Side Man (Acting Edition for Theater Productions)

Lauded by Peter Marks of The New York Times as "powerfully unsettling€¦an enormously moving play," Side Man is the comic and tender story of Clifford, a young man who looks back on his family life; prior to leaving home, Clifford reconciles the role that he has long played as parent to his parents. Smoothly gliding between present and past, the play tells the story of a time before the Beatles and Elvis, when jazzmen were heroic like ballplayers and there was no shortage of Saturday-night gigs. Side Man is both a tribute to the men whose lives were their music and a sober look at a family drama left in the wake of that passion.

A Tony Award winner for Best Play, Side Man delves deep into the postwar New York jazz underground through the life of a celebrated musician and his dysfunctional family. Warren Leight used his own experiences as the son of a jazz musician to create Gene, a talented but emotionally incompetent trumpeter whose pure devotion to music comes at the expense of his relationship with resentful wife Terry and their self-sacrificing son, Clifford.

An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring:

Frank Wood as Gene

Garret Dillahunt as Clifford

Christine Lahti as Terry

Kyle Colerider-Krugh as Ziggy

Kevin Geer as Jonesy

Joseph Lyle Taylor as Al

Stephanie Zimbalist as Patsy

Directed by Stephen Sachs. Recorded before a live audience at the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles.