James Lapine to Direct Broadway Revival of Annie

Tony Award winner James Lapine will direct a new Broadway production of Annie. As previously reported, the revival, produced by Arielle Tepper Madover, is scheduled to open in the fall of 2012. The theater, creative team, and casting will be announced at a later date.

Lapine has won Tony Awards for his books for the musicals Passion, Falsettos, and Into the Woods, and he and Stephen Sondheim received the Pulitzer Prize for Sunday in the Park with George. In addition to directing these pieces, he also has staged such shows as Dirty Blonde, Golden Child, Amour, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

With music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin and book by Thomas Meehan, the Tony Award-winning musical is based on the newspaper character Little Orphan Annie. The original production opened on April 21, 1977 at the Alvin Theatre, and went on to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, seven Drama Desk Awards including Best Musical, the Grammy for Best Cast Show Album and seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book and Best Score. The show was one of the biggest Broadway musical hits of the 1970s, running for almost six years and playing 2,377 performances.

In addition to its stage incarnations, Annie has been filmed twice, for motion pictures in 1982 and for television in 1999.