Jack Viertel, Artistic Director of New York City Center's Encores! series, today announced directors for the three 2009-10 season musicals: Jerry Zaks will direct the season opener, Girl Crazy, with music and lyrics by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin and book by Guy Bolton and Jack McGowan, opening on November 19, 2009. Marc Bruni will direct Fanny, a musical play by S. N. Behrman and Joshua Logan, with music and lyrics by Harold Rome, opening on February 4, 2010. Fanny will be the 50th Encores! production presented by City Center since 1994. Casey Nicholaw will direct and choreograph Anyone Can Whistle, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents' legendary 1964 musical, opening on April 8, 2010.
In addition, Mr. Viertel announced that Encores! Music Director Rob Berman will helm both Fanny and Anyone Can Whistle, and former Encores! Music Director Rob Fisher will return as Guest Music Director for Girl Crazy.
Jerry Zaks (Director) directed Stairway to Paradise and Bye Bye Birdie for Encores! and acted in the first production, Fiorello. He has received four Tony Awards, four Drama Desk Awards, two Outer Critics Circle Awards, an Obie Award, and an NAACP Image Award nomination. Mr. Zaks has directed more than 30 New York productions, including, on Broadway: Guys and Dolls (Tony Award), Six Degrees of Separation (Tony Award), Lend Me A Tenor (Tony Award), House of Blue Leaves (Tony Award), A Funny Thing...Forum, Smokey Joe's Café, Anything Goes, and A Bronx Tale. Film: Marvin's Room. TV: "Everybody Loves Raymond," "Fraiser," and "Two and a Half Men." Mr. Zaks served as resident director at Lincoln Center Theater from 1986-1990. Since 1990 he has been proudly affiliated with Jujamcyn Theaters.
Marc Bruni is directing Ordinary Days for Roundabout Underground this fall. Other directing credits include Such Good Friends (NYMF Directing Award), The Music Man, My One And Only, Seven Brides... (St. Louis Muny), High Spirits (York), Glimpses Of The Moon (Oak Room). He was Associate Director of the Broadway, London and touring productions of Legally Blonde and appeared on MTV's "Search for Elle Woods." He has been associated with Walter Bobbie, Kathleen Marshall, Jerry Mitchell, and Jerry Zaks on thirteen Broadway shows including Irving Berlin's White Christmas, The Pajama Game, Grease, Wonderful Town, High Fidelity, Sweet Charity, La Cage Aux Folles, and Little Shop Of Horrors (Bway/Tour) as well as on City Center Encores! productions of Finian's Rainbow, No, No, Nanette; Applause; 70, Girls, 70; and Bye Bye Birdie.
Casey Nicholaw was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Choreography for Monty Python's Spamalot and also for his direction and choreography for the Broadway production of The Drowsy Chaperone. Other New York credits include Candide starring Patti LuPone and Kristin Chenoweth for NY Philharmonic (also on PBS Great Performances) and South Pacific at Carnegie Hall with Reba McEntire and Brian Stokes Mitchell (also on PBS Great Performances). His previous Encores! credits include director/choreographer of Follies, the musical staging of Can-Can and the Bye Bye Birdie choreography. Upcoming projects include the new musicals Minsky's, Elf, and Robin and the 7 Hoods.
Rob Fisher was the founding music director and conductor of Encores! from its inception in 1994 until 2005, for which he won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Special Achievement in 1997. He served as Music Director for the 40th anniversary production of Hair in Central Park (continuing his association with the Broadway revival in 2009), for the revival of My Fair Lady with the New York Philharmonic in 2007 and for Chicago and its Grammy Award-winning cast album. Along with conducting many leading orchestras, Mr. Fisher has collaborated recently in concert with Kristin Chenoweth, Victoria Clark, Patti LuPone and David Hyde Pierce.
Rob Berman is entering his third season as music director of Encores!, where he has conducted Stairway to Paradise, Damn Yankees, Music in the Air and Finian's Rainbow. This fall he will be conducting the Broadway transfer of Finian's Rainbow at the St. James Theater. Other Broadway credits include Irving Berlin's White Christmas, for which he serves as music supervisor, the Tony Award-winning revival of The Pajama Game, and Wonderful Town. Rob was music director of the Kennedy Center's production of Sunday in the Park with George for which he won a Helen Hayes Award for Best Musical Direction. He is also music director of the Kennedy Center Honors orchestra, for which he received an Emmy nomination.
Girl Crazy, the Gershwin's fanciful depression-era musical of 1930, is the tale of a sophisticated New Yorker marooned in a dusty Western cowtown with no one who understands him but the Yiddish-speaking cabbie who brought him there and no one to love but the only woman within 50 miles. The show gave birth to one of the all-time flashiest Broadway scores, featuring "I Got Rhythm," "Embraceable You," "But Not For Me" and "Boy! What Love Has Done To Me," among others. Girl Crazy opened at the Alvin Theatre on October 14, 1930 and ran for 272 performances. The Encores! production will run November 19 - 22, 2009.
