If you didn’t manage to catch Nathan Lane’s performance as gay burlesque star Chauncey Miles in The Nance, never fear! Jack O’Brien’s production, which as we previously reported was filmed, is coming to more than 300 movie theaters in the U.S. and Canada for a limited run beginning June 23, during Gay Pride Week in many cities.
Written by Douglas Carter Beane, The Nance is a burlesque-set drama centered on Chauncey Miles (Lane), a nance performer working during the period when New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia was trying to ban burlesque. Integrating burlesque sketches into the drama, The Nance paints the portrait of a homosexual man, living and working in the secretive and dangerous gay world of 1930s New York, whose outrageous antics on the stage stand in marked contrast to his messy offstage life.
The drama ran at Broadway's Lyceum Theatre last year. In addition to Lane, the play starred Tony winner Cady Huffman, Andréa Burns, Lewis J. Stadlen, Jenni Barber and Jonny Orsini.