NYC CENTER ENCORES - 2020 SEASON ANNOUNCED

[edjames]

First up, a show I have been longing to see again. I saw a London production in '96. Wonderful score.

 

Encores!

Mack and Mabel

Feb 19 – 23, 2020

 

General Public Tickets Available Aug 5

The Encores! season opens with Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart’s Mack and Mabel. Follow the dramatic, romantic entanglements of silent movie pioneer Mack Sennett and his comedienne-muse Mabel Normand. Relive Herman’s timeless score which includes the beloved ballads, “Time Heals Everything” and “I Won’t Send Roses.”

 

Love Life

Mar 18 – 22, 2020

 

General Public Tickets Available Aug 5

Love Life, the only collaboration between Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner, is a journey through American history with a family that never grows any older. Directed by Victoria Clark, the story is accentuated with vaudevillian acts and features some of Weill’s most beautiful and accessible songs, including “Mr. Right,” and “Here I’ll Stay.” Little-seen but much-discussed, Love Life has had a large and direct impact on Broadway shows such as Gypsy; Cabaret;Follies; and Hallelujah, Baby!

 

Thoroughly Modern Millie

May 6 – 10, 2020

 

General Public Aug 5

 

Dick Scanlan and Jeanine Tesori’s Thoroughly Modern Millie is a raise-the-roof tribute to the indomitable spirit of New York and the diverse people who call it home and features showstopping numbers like “Forget About the Boy” and “Gimme Gimme.” Starring Ashley Park (Mean Girls, The King and I) with direction by Encores! Resident Director Lear deBessonet, and playwright Lauren Yee working with the show’s original authors as creative consultant, the team will explore the work with a fresh perspective to deliver a thoroughly modern Thoroughly Modern Millie.

[edjames]

FYI, tickets now on sale for the summer Encores! Off-Center series of shows, INCLUDING, Sondheim's ROAD SHOW (July 24-27), PROMENADE (July 10 & 11) and WORKING ( (June 26-29)

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

Millie will be sanitized and politically-corrected for the new generation, or so I hear. #snooze

 

Mack and Mabel could be incredible. It's got a solid score.

[bostonman]

It seems that for years, Encores has been denied the rights to do any of Jerry Herman's scores, so this is great news indeed.

 

I couldn't care less about Millie. It never really interested me in the first place. Love Life, being a huge Kurt Weill fan, is another story. I'm hoping I can get down to see that. I'm also hoping to see either Working or Road Show this summer.

[foxy]

Having seen the original production of Mack & Mabel it will be fun to see it again.

[+ sam.fitzpatrick]

We did Mack & Mabel in high school. By far, my favorite Jerry Herman score. I'd love to see it from the audience.

[edjames]

I would be remiss not to note that Jack Vietel is leaving his post of City Center Encores after 20 years and after the conclusion of next season.

 

 

How Encores! gives new life to fading Broadway musicals

After 20 years, Jack Viertel is giving up the job that everyone who loves musical theater covets: producing Encores! at City Center.

As I shouldn’t have to remind my readers, Encores! presents concert versions of musicals that, for one reason or another, have slipped away or are in danger of doing so.

The first show Viertel wanted to produce had disappeared altogether: “Juno,” an adaptation of a Sean O’Casey play that had a score by Marc Blitzstein (“The Threepenny Opera”).

“I have loved the score to ‘Juno’ since I was 14,” 70-year-old Viertel tells me. “But it’s a drama. People get killed. It’s not ‘Hello, Dolly!’ So I thought I better try to prove myself in the job before I do ‘Juno.’ ”

The first Encores! show he produced was Rodgers and Hart’s “A Connecticut Yankee,” in 2001. Viertel did it as a tribute to his parents, who took him to Broadway shows when he was a kid. They loved Ella Fitzgerald’s album “The Rodgers and Hart Song

Book,” which has the definitive rendition of that musical’s “Thou Swell.”

The Encores! production was just so-so — “The show was more problematic than I thought,” Viertel says — but Christine Ebersole, singing “To Keep My Love Alive,” brought the house down.

Three months later, he did “Hair,” which, with Idina Menzel, Gavin Creel, Michael McElroy and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, was a sensation. “We sold every single ticket to that show,” he says. But he got hate mail from Encores! subscribers who objected to the nudity. “They said it was obscene and disgusting,” Viertel says. “Those letters could have been written in 1967. It must have taken a long time for them to be delivered.”

More successes followed, including “The Apple Tree,” “Finian’s Rainbow” and “Gypsy,” starring Patti LuPone — all of which transferred to Broadway.

Viertel says he never felt the pressure to give Broadway another “Chicago,” the long-running revival that started with his predecessors at Encores!

“It was always about the score,” he says. “Do we want to hear the score? And if the book is not good, how do we make it tolerable?”

He tried it with “Juno,” and while critics praised the score, one called the musical’s plot “the stuff of nightmares.”

Another show Viertel couldn’t salvage was his 2003 production of “House of Flowers,” based on Truman Capote’s book about rival brothels, with music by Harold Arlen. Pearl Bailey starred in the 1954 original, but the show was troubled out of town. By the time it got to New York, Bailey had turned it into something like a nightclub act.

“I love the score,” Viertel says. “And we tried it. But the show had just torn itself to pieces, and we could not fix it.”

Because of its prestigious reputation — 30-piece orchestras are the norm at Encores! — City Center has attracted stars. The one Viertel wanted most was Hugh Jackman for Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley’s 1961 show, “Stop the World — I Want To Get Off.”

“We had a meeting, and he was interested, but we couldn’t get him for nine days of rehearsals for just seven shows,” Viertel says.

One of his most acclaimed Encores! shows was 2018’s “Grand Hotel,” with a beautiful score by Robert Wright, George Forrest and Maury Yeston. Viertel had been involved in the original 1989 production as an executive of Jujamcyn Theaters, which produced the musical. It had a difficult tryout in Boston, but director Tommy Tune fixed it for Broadway, where it went on to win five Tony Awards.

Viertel says he was watching the Encores! production when he thought, “First you do shows you saw the first time. But when you start doing shows you produced the first time — well, that’s when you know it’s time to get off.”

[+ WilliamM]

I was still happy to see House of Flowers, despite the problems. Also Kurt Weill One Touch of Venus and Lady in The Dark.

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

We did Mack & Mabel in high school. By far, my favorite Jerry Herman score. I'd love to see it from the audience.

 

I hear you do a mean Time Heals Everything

[+ sam.fitzpatrick]

I hear you do a mean Time Heals Everything

 

Any score with a song titled I Promise You a Happy Ending is worth the price of admission.