Bob & Jean Audiobook By Robert Schenkkan cover art

Bob & Jean

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Bob & Jean

By: Robert Schenkkan
Narrated by: Santino Fontana, Peter Friedman, Betsy Wolfe
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About this listen

For two people not looking for love, it found them at the worst possible time.

When college friends Bob Schenkkan (Santino Fontana) and Jean McKenzie (Betsy Wolfe) reunited in New York City in 1941, lightning struck. However, with Bob shipping off to the Pacific War as a bomb disposal officer and Jean touring the nation as a USO actor, keeping this new flame alive while thousands of miles apart was a challenge.

Written by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award®-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan (All the Way, The Kentucky Cycle), Bob & Jean is a stirring and romantic new play that tells the remarkable story of his parents' tumultuous courtship with direction from Tony nominee Scott Ellis. Travel through their passionate, funny, sometimes desperate letters as they navigate bombs, wrecked trains, miscues, and the complexities of the human heart.

A true love story about going the distance.

©2023 Robert Schenkkan (P)2023 AO Media LLC Entertainment & Performing Arts Heartfelt Inspiring Funny
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Robert Schenkkan
Scott Ellis
About the Author-Robert Schenkkan

About the Author

Robert Schenkkan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, Tony Award-winning, Writer's Guild Award-winning, three-time Emmy-nominated writer of stage, television, and film. He is the author of 14 original full-length plays, two musicals, and a collection of one-act plays. He co-wrote the feature film Hacksaw Ridge (six Academy Award nominations) and The Quiet American, and his television credits include All the Way, The Pacific, The Andromeda Strain, and Spartacus.

About the Director-Scott Ellis

About the Director

Scott Ellis’s Broadway credits include Take Me Out (Tony Award, Best Revival), Tootsie (Tony nomination), Kiss Me Kate, She Loves Me (Tony nomination), On the Twentieth Century, You Can’t Take It With You (Tony nomination), The Elephant Man, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Tony nomination), Harvey, Curtains (Tony nomination), The Little Dog Laughed (Drama League Award nomination), Twelve Angry Men (Tony nomination), The Man Who Had All the Luck, The Rainmaker, 1776 (Drama Desk Award and Tony nominations), Picnic (Outer Critics Circle Award nomination), Company, A Month in the Country, and Steel Pier (Tony nomination). Off-Broadway credits include Dada Woof Papa Hot; The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin; Gruesome Playground Injuries; Streamers; Good Boys and True; Entertaining Mr. Sloane; Flora, the Red Menace (Drama Desk nomination); And the World Goes ’Round (Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards); and The Waverly Gallery. His television credits include All Rise, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Dr. Ken (pilot), Undateable (pilot), Two Broke Girls, The Good Wife, The Closer, Weeds (executive producer), 30 Rock (Emmy Award nomination for Best Director), Modern Family, and Fox’s A Christmas Story Live. Upcoming projects include co-producing the new Amazon TV series Étoile, written by Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino, and the new Broadway revival of Doubt starring Tyne Daly and Liev Schreiber. Ellis is the interim artistic director of The Roundabout Theatre Company in New York City.

Peter Friedman
Betsy Wolfe
Santino Fontana
About the Performer-Peter Friedman

About the Performer

Peter Friedman has been in the original New York productions of works by Wendy Wasserstein, Simon Gray, C.P. Taylor, Charles Fuller, Annie Baker, Amy Herzog, Max Posner, Greg Pierce, Jennifer Haley, Deborah Zoe Laufer, The Debate Society, Rachel Bonds, Lauren Yee, Will Eno, Michael Mitnick, Kim Rosenstock, Will Connolly, Gunnar Madsen, Joy Gregory, John Lang, Susan Stroman, David Thompson, John Kander, Terrence McNally, Lynn Ahrens, and Stephen Flaherty. He’s performed in NYC revivals of plays by Paddy Chayefsky, Reginald Rose, Donald Margulies, Chekhov, and Shakespeare. Film: The Savages, Safe, Single White Female. TV: Brooklyn Bridge, High Maintenance, The Muppet Show, The Affair, The Path, Succession.

