San Francisco’s 42nd Street Moon presents a concert staging of THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE, Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach’s neglected 1931 musical about two composers weathering a stormy romance together. The score, regarded as one of Kern’s most unique and beautiful, contains several songs which have since become standards, including "The Night Was Made for Love" and "She Didn’t Say Yes."

THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE will be directed by Greg MacKellan with musical direction by Barbara Day Turner. Accompanying Turner for this special two-piano presentation will be Brandon Adams.

THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE, set in Brussels, tells of the attraction between a Romanian classical composer, Victor Florescu, and a vivacious jazz composer from America, Shirley Sheridan. Their disparate musical and working styles cause constant clashes between the two – particularly when a producer tries to lighten Victor’s operetta, THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM, with some of Shirley’s uptempo numbers – but eventually true love wins out, and the pair begin to make beautiful music together.

The stage show premiered in 1931 in New York, running for nearly 400 performances, and was also made into a movie in 1934, starring Jeanette MacDonald, Ramon Novarro, and Vivienne Segal. Other songs in the beautifully haunting score include "I Watch the Love Parade," "Try to Forget," "Poor Pierrot," "A New Love is Old," and "One Moment Alone."

The cast assembled for this production of THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE includes 42nd Street Moon favorites Bill Fahrner as Victor and Susan Himes Powers as Shirley. Joining them will be Alison Aylers as mischief-making diva Odette, Patrick Leveque (from American Musical Theatre of San Jose’s recent production of VICTOR/VICTORIA) as impresario Clement Daudet; David Gunderman and Caroline Altman as Shirley’s brother and sister-in-law, a song-and-dance team; G. Scott Kaufman as the strolling street singer, Pompineau; and Narelle Yeo as an opera singer. Sean Sharp, Katie Dederian, Catherine Sheldon, Matthew Riutta, Alison Bloomfield, and Richard Wenzel complete the cast.