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July 20, 2014

Musicals can gestate for an awfully long time. A case in point: Douglas J. Cohen’s The Gig, about a ragtag band of middle-age, middle-class jazz amateurs who get a shot at some professional work. In development for more than 20 years, the show made long-ago stops at the National Music Theater Conference, Manhattan Theater Club, Goodspeed Opera House and elsewhere. Now it’s onstage with a strong cast and a fine four-piece band at the PTC Performance Space, in a spare production directed by Igor Goldin as part of the New York Musical Theater Festival. Based on Frank D. Gilroy’s 1985 movie, The Gig has a throwback feel, and not just because the two-week job that the trombone player and used-car salesman Marty (Larry Cahn) booked on a whim is at a Catskills resort. The year is 1975, and the band mates who pile into his van have ditched their regular lives for a chance to test their worth.

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