Broadway stars Victor Garber, Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley, and Signature favorite Sherri L. Edelen will salute Angela Lansbury at the Signature Theatre's Sondheim Award Gala on April 12 at the Embassy of Italy. The beloved stage, screen, and television actress will be presented with the company's first Stephen Sondheim Award, established last year in honor of America's most influential contemporary musical theater writer and composer.
Signature's Artistic Director and Co-Founder
Eric Schaeffer stated, "It's really wonderful to have these four amazingly talented artists come to the Sondheim Gala to perform in honor of
Angela Lansbury, the first lady of Sondheim musicals. Victor, Marin, Jason and Sherri will give her a salute like none other!"
The performers have many connections to
Stephen Sondheim.
Victor Garber originated two Sondheim roles, the young sailor Anthony in Sweeney Todd and
John Wilkes Booth in Assassins.
Marin Mazzie created the role of Clara in Passion, then interpreted it for television on PBS's Great Performances. Ms. Mazzie has also performed Beth in Merrily We Roll Along, and the roles of Rapunzel, The Witch, and Cinderella from Into the Woods. For "Live at
Carnegie Hall," she performed and recorded Anyone Can Whistle - the musical that started Ms. Lansbury's work with
Stephen Sondheim. Ms. Mazzie's husband,
Jason Danieley, who won a
Helen Hayes Award for his
Signature Theatre performance of The Highest Yellow, is considered one of leading tenors on Broadway - with roles in Curtains, Candide, and The Full Monty - and joins his wife and frequent co-performer in saluting Ms. Lansbury.
Sherri Edelen, an outstanding Washington-based comic actress, will be coming to the Gala after performing Ms. Lansbury's all time favorite role this spring, Mrs. Lovett, in Signature's 20th anniversary production of Sweeney Todd.
The 2010 Sondheim Award Gala is chaired by Juliann and C. Daniel Clemente; Honorary Hosts include actors
Catherine Zeta-Jones,
Bernadette Peters, and
Michael Cerveris, philanthropists
Helen Henderson and Ted and Mary Jo Shen, political leaders Italian Ambassador Giulio Terzi, Virginia Senator Jim Webb and Mrs. Webb, and Virginia Congressman James Moran and LuAnn Bennett, as well
Stephen Sondheim. The Sondheim Award Gala will benefit
Signature Theatre's artistic, education, and community outreach programs.
To date, Platinum Level Sponsors are Juliann and C. Daniel Clemente, Bonnie and
Kenneth Feld, and Ted and Mary Jo Shen. Gold Level Sponsors are A+ Government Solutions, BNA, Susan Gage Caterers, Frank Guzzetta, Maxine Isaacs and James A. Johnson, Wesley C. Pickard and Jeanette Studley, Victor Shargai, Patti and Jerry Sowalsky, Target, and J. Watkins and Bradley Frey.
Angela Lansbury has enjoyed a career without precedent. Her professional life spans more than a half-century during which she flourished, first as a star of motion pictures, then as a five-time Tony Award®-winning Broadway musical star. Two of Ms. Lansbury's Tonys are for
Stephen Sondheim musicals: the role of Mama Rose in the 1974 revival of Gypsy and Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd in 1979. She is currently playing the role of Madame Armfeldt on Broadway in the revival of Sondheim's A Little Night Music, co-starring
Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Ms. Lansbury appeared most recently on Broadway as Madame Arcati in the 2009 revival of Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit, for which she received her fifth Tony Award, as well as Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards; and in 2006 in
Terrence McNally's Deuce, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award. She made her Broadway debut in 1957 starring as
Bert Lahr's wife in the French farce, Hotel Paradiso.
In 1960, she came back to Broadway as
Joan Plowright's mother in the season's most acclaimed drama, A Taste of Honey, by
Shelagh Delaney. Her first musical role there was
Stephen Sondheim's 1964 Anyone Can Whistle. Ms. Lansbury returned to New York in triumph in 1966 as Mame, for which she won the first of her unprecedented four Tony Awards as Best Actress in a Musical; her second was for the Madwoman of Chaillot in Dear World (1968).
From 1984-1996 she starred as Jessica Fletcher, mystery-writing amateur sleuth, on "Murder, She Wrote," the longest-running detective drama series in the history of television, for which she won four Golden Globe Awards.
In 2009
Signature Theatre inaugurated The
Stephen Sondheim Award in recognition of the importance of Sondheim's work to Signature and to theater in general. The Award is given on a yearly basis to an individual for his or her career contributions to interpreting, supporting, and collaborating on
Stephen Sondheim's music works. Signature has produced 18 productions of the works of
Stephen Sondheim, more than any other theater in the United States. In 2002, Signature's
Eric Schaeffer was the Artistic Director of "The Sondheim Celebration" at the Kennedy Center.
Sponsorship packages for the 2010 Sondheim Award Gala range from $1,000 to $50,000 and include rewarding, year-long visibility and entertainment benefits. Individual tickets and ticket packages range from $650 to $5,000. For more information about sponsorship and tickets contact Emily Hill, Development Manager, at (571) 527-1828 or events@signature-theatre.org.
Recipient of the 2009 Regional Theater Tony Award®,
Signature Theatre is a non-profit professional theater company dedicated to producing contemporary musicals and plays, reinventing classic musicals, and developing new work. Under the leadership of co-founder and Artistic Director
Eric Schaeffer and Managing Director
Maggie Boland, Signature has presented 26 world premiere productions and is renowned for combining Broadway-quality productions with intimate playing spaces. In addition to the finest talent from the DC metropolitan area and New York, Signature has been a home to such theater luminaries as
John Kander and
Fred Ebb,
Cameron Mackintosh,
Terrence McNally, and of course,
Stephen Sondheim. Since its founding in 1989, Signature has been nominated for 284
Helen Hayes Awards for excellence in the professional theater and has been honored with 69
Helen Hayes Awards, including Outstanding Musical in 1992, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2000, 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2009, and Outstanding Play in 1999.
In the 2007-2008 season, Signature celebrated the work of
John Kander and
Fred Ebb in a festival that included their musicals Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Happy Time, and their last project The Visit, starring
Chita Rivera and
George Hearn. In the 2008-2009 season Signature received national attention for its highly successful, revamped version of Les Misérables.
Administering the million-dollar American Musical Voices Project funded by the Shen Family Foundation, Signature has given awards and commissions to
Bruce Coughlin,
Ricky Ian Gordon,
Peter Foley,
Adam Guettel,
Michael John LaChiusa,
Audra McDonald, Marisa Michelson,
Ted Sperling,
Joseph Thalken, and other musical theater innovators. The April 2009 production of
Michael John LaChiusa's Giant was the first of seven musical commissions; the next is the May 2010 production of
Ricky Ian Gordon's Sycamore Trees.
Signature Theatre is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary season with productions of Dirty Blonde, Show Boat, I Am My Own Wife, Sweeney Todd, [title of show], and the world premieres of Sycamore Trees and "First You Dream": The Music of Kander & Ebb,
Signature is partially supported by a grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts and by a gift from Arlington County through the Arlington Commission for the Arts and the Cultural Affairs Division of the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Resources.
The
Signature Theatre is located at 4200 Campbell Avenue, Arlington, VA 22206. For more information, visit
http://www.signature-theatre.org.
Photo Credit: Walter McBride / Retna Ltd.
