Anyone Can Whistle: Tony Award-winner Sutton Foster to star in Encore production

Tony-Award winner Sutton Foster will star in Stephen Sondheim's and Arthur Laurents' Anyone Can Whistle, the final Encores! production of the 2009-10 season, playing for five performancesfrom 8 - 11 Apr 2010, diretced by Casey Nicholaw.

Foster will play 'Nurse Fay Apple,' the role originated by Lee Remick when the show premiered on Broadway in 1964.

Sutton Foster won a Tony Award for her role as 'Millie Dillmount' in 'Thoroughly Modern Millie,' and has been nominated for Tonys for 'Shrek' (in which she currently stars as 'Princess Fiona'), 'The Drowsy Chaperone,' and 'Little Women.' Her other Broadway credits include 'Young Frankenstein,' 'Les Miserables,' 'Annie,' 'Scarlet Pimpernel' and 'Grease!'

Anyone Can Whistle: Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents' 1964 experimental satire of any and every target on the American cultural scene of the moment - conformity, psychology, race relations, greed, religion and politics closed after a brief run, becoming an instant legend that has grown over the years as Sondheim's reputation has soared.

Anyone Can Whistle is set in an imaginary town that has gone bankrupt, it focuses on the unpopular, manipulative and corrupt mayoress, Cora Hoover Hooper and the practical but idealistic nurse, Fay Apple. Mayoress Cora Hoover Hooper together with her political cronies fakes a miracle—water flowing from a rock—that they think will attract tourist dollars ("Miracle Song"). They find themselves challenged by skeptical Fay Apple, a nurse at the local sanitarium, the "Cookie Jar", who intends to use her patients to disprove the claim.

Anyone Can Whistle opened on 4 Apr 1964 at the Majestic Theatre, starring Angela Lansbury, Lee Remick and Harry Guardino, directed by Arthur Laurents, and ran for 12 previews and 9 regular performances.

The 2009-10 Encores! Season features:

Girl Crazy (19 - 22 Nov 2009)
Opened at the Alvin Theatre on 14 Oct 1930 and ran for 272 performances.
Music and lyrics by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin
Book by Guy Bolton and Jack McGowan

Fanny (4 - 7 Feb 2010)
Opened at the Majestic Theater on 4 Nov 1954 and played for a total of 888 performances.
A musical play by S. N. Behrman and Joshua Logan
Based on the Trilogy of Marcel Pagnol
Music and lyrics by Harold Rome

Anyone Can Whistle (8 - 11 Apr 2010)
Opened at the Majestic Theatre on 4 Apr 1964, directed by Arthur Laurents and played for 12 previews and 9 performances.
Book by Arthur Laurents
Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim