NEW YORK — Tony Award-winner Lea Salonga will join the cast of George Takei’s musical “Allegiance” on Broadway.
The Broadway veteran played the lead female role, Kei Kimura, when the musical made its premiere in 2012 at the Old Globe in San Diego, California. She will reprise it at the Longacre Theatre starting this fall.
Producers also announced Thursday that Telly Leung of “Glee” will also rejoin the cast. The “Rent” and “Godspell” star had also been part of the cast in California.
“Star Trek” actor Takei’s “Allegiance” is multi-generational tale with two love stories that’s framed by a Japanese-American war veteran looking back on his family’s time in a Wyoming internment camp during World War II.
Salonga starred in the original “Miss Saigon” in London and New York and in the Broadway revival of “Flower Drum Song” in 2002, the last time an Asian-led cast of a musical hit Broadway.
“Allegiance” features music and lyrics by Jay Kuo and a book by Marc Acito, Kuo and Lorenzo Thione. It is being directed by Stafford Arima, who directed “Carrie” and “Altar Boyz” off-Broadway and whose own father was interned in Canada during the war.
Previews begin Oct. 6 with an opening set for Nov. 8.
Takei was 5 years old when soldiers marched onto his front porch with bayonets in May 1942 and ordered his entire family to leave their Los Angeles home. It would be nearly four years until the family was able to return to Los Angeles, penniless and forced to start over on Skid Row.