Herbert and Kern Musicals Added to 2005-2006 Musicals Tonight! Season

By: Sep. 23, 2005
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The 2005-2006 Musicals Tonight! season will now feature the songs of Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz, Victor Herbert, and Henderson, DeSylva and Brown after the previously-announced Show Girl and Roberta were replaced on the season roster by Oh, Lady! Lady!! and Mlle. Modiste. 

The High Life (first known as The Gay Life), Good News and Let's Face It, however, will play as originally scheduled by the company.

The first show presented in the concert series will be Schwartz and Dietz' The High Life, which opened at the Shubert Theatre on November 18th, 1961 and starred Barbara Cook. The plot "has determined bachelor Anatol succumbing to the whiles of the enchanting Liesl in the Vienna of 1904." The Gay Life will run from October 18th to 30th.

Next, Henderson, DeSylva and Brown's Good News, which "takes us back to the ingenuousness of the 1920s on college campuses (and on Broadway). Football-mad Tait College's star is flunking Astronomy until he falls for his tutor," will run from November 1st to 13th. The original production opened on September 6th, 1927 at the 46th Street Theatre and made a hit of songs such as "The Varsity Drag."

Victor Herbert's 1905 operetta Mlle. Modiste made a hit of the ballad "Kiss Me Again."  The show centers around "Fifi, a shop girl, who becomes a stage star, the toast of Paris, and ultimately weds her beloved - in spite of the opposition of his aristocratic uncle."  The show will be presented from March 21st through April 2nd, 2006.

Oh, Lady! Lady!! was one of the Princess Theatre musicals that began to reshape the form of the American musical in the 1910s.  The 1917 show was penned by Jerome Kern, P.G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton, and was a musical comedy in which "the bridegroom's old flame arrives unexpectedly on his wedding day and the nuptials are called off  but only long enough for a second act set in Greenwich Village to solve all."  It will run from April 25th through May 7th, 2006.

Cole Porter's Let's Face It (with a book by Dorothy and Herbert Fields) "has three suspicious wives recruiting three eager soldiers to help make their philandering husbands take notice;" it runs from May 9th to the 21st. The production opened at the Imperial Theatre on October 29th, 1941, and it starred Danny Kaye and Eve Arden.

Musicals Tonight!, whose minimalist concerts are curated by artistic director Mel Miller, consist of piano and singers.  In addition to the overlooked musicals of the past, Musicals Tonight! will present the third season  At This Performance, which offers performances by Broadway standbys/understudies, and BMI Musical Mondays, in which songwriting students of the famed workshop share their work.

The series plays at the 45th Street Theatre, which is located right in the heart of the Big Apple's Theatre District at 354 West 45th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues.  For tickets and more information on Musicals Tonight!, visit www.musicalstonight.org.
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