Theater News

City Center Encores! Series Will Present Follies, Face the Music, and Stairway to Paradise in 2007

The 2007 season of City Center Encores! musicals in concert will honor the 100th anniversary of the first Ziegfeld Follies with presentations of three shows inspired by the form, including an all-new revue created by Encores!

The season will begin with Stephen Sondheim’s Follies, February 8-11.
First seen on Broadway in 1971, the show ran for more than 520 performances. The Roundabout Theatre Company revived Follies in 2001, but the Encores! presentation will mark the first full-orchestra performances of the score in New York since 1985, when the New York Philharmonic offered a concert version of the show starring Barbara Cook, Lee Remick, Mandy Patinkin, and George Hearn.

Next up in the Encores! season, March 29 -April 1, will be Irving Berlin and Moss Hart’s Face the Music, a 1932 musical about a desperate producer trying to raise the money for his latest revue. The show reopened for another Broadway run in 1933; both productions starred Mary Boland.

The season will conclude with Stairway to Paradise, May 10-14. This first-ever specially created Encores! show will celebrate the best material from a half century of Broadway revues, including songs and sketches from Florenz Ziegfeld’s spectaculars and other legendary musicals and revues of the era.

No casting or directors for the Encores! shows have yet been announced. Paul Gemignani, the series’ resident music director, will serve as musical director for Follies and Stairway to Paradise, while former music director Rob Fisher will return for Face the Music.