Nick Jr.'s 'The Wonder Pets' to Feature Music by Top Bway Composers; Premieres March 3 with Brown Episode

By: BWW News Desk Mar. 02, 2006

A new Nick Jr. show--featuring scores by some of Broadway's preeminent composers-- will pair cartoons with musical theatre.

"The Wonder Pets" will feature episodes with "a 12-minute operetta with musical influences tied to the locales of the particular episode's adventure," according to an article in The New York Daily News. The show "revolves around the after-hours escapades of Turtle Tuck, Linny the Guinea Pig and Ming-Ming Duckling, three classroom pets who moonlight as globetrotting rescuers, traveling the world and sometimes the space-time continuum to rescue baby animals in distress."

A 40-episode series, the programs will air back-to-back with the premiere episodes to be broadcast on Nick Jr.'s sister network Noggin. The show will premiere on March 3rd at noon, with an episode scored by Tony Award-winner Jason Robert Brown (The Last Five Years, Parade). Written with Spamalot orchestrator, Larry Hochman (who will serve as the series' lead composer), his episode is entitled "Save the Unicorn!" Upcoming episodes will feature music by Tony Award-winner Robert Lopez (Avenue Q) and Andrew Lippa (The Wild Party, john & jen).

The music of those composers "makes the whole viewing experience so much richer. It helps it resonate beyond just those years that (children) are watching that show," stated executive producer Josh Selig. "One thing (the composers) bring to the show is a sense of not playing down to the audience. The music works on so many levels. It's fairly sophisticated, but it's also lots of fun," added music supervisor Jeffrey Lesser.

The show's creators are also hoping to lure one particular composer/lyricist to write for "The Wonder Pets." "Sondheim would be the ultimate coup. If we could get him to do a show, that would be brilliant. Man, Stephen if you're reading this, come home to 'The Wonder Pets,'" stated Lesser.

For more information, visit www.nickjr.com.

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