James Lapine to Direct ANNIE on Broadway

Reported by BWW back in August and now confirmed - Tony Award®-winning producer Arielle Tepper Madover announced today that Tony Award®-winner James Lapine will direct the new production of the beloved Tony Award®-winning musical ANNIE. The production will open in fall, 2012 at a Nederlander theatre to be announced.

ANNIE features music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin and book by Thomas Meehan, based on the newspaper character "Little Orphan Annie" by Harold Gray.

James Lapine is the winner of three Tony Awards®; five Drama Desk Awards and the Pulitzer Prize with Stephen Sondheim for Sunday in the Park with George. He was most recently represented on Broadway with Sondheim on Sondheim, which he conceived and directed. His Broadway credits as a book writer and director include: Sunday in the Park with George; Into the Woods; Passion; Falsettos (book with William Finn); Dirty Blonde (by Claudia Shear and conceived with her). Broadway credits as a director include: Golden Child, The Diary of Anne Frank, Amour, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Off-Broadway writing credits include: Table Settings; Twelve Dreams; Luck, Pluck, and Virtue; The Moment When; and Fran's Bed. He is currently working on the new musical Little Miss Sunshine.

ANNIE will be produced on Broadway by Arielle Tepper Madover, Roger Horchow, Sally Horchow, Roger Berlind, Jane Bergere, Roy Furman, Stacey Mindich, Daryl Roth and Nederlander Presentations, Inc.

The original production of ANNIE opened 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 (Thomas Meehan) and Best Score (Charles Strouse, Martin Charnin). The show was one of the biggest Broadway musical hits of the 1970s, running for almost six years and playing 2,377 performances.

The score for ANNIE includes "Maybe," "It's the Hard Knock Life," "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile," "Easy Street," "I Don't Need Anything But You" and the eternal anthem of optimism, "Tomorrow".