The back cover of the program for "Miracle on Easy Street" contains a special announcement: the Double Cupp Diner is reopening.
Easy Street Productions will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2013 by reuniting the original cast of "Pump Boys and Dinettes" for performances in May at DeYor Performing Arts Center's Ford Family Recital Hall.
Todd Hancock, Maureen Collins, Don Creque, Rick Blackson Jeff Sanders and Robyn Elia McCamy will be doing the musical together for the first time since it closed at the Uptown Theater in 1991 after two years and 200 performances. Blackson was unable to take part when Easy Street staged the show in 2000 at Powers Auditorium.
"We tried to do it one other time, but there was always someone who couldn't it," Hancock said. "This time everything just lined up."
Creque lives in Las Vegas and McCamy lives in Nashville, which makes it difficult to work around their schedules. But Creque came back to play Daddy Warbucks in Easy Street's production of "Annie" in November, and Hancock said he thinks McCamy seeing Creque's Facebook posts about how much fun he was having encouraged her to juggle her work schedule so she could reprise her role alongside Collins as one of the Cupp sisters, who run the diner where the story takes place.
And Hancock said he saw Blackson in the audience with his wife, Mary Jo Maluso, at "Annie," so he decided to broach the idea with him about playing L.M. once more.
"The timing was right," he said.
Ironically, "Pump Boys" is scheduled to reopen on Broadway next spring, its first revival since its original run in 1982-83, Easy Street's "Annie" opened in November the same weekend a revival of that show opened on Broadway.
Hancock believes the 600-seat Ford Family Recital Hall is better suited for the show than Powers, which is about four times larger.
"At Powers people had a good time, but we were used to doing it in a smaller space," he said.
Performances will be scheduled the first two weekends in May, and Hancock said they will determine the number of performances based on ticket demand.
"We're not sure what to expect," Hancock said. "There's a mystique about that show. So many people have heard about it and never had a chance to see it, and so many saw it and said they want to see it again."