It just might be the most anticipated concert event of the year; the tickets for Tony Winner Cynthia Erivo and two-time Tony Nominee Joshua Henry's one-night-only performance of The Last Five Years sold out in less than an hour on the first day of the evening's pre-sale. With the concert, which will be performed at Town Hall, only two days away, the entire team is hard at work perfecting the piece before sharing it with the lucky few who nabbed tickets. This afternoon, Jason Robert Brown, the composer of The Last Five Years, took to Facebook to share a sneak peak of one of the orchestra's final rehearsals before the big night. Check it out below!
Cynthia Erivo is a multiple award-winning actress who has made a name for herself on both West End and Broadway stages. Erivo made her Broadway debut reprising her starring role as 'Celie' in the critically acclaimed revival of The Color Purple. She first played the role in 2013 at London's Menier Chocolate Factory, earning rave reviews and an Evening Standard Theatre Award nomination for Best Musical Performance and a WhatsOnStage Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical. Her performance on Broadway earned her the Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical, as well as the Drama Desk Award, Theatre World and Outer Critics Circle Awards and a Drama League Award nomination. In spring 2015, Erivo appeared as 'Puck' in the Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse production of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Nick Bagnall. In fall 2014, she returned to her classical roots in the Donmar Warehouse's acclaimed all-female production ofHenry IV, opposite Dame Harriet Walter, directed by Phyllida Lloyd. In summer 2014, she played the lead in the European premiere of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty musical Dessa Rose at Trafalgar Studios. Erivo's additional theatre credits include the Perfect Pitch musical, Lift, directed by Steven Paling; Kneehigh Theatre's production of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg at the Gielgud Theatre; the starring role of 'Deloris Van Cartier' in the UK tour of Jerry Zaks' production of Sister Act; Harry Hill and Simon Cowell's critically acclaimed musical, I Can't Sing, at the London Palladium in the West End; Simon Stephens' Marine Parade, which premiered at the 2010 Brighton Festival, John Adams' experimental song play, "I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw The Sky," at Theatre Royal Stratford East; and Dominic Hill's The Three Musketeers and The Princess of Spain at Traverse, Belgrade and English Touring theatres. In addition to her stage career, Cynthia is an accomplished songwriter, having written the song, "Fly Before You Fall," for the 2014 feature film Beyond the Lights. In March 2015, she made her solo concert debut with the show entitled "Hear My Soul" at Kings Place in London. A UK native, Erivo graduated from the famEd Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 2010.
Joshua Henry recently completed his starring role as Noble Sissle in Scott Rudin's new Broadway musical Shuffle Along opposite Audra McDonald.Shuffle Along was directed by George C. Wolfe and choreographed by Savion Glover. Joshua just filmed a lead role in the action thriller The Lakeopposite J.K. Simmons and Sullivan Stapleton, which releases Jan 2017. He received critical acclaim for his Tony nominated turn opposite Sutton Foster in the musical Violet on Broadway, which garnered him Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League Award nominations for his thrilling, show-stopping performance. He was previously nominated for a Tony Award for his starring role in Susan Stroman's The Scottsboro Boys. Joshua's other Broadway credits include leading roles in Diane Paulus' revival of The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess and Green Day's American Idiot. Joshua recently sang with Sutton Foster in concert with The New York Pops at Carnegie Hall and the Houston Symphony Orchestra. He is scheduled to return to the Houston Symphony in February 2017 in an original show called A Salute to Stevie Wonder. In March of 2017, he'll be starring at Carnegie Hall in the show Life is A Cabaret: The Songs of Kander and Ebb. He also recently starred as Jim Conley at Avery Fisher Hall in Jason Robert Brown's Parade. Other film credits include Sex and the City and Winter's Tale.
Jason Robert Brown is the ultimate multi-hyphenate - a three-time Tony Award-winning composer, lyricist, conductor, arranger, orchestrator, director and performer - best known for his dazzling scores to several of the most renowned musicals of his generation, including the award-winningThe Bridges of Madison County, the influential The Last Five Years, his debut song cycle Songs for a New World, and the seminal Parade, for which he won the 1999 Tony Award for Best Score. His major musicals as composer and lyricist include: The Bridges of Madison County, adapted by MarSha Norman from the blockbuster novel, and starring Kelli O'Hara and Steven Pasquale; 13, written with Robert Horn and Dan Elish, which began its life in Los Angeles in 2007 and opened on Broadway in 2008 (and was subsequently directed by the composer for its West End premiere in 2012); The Last Five Years, which was cited as one of Time Magazine's 10 Best of 2001 and won Drama Desk Awards for Best Music and Best Lyrics (and was subsequently directed by the composer in its record-breaking Off-Broadway run at Second Stage Theatre in 2013); Parade, written with Alfred Uhry and directed by Harold Prince, which premiered at Lincoln Center Theatre in 1998, and subsequently won both the Drama Desk and New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards for Best New Musical, as well as garnering Jason the Tony Award for Original Score; Honeymoon In Vegas, based on Andrew Bergman's film, which played on Broadway starring Tony Danza; and Songs for a New World, a theatrical song cycle directed by Daisy Prince, which played Off-Broadway in 1995, and has since been seen in hundreds of productions around the world. A film version of The Last Five Years was released in 2015, starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan and directed by Richard LaGravenese; and a film version of 13 is in development with CBS Films. Parade was also the subject of a major revival directed by Rob Ashford, first at London's Donmar Warehouse and then at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and was performed in concert at New York's Avery Fisher Hall in February 2015 with a full orchestra conducted by the composer. His orchestral adaptation of E.B. White's novel The Trumpet of the Swan premiered at the Kennedy Center with John Lithgow and the National Symphony Orchestra, and the CD was released on PS Classics. He has also contributed music to "Sesame Street" and "The Wonder Pets." Future projects include songs for the Broadway-bound King Kong; The Connector, a new piece with Daisy Prince and Jonathan Marc Sherman; a collaboration with MarSha Norman and Rob Ashford; a new production of The Last Five Years in London this fall; and a new solo album for release in 2017.www.jasonrobertbrown.com.
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