Benanti, Ripley & Burgess Join Brown for Strathmore 'Songs'

According to Tony-nominee Laura Benanti's website, she, Alice Ripley and Tituss Burgess will join the previously announced Jason Robert Brown for the upcoming Strathmore Center production oF Brown's acclaimed song cycle Songs for a New World.

Brown will also conduct the show, which will take place in Bethesda, MD on May 16th and 17th (both performances at 8 PM). The event will be produced by Signature Theatre. Michael Baron will direct.  "In this unique collaboration, Signature brings the Washington premiere of Songs for a New World to Strathmore, the revue that launched the career of Tony Award-winning composer Jason Robert Brown and has since become the stuff of theater legend," states the Strathmore website.  Songs for a New World, which premiered at the WPA Theatre in 1995, features songs such as "Stars and Moon," "I'm Not Afraid of Anything," and "I'd Give It All for You."

Benanti is a Tony Award-nominee for Swing! and for Into the Woods.  She most recently appeared on Broadway in The Wedding Singer.  Other credits include Nine and The Sound of Music.  Ripley is a Tony-nominee for Side Show, and has appeared on Broadway in The Rocky Horror Show, James Joyce's The Dead, Sunset Boulevard, The Who's Tommy and Les Miserables.  Burgess, who will next appear as Sebastian in The Little Mermaid, appears on Broadway in Jersey Boys and has also been seen in Good Vibrations.

Brown is the composer and lyricist of the musical, The Last Five Years, which was cited as one of Time Magazine's 10 Best of 2001 and won Drama Desk Awards for Best Music and Best Lyrics.  He won a 1999 Tony Award for his score to Parade, a musical written with Alfred Uhry and directed by Harold Prince, which premiered at Lincoln Center Theatre in December 1998, and subsequently won both the Drama Desk and New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards for Best New Musical.  Parade was also presented on a national tour in 2000, which Jason conducted. He also contributed to the Tony-nominated score of Urban Cowboy.  Brown is the winner of the 2002 Kleban Award for Outstanding Lyrics and the 1996 Gilman and Gonzalez-Falla Foundation Award for Musical Theatre.  Brown's first solo album, "Wearing Someone Else's Clothes," featuring his band The Caucasian Rhythm Kings, is available from Sh-K-Boom Records.  His current theater project, 13, a musical comedy written with Dan Elish, recently played the Mark Taper Forum in L.A.

Visit www.strathmore.org for tickets and more information.

Photo of Laura Benanti by Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.

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