Encores 2007! Follies, Face the Music and New Revue

Arlene Shuler, President and CEO of New York City Center, announced today that the 14th season of its acclaimed ENCORES! series will celebrate the great Broadway revue, a form that flourished from just before 1900 until the early '50s. In honor of the 100th anniversary of the first Ziegfeld Follies – the annual Ziegfeld show was generally considered the defining achievement of the revue format – ENCORES! will present three events inspired by the form, beginning with the first full-scale New York presentation of Stephen Sondheim's score for Follies in more than two decades, playing February 8 – 11.

In describing the season, artistic director Jack Viertel said, "We'll open the season with Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman's Follies. For many theatergoers of my generation, Follies was a first exposure to this kind of material, as Stephen Sondheim wrote brilliant pastiches of songs from the teens, '20s and '30s in the style of Gershwin, Berlin and Porter. We'll begin with those wonderful re-imaginings, and spend the season delving back into the originals."

From March 29 –April 1, ENCORES! will present the first full-scale restoration of Irving Berlin and Moss Hart's Face the Music, a 1932 musical about a desperate producer in New York trying to raise the money for his latest revue, Rhinestones of '32. The show, one of Berlin's personal favorites, contains a pair of depression-era classics – "Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee" and "Soft Lights and Sweet Music."

The season will conclude with Stairway to Paradise, from May 10-14. This first-ever specially created ENCORES! production will be a celebration of the very best material from a half century of Broadway revues, and will include numbers and sketches from Florenz Ziegfeld's shows and other legendary musicals and revues of the era.

Between 1900 and 1950, while Broadway book musicals were morphing from operetta to musical comedy to the musical plays of Rodgers and Hammerstein, there existed an equally thrilling profusion of Broadway revues – plotless, bookless, sketch-driven shows featuring girls, gags, star comedians like Bert Lahr and Fanny Brice, and some of the finest popular songs ever written. Ziegfeld was the king of the revue, but hundreds of imitators and emulators followed his lead.

Revues were conceived as topical, disposable entertainment, mixing political and social satire with popular song and dance crazes. In Ziegfeld's shows the comedians delivered short sketches, star vocalists appeared in fabulous gowns. and gorgeous showgirls paraded across a series of spectacular stage designs. Competing with the opulence of Ziegfeld's Follies were a series of smaller, slyer, more biting political revues with more serious, if often satirical points of view. Virtually all of the great songwriters of Broadway, from Irving Berlin and the Gershwins to Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Harold Rome, Schwartz and Dietz, Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg provided the songs, which included immortal classics such as "Brother Can You Spare A Dime?," "Every Time We Say Goodbye," "Stairway to Paradise," "Manhattan" and "Dancing in the Dark."

Immigration, ragtime, World War I, prohibition, the Great Depression, and the arrival of talking pictures all proved fodder for early revues. In the '40s, World War II and its aftermath dominated the scene. The '50s began with the last great revues, concluding with the much-loved New Faces of 1952.

The 2007 ENCORES! season will blow the dust off these long-forgotten gems, cull the very best from the era, and match the results with Berlin's and Sondheim's own fascination with the form. These three shows provide a unique opportunity to explore and enjoy a treasure trove of great American songs and sketches, performed in their original contexts by Broadway's finest actors, singers and comedians.

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Major support for the New York City Center ENCORES! 2007 season is provided by the Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Charitable Trust and Donna and Ben Rosen.

New York City Center ENCORES! (Jack Viertel, Artistic Director; Paul Gemignani, Music Director) has, since 1994, celebrated the rarely-heard works of America's most important composers and lyricists. Conceived as "concert versions," each ENCORES! season gives three scores the chance to be heard as

originally intended by their creators. Over the years, ENCORES! has presented the works of the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Kurt Weill, Bock and Harnick, Burt Bacharach, Kander and Ebb, Comden and Green, and many more. The program is the recipient of a special 2000 Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre, as well as a New York Drama Critics Circle Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Lucille Lortel Award and Jujamcyn Theaters Award.

Tickets for the 2007 ENCORES! season 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. Tickets for the Orchestra, Grand Tier are $95; Mid-Mezzanine tickets are $90; tickets for the Rear Mezzanine and Front Gallery are $50; tickets for the Rear Gallery are $25.