Brian Stokes Mitchell Leads Encores! The Band Wagon
The New York City Center has announced a special Encores! concert event this November. Tony Award winner Brian Stokes Mitchell will star in a concert production of The Band Wagon, directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall, running from 6 - 16 November 2014.
The show has a book by Douglas Carter Beane adapted from the screenplay by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, with music by Arthur Schwartz and lyrics by Howard Dietz. The production is in arrangement with Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures and based on the 1953 film of the same name which used Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz's songs to tell their story and took its title from the famed 1931 Broadway revue written by Schwartz, Dietz, and George S. Kaufman. The special event will use the original Comden and Green screenplay with a wonderful score that includes "Dancing in the Dark," "By Myself," "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan," "A Shine on My Shoes," and "That's Entertainment."
The Band Wagon is a classic backstage musical: A washed-up Hollywood star trying to make a comeback by doing a Broadway show, a British director who is a genius but has no business directing a musical, a leading lady who's never done a show before, and a composer and a lyricist who are at each other's throats. All the things that could never happen in the New York theater today.
Brian Stokes Mitchell's previous Broadway credits include George and Ira Gershwin's 'Oh, Kay!', 'Jelly's Last Jam', Kander and Ebb's 'Kiss of the Spider Woman', 'Ragtime', the 1999 revival of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate (for which he won a Tony award) and 'Man of La Mancha'. His previous roles with City Center Encores! include Jule Styne's 'Do Re Mi' (1999), Bob Merrill's 'Carnival!' (2002)and Kismet (2006).
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