The Family of Mann - 1994 - Off-Broadway Articles Page 9

Playwrights Horizons (Tim Sanford, Artistic Director; Leslie Marcus, Managing Director) continues its 2008/2009 Season with the New York premiere of THE SAVANNAH DISPUTATION, a new play by Evan Smith (Psych and The Uneasy Chair at Playwrights Horizons, Remedial English for the Young Playwrights Festival at Playwrights Horizons, Servicemen at The New Group). This will be Mr. Smith's fourth collaboration with the theater company.

On March 12, 2009 at 7:00 p.m., The Collegiate Chorale appears with The New York City Opera Orchestra at the newly renovated Alice Tully Hall in a performance of Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin's 1945 Broadway operetta The Firebrand of Florence. The performance, led by guest conductor Ted Sperling, stars baritone Nathan Gunn, soprano Anna Christy, baritone Terrence Mann, and soprano Victoria Clark. Krysty Swann, David Pittu and Patrick Goss complete the cast, and narration will be provided by Stage Director Roger Rees. Boasting a score by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, and a book by playwright and screenwriter Edwin Justus Mayer, The Firebrand of Florence had a short run on Broadway in 1945. The work was subsequently not heard for over a half-century until three presentations - Ohio Light Opera (1999), the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London (2000) and the Radio Symphony Orchestra in Vienna (2000) - shed new light on the relatively obscure work. The performances were not only accepted, but widely acclaimed, thus giving hope for a new life in a new century. Variety's theater critic Steven Suskin says 'I have long believed that Firebrand in concert should be a dazzling delight.' Benvenuto Cellini, the great Florentine artist, is sentenced to hang, but he is pardoned when the duke realizes that he has not completed a previously commissioned sculpture. Freed, he is able to turn his attention to his favorite model (and object of his affections), Angela. The Duke also is interested in Angela. In a typical operetta plot, Cellini swashbuckles around the stage, keeping the Duke away from Angela, keeping himself away from the Duchess, and escaping yet another death sentence by fleeing to Paris, as the end of the show recapitulates the beginning.

Playwrights Horizons (Tim Sanford, Artistic Director; Leslie Marcus, Managing Director) begins 2009 with the New York premiere of THE SAVANNAH DISPUTATION, a new play by Evan Smith (Psych and The Uneasy Chair at Playwrights Horizons, Remedial English for the Young Playwrights Festival at Playwrights Horizons, Servicemen at The New Group). This will be Mr. Smith's fourth collaboration with the theater company.

Playwrights Horizons (Tim Sanford, Artistic Director; Leslie Marcus, Managing Director) continues its 2008/2009 Season with the New York premiere of THE SAVANNAH DISPUTATION, a new play by Evan Smith (Psych and The Uneasy Chair at Playwrights Horizons, Remedial English for the Young Playwrights Festival at Playwrights Horizons, Servicemen at The New Group). This will be Mr. Smith's fourth collaboration with the theater company.

North Shore Music Theatre pays homage to the endurance of a classic and the human spirit in its presentation of the 1994 Hal Prince Broadway revival

The full cast of the Broadway production of Billy Elliot the Musical has been announced by Universal Pictures Stage Productions, Working Title Films and Old Vic Productions in association with Weinstein Live Entertainment.

Second Stage Theatre has shuffled the schedule for its upcoming 2006-2007 season. In addition, Tripp Cullman has been announced to helm the New York premiere of Terrence McNally's Some Men and Rebecca Taichman will do the same for Theresa Rebeck's The Scene

Second Stage's 2006-2007 season will include plays by Eric Bogosian, Terrence McNally and Theresa Rebeck

Playwrights Horizons (Tim Sanford, Artistic Director; Leslie Marcus, Managing Director) has announced complete details for the fifth production of its 2005/2006 35th Anniversary Season, the World Premiere of PEN, a new play by David Marshall Grant.