NEXT TO NORMAL, 9 TO 5 et al. Announced for 5th Avenue's New Season

The 5th Avenue has announced the seven productions that make up its 2010-2011 Season, which includes a mix of premieres of new works, the hottest shows direct from Broadway and Golden Age classics featuring Seattle's favorite performers and artists.

We open our 30th Anniversary Season with the current Broadway smash In the Heights, winner of four 2008 Tony Awards® and the 2008 Grammy® Award for Best Musical Show Album. In the Heights tells the universal story of a vibrant community in Manhattan's Washington Heights - a place where the coffee from the corner bodega is light and sweet, the windows are always open and the breeze carries the rhythm of three generations of music. It's a community on the brink of change, full of hopes, dreams and pressures, where the biggest struggles can be deciding which traditions you take with you, and which ones you leave behind. In addition to winning the 2008 Tony Award for Best Musical, Lin-Manuel Miranda, the show's creator, won the Tony Award for Best Music and Lyrics, Andy Blankenbuehler won for Best Choreography, and Alex Lacamoire and Bill Sherman won for Best Orchestrations. The original cast recording won the 2008 Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album, and Universal Pictures has acquired the rights to produce a feature film based on the smash hit musical.

Our next production, A Christmas Story-The Musical!, is both a big, splashy holiday favorite and the premiere of an exciting new musical. Inspired by the classic 1983 movie and the stories of popular radio humorist Jean Shepard, this hilarious show takes you back to the 1940s and follows the adventures of young Ralphie Parker and his desperate quest to receive the most desirable and forbidden of all Christmas presents-"An Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action 200-shot Range Model Air Rifle." With its tuneful score, wicked wit and unexpected emotion, A Christmas Story-The Musical! is certain to become a new Seattle holiday tradition.

Then it's the Northwest premiere of Vanities-A New Musical, presented in collaboration with Seattle's acclaimed ACT Theatre Company. Follow the journey of three best friends as they travel from high school cheerleaders, to sorority sisters, to housewives and liberated women in a funny and moving trip through the turbulent 1960s, '70s and '80s. With David Kirshenbaum's evocative score and Jack Heifner's sparkling adaptation of his long-running off-Broadway play, Vanities is a musical scrapbook of an era and a generation. This production will be performed in ACT's intimate Falls Theatre located just three short blocks from The 5th Avenue Theatre.

Next up is another current Broadway smash, Next to Normal. This groundbreaking new show that "pushes Broadway in new directions" (Rolling Stone) got its start locally when writer and lyricist Brian Yorkey and composer Tom Kitt premiered it under the title Feeling Electric at Issaquah's Village Theatre as both a reading and a workshop. Now this Tony-winning musical, an emotional powerhouse about a family trying to take care of themselves and each other, returns to Seattle in its fully-realized glory.

Just in time to brighten up the final grey days of spring will be 9 To 5: The Musical. This outrageously funny recent Broadway delight is adapted from the popular film and features not only the movie's blockbuster title tune but also18 new original songs by the one and only Dolly Parton! Parton's Tony-nominated score mixes Broadway, pop and country with her signature witty lyrics, and tells the story of three overworked and harassed secretaries who turn the tables on their chauvinistic boss.

The season will conclude with two timeless classics from the Golden Age Of Broadway, beginning with the brilliant Guys & Dolls. The swinging music of Frank Loesser finds its perfect subject in Damon Runyon's stories of the denizens of New York's underworld, including fast-talking Nathan Detroit, host of "the oldest-established-permanent-floating crap game in New York," his sexy and long-suffering girlfriend Miss Adelaide, the cool and clever gambler Sky Masterson, and the unlikely visitor Sarah Brown, an inner-city missionary unexpectedly swept off her feet by Sky. Featuring such treasured Loesser tunes as "Luck Be A Lady," "Bushel And A Peck," "If I Were A Bell", "Sue Me" and "Sit Down You're Rockin' The Boat," Guys & Dolls is considered to be one of the greatest musicals of all time.

We will close this 30th Anniversary Season with Rodgers and Hammerstein's masterpiece Oklahoma! This groundbreaking musical, an influence on every show since its premiere, is set in Oklahoma Territory in the early days of the new century, when a land a people faced unexpected challenges and triumphs. Like their masterwork South Pacific, Oklahoma! combines the immortal music of Richard Rodgers with the psychological complexities of Oscar Hammerstein's writing, which won the 1944 Pulitzer Prize. Two romances, that of cowboy
Curly and spunky farm girl Laury and their counterparts, flirtatious Ado Annie and patient Will Parker, drive the story and set the scene for such soaring tunes as "Oh What a Beautiful Mornin'," "I Can't Say No," "Surrey with the Fringe on Top" and the title song, this landmark musical brings a fitting close to a season of great shows at a great Theatre.

Vanities: A New Musical

February 4 - April 3, 2011 (5th Avenue Theatre and ACT Theatre Co-production)
Cast and Creative Team:
Music and lyrics by David Kirshenbaum
Book by Jack Heifner
Director David Armstrong

Next to Normal

February 22 - March 13, 2011 (Tour)
Cast and Creative Team:
Book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey
Music by Tom Kitt
Directed by Michael Greif

9 to 5: The Musical

April 5 - April 24, 2011 (Tour)
Cast and Creative Team:
Music and lyrics by Dolly Parton
Book by Patricia Resnick

Guys & Dolls
May 14 - June 3, 2011 (5th Avenue Theatre Production)

Cast and Creative Team:
Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser
Book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows, based on short stories and characters created by Damon Runyon.

Oklahoma!
July 10-July 30, 2011 (5th Avenue Theatre Production)

Cast and Creative Team:
Music by Richard Rodgers
Libretto by Oscar Hammerstein II
Book based on Lynn Riggs' play, Green Grow the Lilacs.

Season subscriptions to The 5th's 2010-2011 Season will be available starting Monday March 8, over the phone by calling 206-625-1900/toll-free 888-5TH-4TIX (584-4849), and in person at the box office at 1308 5th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101.

The 5th Avenue Theatre is Seattle's premier musical theater. In 1980, the non-profit 5th Avenue Theatre began producing and presenting top-quality live musical theater for the cultural enrichment of the Northwest community. The 5th Avenue Theatre maintains a subscription audience of over 25,000 and an annual attendance of more than 287,000. It ranks among the nation's largest and most respected musical theater companies. The Theatre is committed to encouraging the next generation of theatergoers through its Educational Outreach Program which includes: The Adventure Musical Theatre Touring Company, The 5th Avenue High School Musical Theatre Awards, the Student Matinee Program and Spotlight Nights. Unique in its Chinese-inspired design, the exquisite theater opened in 1926 as a venue for vaudeville and film. Today, under the leadership of Executive Producer and Artistic Director David Armstrong, Managing Director Bernie Griffin and Producing Director Bill Berry, The 5th Avenue Theatre continues to achieve the highest standards in all aspects of artistic endeavors and facility operations, while preserving its artistic, architectural and historic legacy. Visit www.5thavenue.org.

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