Altar Boyz plays its 1500th performance

The Off-Broadway musical Altar Boyz will play its 1500th performance on 3 Oct 2008. This makes it the 11th longest running Off-Broadway musical ever � behind The Fantasticks, 'I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change,' 'Nunsense,' 'Threepenny Opera,' Naked Boys Singing, Forbidden Broadway, 'Little Shop of Horrors,' 'Godspell,' 'Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris,' and 'Forever Plaid.'

Altar Boyz is currently booking through to 1 Mar 2009 at New World Stages / Stage 4, where it opened on the 1 Mar 2005, following previews from the 15 Feb 2005.

Altar Boyz is a musical comedy about a struggling Christian boy-band riding the wave of America's latest fascination with religion. Armed with catchy melodies, freaky moves and product in their hair, the self-anointed apostles of pop (Matthew, Mark, Luke, Juan . . . and Abraham (He's Jewish) bring their soul-saving tour to New York City, with their heavenly hits like �Girl, You Make Me Wanna Wait� and �Jesus Called Me On My Cell Phone�.

Currently starring in the show are Neil Haskell (Luke), Michael Kadin Craig (Matthew), Mauricio Perez (Juan), Travis Nesbitt (Mark) and Ryan Strand (Abraham).

Conceived by Marc Kessler and Ken Davenport, Altar Boyz has a score by Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker with book by Kevin Del Aguila.

The musical is directed by Stafford Arima and choreographed by Christopher Gattelli, with set designs by Anna Louizos, lighting design by Natasha Katz, and sound design by Peter Hylenski. Lynne Shankel is the music director and Co-Orchestrator.

The show received mostly Good to luke-warm reviews: "Go and enjoy!" (New York Theatre Guide); "Sends you home with a smile." (NY Times); "keeps you laughing all evening long." (New York Daiy News); "Sufficiently well-executed and funny to make the slight evening entertaining." (New York Post); "Devout service of rousing silliness." (NewsDay) and "It should be preaching to enthusiastic crowds for some time to come." (Associated Press).

Altar Boyz received the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical Off-Broadway and earned Christopher Gattelli the 2005 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Choreographer.