After a summer spent watching the world’s best football players take the field across North America, Chicago audiences have one more match to look forward to.
On August 31, The Beautiful City Project returns to Athenaeum Center for a concert performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ben Elton’s The Beautiful Game. All proceeds from the evening will support Athenaeum Center for Thought & Culture.
We are grateful to welcome The Beautiful City Project back to the Historic Main Stage and honored to be the beneficiary of this performance.
Set in Belfast during the Troubles, The Beautiful Game follows a group of young football players whose lives are changed by the conflict around them. What begins with the energy of a local team soon becomes a story about friendship, first love, faith, family, and divisions that reach far beyond the football field.
The musical is rooted in a particular place and period, but the questions it raises remain familiar: what shapes a community, what people inherit from the world around them, and whether they can choose a different way forward.
A Large Chicago Cast
The concert brings together performers from across Chicago’s musical theatre community.
The principal cast includes David Moreland, Caroline Lyell, Steve McDonagh, Joey Chelius, Rose McReynolds, Christopher Ratliff, Dee Pace, Peyton Knowski, Kyle Widener, and Kate Turner. Their credits include work with Goodman Theatre, Drury Lane Theatre, Porchlight Music Theatre, Mercury Theater Chicago, Broadway in Chicago, Kokandy Productions, Blank Theatre Company, and Disney Cruise Line.
They will be joined by an ensemble of more than twenty performers, with Isabel Koleno and Haleigh Hutchinson serving as swings.
The production is directed and music directed by The Beautiful City Project Founder and Artistic Director David Fiorello. An Equity Jeff Award winner, Fiorello’s credits include Blues in the Night at Porchlight Music Theatre, Sister Act at Drury Lane Theatre, Hairspray at Fulton Theatre and Maine State Music Theatre, and the national tour of John Doyle’s Sweeney Todd.
Jacob Alexander serves as assistant director, with Marisa DiBennardi as intimacy captain. Abbey Loria and Gabriella Longo are associate producers, and Elizabeth Bushell serves as executive producer.
A Continuing Partnership
The Beautiful City Project uses musical theatre to raise funds and awareness for organizations throughout Chicago. Its cabaret performances and musicals in concert support a different cause or organization while bringing together artists and audiences from across the city.
Athenaeum Center has partnered with the company before. The Beautiful City Project presented Oscar Night here in 2023 and returned with The Scarlet Pimpernel in Concert in 2025. We are especially grateful that its next performance at Athenaeum Center will directly support our work.
Proceeds from The Beautiful Game will support Athenaeum Center’s artistic programming and the continued care of our historic building.
For those who have attended a Beautiful City Project performance before, this is a welcome return. For first-time audiences, it is a chance to hear a rarely produced Andrew Lloyd Webber score performed by a large Chicago cast while directly supporting Athenaeum Center.
Beautiful City Project presents
The Beautiful Game in Concert
Monday, August 31, 2026
7:30 PM
Historic Main Stage at Athenaeum Center
2936 N. Southport Avenue, Chicago
General admission tickets are $50.
VIP tickets are $100 and include a private pre-show reception in Paradiso, one drink ticket, and reserved premium seating.
All proceeds benefit Athenaeum Center for Thought & Culture.
