Producer Arielle Tepper Madover, currently represented on Broadway with the Tony Award®-nominated play Red, announced today that she has acquired the production rights for the beloved Tony Award®-winning musical ANNIE and will produce an all-new production of it for Broadway, opening in Fall, 2012.
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. The original production opened April 21, 1977 at the Alvin Theatre.
"My grandmother took me to see ANNIE over the Thanksgiving holiday when I was eight. It was my first Broadway show," Arielle Tepper Madover comments. "From that moment, I knew that I wanted to work in the theater. The past 30 years have prepared me to produce this show on Broadway and I cannot wait to share it with a new generation of Broadway audiences and with my own children."
ANNIE won 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.
ANNIE launched five national US companies and dozens of international productions, including two successful West End productions. The musical has been filmed twice, for motion pictures in 1982 and for television in 1999. 20th and 30th Anniversary productions have toured the country.
"We're truly thrilled to have ANNIE return to Broadway in a brand new production," commented authors Charles Strouse, Martin Charnin and Thomas Meehan. "We think it seems like a great time to welcome back the hope, optimism and spirit of ANNIE. She changed our lives forever."
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".
Arielle Tepper Madover is a Tony Award®-winning producer. On Broadway, her producing credits include Red (nominated for seven Tony Awards®, including Best Play), Hamlet with Jude Law, Hair, Mary Stuart, Equus, Frost/Nixon, Monty Python's Spamalot, The Pillowman, A Raisin in the Sun, James Joyce's The Dead, John Leguizamo's Freak. West End credits include Piaf, Spamalot, Frost/Nixon, Guys and Dolls, Mary Stuart, A Voyage Round My Father. Her Off-Broadway credits include De La Guarda, The Last Five Years. She founded the Summer Play Festival (SPF). She is on the board of Syracuse University, The Public Theater and the Dalton School.
Theatre and creative team for ANNIE will be announced at a later date.