Betsy Wolfe

About the Performer

Betsy Wolfe was nominated for a 2023 Tony Award for her performance as “Anne Hathaway” in & Juliet, the musical from writer David West Read with music by hitmaker Max Martin. Additional Broadway credits include “Jenna” in Waitress, the revival of Falsettos, Bullets Over Broadway, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, 110 in the Shade, and Everyday Rapture. Wolfe is perhaps best known for her critically acclaimed performance as “Cathy” in the off-Broadway revival of The Last Five Years. Previous theater includes Merrily We Roll Along (NY City Center Encores), How to Succeed... (Broadway Center Stage), Up Here (La Jolla Playhouse), and the Die Fledermaus productions (Met Opera). A soloist with over 60 symphony orchestras, including the National Symphony, Chicago Symphony, and Carnegie Hall.  Screen credits include the indie First One In and CBS's Instinct. Wolfe founded BroadwayEvolved, an award-winning theater training program for students. www.BroadwayEvolved.com

Santino Fontana

About the Performer

Santino Fontana received the Tony Award, two Drama Desks, an Outer Critics Circle, a Lortel, an Obie, and the Clarence Derwent Award for his work in both plays and musicals. Most recently seen on Broadway in his virtuosic Tony-winning turn as Michael Dorsey in Tootsie. The New York Times wrote, “Santino Fontana [is] one of the most promising actors to emerge in the New York theater.” New York magazine heralded him as an “indispensable stage star.”
He is widely known for lending his voice to the villainous Prince Hans in Disney’s Academy Award-winning animated feature Frozen.
On TV, Santino was seen on the Emmy-winning The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.  He starred on CW’s comedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend as fan favorite Greg, and NBC’s drama Shades of Blue, opposite Jennifer Lopez, simultaneously. 
A critically acclaimed narrator of dozens of audiobooks, he was the original voice of Joe in Caroline Kepnes’s cult hit You and all its sequels. He received the Audie Award for Stephen King’s The Institute and was chosen to read Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

Heartwarming Love Story • Wartime Romance Tale • Superb Narration • Captivating True Story • Engaging Personal Account
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what a gift to share their budding feelings and listen to their love grow.

lovely and touching

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A delightful account of the author’s parent’s relationship. From stories told and letters kept from their courting years, their love story became a play. What a wonderful love story they had and left for their children and families.

Wonderful Love Story for Valentine’s Day

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I am a history teacher who is always looking to learn more about the past. I enjoyed this glimpse into the lives of a man and a woman learning to love each other against the backdrop of World War II. The acting, music, and writing were superb. Thank you to all involved.

Delightful

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I loved everything about this short and real story of the author's parents' romance during WWII, told primarily through their letters to eachother as he was deployed to the Pacifi lc
deployed and she entertained troops with the USO. Their humor, passion, fears, concerns -- and most of all, their love -- are beautifully told, interspersed with the author's commentary.

Sweet & memorable real life romance

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i only wish i had been able to share this with my mum, before she left to meet up with *her* truest love on the other side, to begin *their* next life together. my parents, my mum and stepdad, had one of those, one-of-a-kind loves, too. i believe he waited for her on the other side, as Jean most certainly waited for Bob …

i also wish i could have heard this before the one time i was able to be at Arlington Cemetery, i would have visited them, too ..

thank you, mr s, for sharing such a wonderful love story🥰

fantastic!

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This played like an old time radio show. I found it fun and interesting to listen to. It was just the right length.

Enjoyed the Old Time Radio Feel!

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What a beautiful tribute to the authors parents. These letters described the growth of the pure love and devotion between Bob and Jean as well as clear adoration and respect of their son. Truly beautiful.

Bob + Jean Forever

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The performers were excellent, The story was captivating. It made wish I had know them.

A great story

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I liked the letters that drew them closer as time passed. It was a difficult time but they made the best of the situation.

Bob & Jean

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I loved hearing the story about Bob and Jean, their letters…everything. My own Grandparents had a relationship during the war. They were married, however, and he never came home. My grandmother was pregnant with my mother at the time. But listening to Bob and Jean through their letters, I couldn’t help but feel like they sounded similar to how my grandparents would have sounded back then.

Such a good story

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