Coincidentally, Sharon Gless best known as Cagney in Cagney & Lacey will be on the West End stage at the same time as her co-star Tyne Daly who played Lacey who stars in Master Class at the Vaudeville Theatre.

Sharon Gless not only originated the role, playing Jane Juska, when it made its world premiere in San Francisco in 2010 but was instrumental in getting the book transformed into a play. “My husband Barney and I had just had a quarrel and he stormed out of the room,” said Gless. “Later he rushed back into the room and announced, 'If you had any balls you'd go after this.'” 

Her husband is Barney Rosenzweig, an Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winning television producer who knows a good project when he sees one.  He was referring to a story about Jane Juska's book that he had just read in The New York Times.  Gless read the story and was fascinated by what she read and set out trying to get the rights to the book.

She owned the rights for 11 years before getting the project off the ground.  “I first thought it would make a great television series.  Nobody wanted to touch it.”  Since the world of television was not interested in a project about an aging woman and her sexual adventures resulting from placing a personal ad, Sharon thought it might make a good play.  It was then that she contacted her friends Jane Prowse (playwright and director) and Simon Moore (who wrote the stage adaption of Stephen King's Misery).  Jane agreed to write the play and is the director of this production.

[posted by Louise, 08/11/2011]

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