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NJPAC Presents King and I, Cats, Millie & More in '05-'06

By: Aug. 09, 2005
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A number of Tony Award-winning musicals will be presented at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (One Center Street) in Newark this season--The King and I, Evita, Cats, Chicago and Thoroughly Modern Millie.

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Stefanie Powers will star as Mrs. Anna in Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I .  The show, which will launch the theatre's "Broadway Season," will run from November 8th through November 13th.  Based on Margaret Landon's Anna and the King of Siam (and with a book by Hammerstein), the show is the East-Meets-West tale of a blooming friendship between schoolmistress Anna Leonowens and the title character.  The King and I won the Best Musical Tony Award in 1952.

Next, NJPAC will present Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's rock opera Evita, which takes a cynical perspective on the rise to power of Argentinian First Lady Eva Peron.  The show, which won a 1980 Tony Award for Best Musical, will run from December 19th through the 24th.

Cats will slink across the stage from January 31st to February 5th, 2006.  The show will be performed by the 25th Anniversary touring company of the show. Andrew Lloyd Webber set his melodies to T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats for the feline dance extravaganza, which took the Best Musical Tony in 1983 and set the record for longest-running musical on Broadway (which it currently holds).

The NJPAC will then switch from Lloyd Webber to Kander and Ebb; the darkly sexy Chicago will run from March 28th to April 2nd at the Prudential Hall.  The show follows the rivalry of murderess-chorines Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, who use their newfound notoreity to scratch their way into vaudeville.  Originally staged by Bob Fosse, it lost the Best Musical Tony to A Chorus Line in 1976 but the currently-running reimagining of the show won Best Revival of a Musical in 1997.  The show has a book by Fosse and Ebb.

Thoroughly Modern Millie, the most recent Tony-winner of the bunch (Best Musical of 2002), will come to the Prudential Hall from June 6th through 11th.  The tap-happy musical concerns the attempts of the title character to marry rich despite falling for someone a little less wealthy than she would have liked.  The show features a score (added to the songs retained from the original film) by Jeanine Tesori and Dick Scanlan, and a book by Scanlan and Richard Morris.

Tickets for the New Jersey Performing Arts Center's season are available by calling (888) 466 5722. For more information, visit www.njpac.org.





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