Photo Flash: The New Broadway Playhouse Revealed

Cesar Corrales of Billy Elliot the Musical, Barbara Robertson who will star in the upcoming productions of Wicked and Working and Sutton Foster, who will give the inaugural concert of the Broadway Playhouse this evening, were in attendance to help uncover the marquee of the new theatre before joining VIPs to tour the interior of the theatre.

Broadway In Chicago and Water Tower Place are proud to announce the addition of a new venue, the Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place, 175 E. Chestnut Street to its family of theatres. Broadway In Chicago has entered into a long-term agreement with General Growth Properties (owner and manager of Water Tower Place) that will allow the theatre, formerly known as the Drury Lane at Water Tower Place, to re-open as the Broadway Playhouse. "This theatre will give Broadway In Chicago the ability to attract those productions that are better suited for a more intimate theatre. We hope to be able to expand the theatrical experiences we offer with this intimate and unique venue in the heart of the Magnificent Mile," James L. Nederlander, President of the Nederlander Organization, announced.The theater's initial inaugural productions are to include AN EVENING WITH Sutton Foster with music direction by Michael Rafter, TRACES and a newly adapted version of the musical WORKING.

Tony® Award-Winner Sutton Foster gives a rare intimate concert performance that will open the Broadway Playhouse September 23 - 26, 2010 during AN EVENING WITH Sutton Foster with music direction by Michael Rafter (THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE, THE SOUND OF MUSIC, JERSEY BOYS, THE KING AND I). Although Sutton has been working on Broadway and national tours since she was 17, she became a Broadway legend when she became an "understudy to the rescue" and took on the lead role of "Millie" in THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE, eventually winning the 2002 Tony Award® for Best Actress in a Musical. Since then, she has created four original roles in four new Broadway musicals LITTLE WOMEN, THE DROWSY CHAPERONE, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN and SHREK THE MUSICAL; a record unsurpassed by any musical theatre actress of her generation. Of the evening, Broadway World.com recently wrote "A stunning performance...Ms. Foster proved she's a major force to be reckoned with, not just on Broadway , but in concert as well." Foster will perform Broadway hits along with songs from her CD Wish (Ghostlight Records), which was co-produced, arranged and music directed by Mr. Rafter.

TRACES, beginning October 26, 2010 is the first production in the new Broadway Playhouse that will be a part of the 2010 Broadway In Chicago Series. 7 Fingers, an astonishingly talented French Canadian company that has pioneered a whole new brand of theatrical entertainment, will launch a U.S. tour of TRACES beginning with this Chicago engagement. Combining awe-inspiring acrobatic training with infectious urban energy, seven performers deliver dazzling, gravity-defying displays of skill that produce "one of the most creative and inspiring pieces of entertainment I've ever witnessed" (Edinburgh's The Sun) - balancing on each other's heads, tumbling through hoops and leaping spectacularly up giant poles without using their hands. More than just a display of acrobatic brilliance, the audience is gradually drawn into the performers' real life stories and, by the final, dramatic climax of the show, on The Edge of their seats, willing them to pull off the seemingly impossible. "Mesmeric, spontaneous and unpretentious," (London's Metro), this thrill-a-minute show will leave you begging for more.

Stephen Schwartz, celebrated composer and lyricist of WICKED, GODSPELL & PIPPIN, created a musical version of Studs Terkel's WORKING. Now a newly imagined version with additional material by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Tony-Award winning creator of IN THE HEIGHTS and music by Grammy-Award winner James Taylor, Micki Grant, Craig Carnelia, Mary Rodgers and Susan Birkenhead, WORKING will follow in the Broadway Playhouse in the Spring of 2011. This funny, vital and deeply moving musical based on the highly acclaimed book by beloved Chicagoan and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Studs Terkel. WORKING is taken directly from Terkel's first-hand interviews that take an unabashed look at 26 everyday men and women and their lives, hopes and dreams. A working man's A CHORUS LINE and the perfect musical for anyone who has worked a day in their life.

Photo credit: Amy Boyle Photography, 2010