“Souvenir” starring Max Wellman & Gina Gedler at Noce

“Souvenir,” the comic yet touching musical play based on the life of Florence Foster Jenkins, is coming to Noce. Directed by Maxwell Schaeffer and music directed by Ben Hagen, the production stars renowned actress and singer Gina Gedler as the shrill yet unabashed soprano, joined by Max Wellman as her faithful accompanist Cosme McMoon. 

The show runs Sept. 8-17. Tickets can be purchased at www.nocedsm.com or by calling (515) 244-5399.

Noce is proud to present ‘Souvenir,’ a musical play starring Gina Gedler as Florence Foster Jenkins & Max Wellman as Cosme McMoon, her faithful accompanist. Max Schaeffer directs, with musical direction from Ben Hagen.

In a Greenwich Village supper club in 1964, Cosmé McMoon flashes back to the musical career of Florence Foster Jenkins, a wealthy socialite with a famously uncertain sense of pitch and key. In 1932, she met mediocre pianist Cosmé McMoon, and the two teamed up in the hope of achieving success. Over the next dozen years, their bizarre partnership yielded hilariously off-key recitals that became the talk of New York, earned them cultish fame. The play culminates in a sold-out performance at Carnegie Hall in 1944, where the audience “turns on her in gales of derisive guffaws.”

The play’s title, “Souvenir,” comes from Jenkins insisting on recording “Queen of the Night” (Mozart), saying that when her voice is not as strong, the recording will make “a lovely souvenir.”