Off-Broadway Revival Of Musical ‘The Goodbye Girl’ Features Superstars Sierra Boggess And Santino Fontana

J2 Spotlight Musical Theater Company on Manhattan’s Theatre Row is presenting the first revival in almost 30 years of the musical based on the Neil Simon comedy, The Goodbye Girl, starring multi-award-winning actors Sierra Boggess and Santino Fontana.

The production—about a single mother in New York (Boggess) who has been jilted often but falls in love with an actor (Fontana), described as an “opinionated actor who shows up unexpectedly on her doorstep with a lease to sublet her apartment”—is directed by the musical’s lyricist, David Zippel. Adapted from a 1997 film starring Marsha Mason and Richard Dreyfuss, the musical debuted on Broadway in 1993 starring Bernadette Peters and Martin Short. The 1997 film was remade in 2004 starring Patricia Heaton and Jeff Daniels in Mason’s and Dreyfuss’ roles.

In an interview this week, Zippel said the new production of the musical—which has a book by Neil Simon and music by Marvin Hamlisch—is the first since 1994, when it was presented by the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, Ill., outside Chicago.

He said some of the musical’s lyrics have been “slightly tweaked,” as has some of the dialogue.

He suggested there is ”always an audience for a romantic comedy musical, even more in today’s times,” when “romance, humor and emotion” all provide “a great escape.”

Zippel said he was approached by J2 Spotlight—which says it “presents professional revivals of worthy Broadway musicals (providing) an opportunity for patrons to revisit these shows and, in some cases, experience them for the first time”—to direct the revival. He immediately contacted Boggess and Fontana to appear and both quickly agreed.

He called them both “perfectly cast, funny, smart, they sing brilliantly. There’s nothing they can’t do.”

He also called the production in J2 Spotlight’s theater “incredibly intimate,” since the actors perform without microphones. “It’s nice to hear great singers without mikes,” he explained.

Fontana has won multiple Drama Desk and Tony Awards, the former for outstanding featured actor in a play, Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs, in 2010, the latter for best performance by an actor in a leading role in a musical, Tootsie, in 2019.

Boggess has appeared on both Broadway and the West End, starring as Christine Daae in Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera in both places and in the musical’s televised 25^th anniversary concert. Webber has called her “the best Christine certainly.”