'Silk Stockings' - a Cole Porter musical, at Florence Gould Hall

Lost Musicals presents an exclusive engagement of Silk Stockings, featuring music and lyrics by Cole Porter, book by George S. Kaufman, Leueen MacGrath and Abe Burrows, directed by Ian Marshall Fisher, at Florence Gould Hall in the French Institute Alliance Fran�aise. The musical will be presented for four semi-staged performances only, beginning the 11 Sep 2005.

The cast of 17 performers will be announced shortly.

Silk Stockings was based on the Billy Wilder film 'Ninotchka' that starred Greta Garbo. Although the musical was a hit on Broadway, running a total of 478 performances, and later became a film starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, Silk Stockings has not been seen on the stage since it debuted on Broadway in 1955 starring Don Ameche.

The show was Porter�s fifth work and is set in Paris. So it is only appropriate that its return to the stage should be at New York�s French Institute Alliance Fran�aise.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Kaufman ('Of Thee I Sing,' The Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera' and 'Animal Crackers', 'The Man Who Came To Dinner,' 'You Can�t Take It With You') and Burrows ('How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,' 'Guys and Dolls') satirize Hollywood and Communism in this musical. Porter�s memorable score includes such numbers as 'All of You,' 'Paris Loves Lovers' and 'Stereophonic Sound.'

Synopsis: Special envoy Nina Yaschenko is dispatched from the Soviet Union to rescue three foolish commissars who have been seduced by the pleasures of Paris. She is romanced by theatrical agent Steven Canfield and eventually comes to recognize the viruses of capitalist indulgence. Other characters include Peter Boroff, Russia's greatest composer, who is being wooed by Janice Dayton, America's swimming sweetheart, to write the music for her first serious, non-swimming picture, War and Peace.

Over the last sixteen years, Ian Marshall Fisher has been known in London for specializing in directing and presenting neglected musicals by America�s finest theatre writers in London�s Barbican, Royal Opera House Covent Garden and Sadler�s Wells.

He has directed, reconstructed, cast and produced over 70 different musicals with some 2,000 actors, most of whom are drawn from the Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre.

Marshall Fisher presented Silk Stockings in London in May 2005. Because of the authors� pedigree and interest in the work, he has decided to bring the show back to New York with an American cast.

These performances of Silk Stockings will raise funds for The Lost Musicals Charitable Trust, a UK government educational organization connected to Ian Marshall Fisher�s Lost Musicals work.