New York City Center 2015 Encores! Season Announced
The New York City Center 2015 Encores! Season will include three new productions of classic musicals, reinvented for modern audiences. The 2015 season will open with George and Ira Gershwin's Lady Be Good on February 4, 2015. The season will continue with Lerner and Loewe's Paint Your Wagon followed by John Kander and Fred Ebb's Zorba!.
Based at the New York City Center under the artistic directorship of Jack Viertel, the Encores! 2015 season is made possible by Stacey and Eric Mindich, Nathalie and Pablo Salame, The Shubert Foundation, and the Stephanie and Fred Shuman Fund. The season features musical direction by Rob Berman, with founding Encores! Music Director Rob Fisher returning as music director of 'Lady, Be Good', supervising the restoration of Gershwin's original score.
Lady Be Good will run 4 - 8 February 2015 at the City Center Main House. Featuring music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and a book by Guy Bolton and Fred Thompson, the musical originally opened on Broadway at the Liberty Theater on 1 December 1924 and ran for 330 performances. It follows a brother and sister who are out of money; both are eager to sacrifice themselves to help the other and features the songs 'Oh, Lady be Good!' and 'Fascinating Rhythm'.
Lerner and Loewe's Paint Your Wagon will run from 18 - 22 March 2015. Set in a mining camp in Gold Rush-era California, it is the story of a dreaming gold miner and his daughter whose world is changed when the daughter finds gold, and love, near their camp. The original Broadway production ran at the Shubert Theater on 12 Nov 1951 and ran for 289 performances. The original production featured direction by Daniel Mann and choreography by Agnes De Mille, and included the songs 'They Call the Wind Maria','I Talk to the Trees' and 'I'm On My Way'.
Zorba! features a score by John Kander and Fred Ebb, and is based on Nikos Kazantzakis's best-selling tale of a larger than life Greek jack-of-all-trades who lives every day as if it will be his last. The original production, directed by Hal Prince, opened at the Imperial Theater on 16 November 1968 and ran for 305 performances. Songs include 'Life Is' and 'Only Love'. The Encores! production will run from 6 - 10 May 2015.
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