NY City 17th Encores season

Girl Crazy, with music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and book by Guy Bolton and Jack McGowan, will open New York City Center�s 2009�2010 Encores! season on 19 Nov 2009.

The season will continue with Fanny, with music and lyrics by Harold Rome and book by S. N. Behrman and Joshua Logan, on 4 Feb 2010. Fanny will be the 50th Encores! production presented by City Center since 1994.

The season will conclude with Anyone Can Whistle, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents� legendary 1964 musical, on 8 Apr 2010.

Girl Crazy, the Gershwin's fanciful depression-era musical of 1930, is the tale of a sophisticated New Yorker marooned in a dusty Western cowtown with no one who understands him but the Yiddish-speaking cabbie who brought him there and no one to love but the only woman within 50 miles.

The show gave birth to one of the all-time flashiest Broadway scores, featuring �I Got Rhythm,� �Embraceable You,� �But Not For Me� and �Boy! What Love Has Done To Me,� among others. The original production put a hot jazz band in the pit, led by cornet virtuoso Red Nichols, and included such jazz greats as Glenn Miller, Gene Krupa, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden.

Girl Crazy opened at the Alvin Theatre on October 14, 1930 and ran for 272 performances. The Encores! production will run 19 Nov � 22 Nov 2009.

Fanny, based on Marcel Pagnol�s trilogy Marius, Fanny and Cesar and set in Marseille, is among Broadway�s greatest love stories � a tale of a young girl�s passion for a young man so in love with the sea that he leaves her, little realizing that she is pregnant with his child. Her marriage of convenience to a wealthy older man desperate to have an heir is complicated by the sailor�s return years later.

Joshua Logan and S.N. Behrman provided an earthy book, and Harold Rome�s score contains some of the most ardent and sweeping melodies written for the theater, including the title song, �Restless Heart� and �Never Too Late For Love.� Oddly, the big hit single from the show in its day was the novelty tune �Be Kind to Your Parents.�

Fanny opened on 4 Nov 1954 at the Majestic Theater, starring Florence Henderson, Ezio Pinza and Walter Slezak (who won a Tony award for Best Actor in a Musical), and played for a total of 888 performances. The Encores! production will run 4 - 7 Feb 2010.

Anyone Can Whistle, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents� experimental satire of any and every target on the American cultural scene of the moment � conformity, psychology, race relations, greed, religion, politics � divided the critics, thrilled the emerging counter-culture, baffled the masses and closed quickly, becoming an instant legend that has grown over the years as Sondheim�s reputation has soared. The title song and �With So Little to Be Sure Of� have survived as cabaret classics, but the rarely-heard complete score is a mixture of jazzy, show-biz razzmatazz, waltzes, gospel numbers and Broadway pastiche.

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 a brief 12 previews and 9 performances. The Encores! production will run 8 - 11 Apr 2010.

New York City Center Encores! (Jack Viertel, Artistic Director) has, since 1994, celebrated the rarely-heard works of America�s most important composers and lyricists. Conceived as �concert versions,� each Encores! season gives three scores the chance to be heard as originally intended by their creators.

Over the years, Encores! has presented the works of the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Kurt Weill, Bock and Harnick, Burt Bacharach, Kander and Ebb, Comden and Green, and many more.

The program is the recipient of a special 2000 Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre, as well as an Outer Critics Circle Award, Lucille Lortel Award and Jujamcyn Theaters Award.