STAGE TUBE: Encores' MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG Promo!

Announced earlier this week was news that Lin-Manuel Miranda will star as 'Charlie' in the upcoming Encores! production of MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG. Merrily has been extended for a two-week run, and will play for 15 performances, February 8-19, 2012 at New York City Center, 55th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues. Check out the just-released promo for the show below!

Lin-Manuel won the 2008 Tony Award for Best Original Score for In the Heights and a 2009 Grammy Award for its Original Broadway Cast Album. Off-Broadway: In the Heights: nine Drama Desk nominations (including Best Music, Best Lyrics), Drama Desk Award (Outstanding Ensemble Performance); Lucille Lortel Award and Outer Critics Circle Award (Best Musical); Obie Award (Outstanding Music and Lyrics). Miranda received the 2007 ASCAP Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award and is a National Arts Club Medal of Honor recipient. He has contributed new songs to the revival of Stephen Schwartz' Working, and collaborated with Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim on Spanish translations for the 2009 Broadway Revival of West Side Story. TV/Film: Sesame Street, The Electric Company, The Sopranos, House, Modern Family and The Sex and the City Movie. Co-founding member of Freestyle Love Supreme, a hip-hop comedy group that tours comedy festivals worldwide.

As BWW reported last week, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Colin Donnell, Betsy Wolfe and Elizabeth Stanley have been cast in Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along, the first New York City Center Encores! production of season. Merrily We Roll Along, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by George Furth, will be directed by James Lapine with music direction by Rob Berman and musical staging by Dan Knechtges.

Merrily We Roll Along, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by George Furth, is a musical about friendship and the compromise of youthful ideals, based on the 1934 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The show moves backwards in time from 1980 to 1955 and examines the lives of three people whose friendship is tested by time, events, ambition and fate. It charts the rise of a songwriting team during the years of Sondheim's own early career and includes some of his most brilliant and bruising songs, such as "Not a Day Goes By," "Old Friends," "Our Time" and "Opening Doors." Although unsuccessful in its original 1981 Broadway production (which ran 16 performances at the Alvin Theatre), Merrily has gained stature and reputation over the ensuing years, beginning with a reconfigured version at the La Jolla Playhouse in California in 1985, directed by James Lapine. Merrily We Roll Along will run February 8 - 19, 2012.

City Center is located on 55th Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues. Merrily We Roll Along will run for 15 performances according to the following schedule: Tuesday at 7 pm, Wednesday at 7:30 pm, Thursday and Friday at 8 pm, Saturday at 2 pm and 8 pm, and Sunday at 2 pm and 7 pm (exception: Wed. 2/15 at 7 pm). Tickets start at $25 and are available at the New York City Center Box Office (West 55th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues), through CityTix® at 212-581-1212, or online at www.NYCityCenter.org.