New York City's Entertainment Press Releases:

Rosie O’Donnell, Christine Ebersole and Beth Leavel will star in New York City Center’s 2008 Encores! season, today announced Artistic Director Jack Viertel. Tony Award-winner Christine Ebersole will star in Applause, directed by Kathleen Marshall, the opening show of the acclaimed Encores! series, running February 7 – 10, 2008. Applause will be followed by Joseph Stein and Marc Blitzstein’s rarely seen Juno, directed by Tony Award-winner Garry Hynes, March 27 – 30, and No, No, Nanette, starring Rosie O’Donnell and Tony Award-winner Beth Leavel and directed by Walter Bobbie, running May 8 – 12. Rob Berman has been appointed music director for the 2008 season.

Tony-winner Christine Ebersole (Grey Gardens) will star as Margo Channing in Applause, the 1970 Tony Award-winning musical with music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Lee Adams and book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, based on the classic film All About Eve, about a great Broadway star and her duplicitous understudy. The original Broadway production, starring Lauren Bacall, opened at the Palace Theatre on March 30, 1970, playing a total of 896 performances. Songs from Applause include “Applause,” “Welcome to the Theater,” and “Good Friends.” Kathleen Marshall will direct and Rob Berman will be the music director for Applause, which runs February 7 – 10. Applause is made possible with major support from the Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Charitable Trust.

Juno, with music and lyrics by Marc Blitzstein and book by Joseph Stein, based on the 1924 play Juno and the Paycock by Sean O'Casey, will run from March 27 –30. Juno will be directed by Tony Award-winner Garry Hynes (The Beauty Queen of Leenane, DruidSynge, The Lonesome West), with music direction by Eric Stern and musical staging by Warren Carlyle. This will be the first production since the original Broadway staging in 1959 to use the original orchestrations by Blitzstein, Hershey Kay and Robert Russell Bennett which will be restored by the Encores! musical staff.

Juno chronicles the disintegration of an Irish family in Dublin in the early 1920s, during the confrontations between the Irish Republican Army and the British. Juno Boyle is the hardworking matriarch who struggles heroically to hold the family together in the face of war, betrayal, and her husband's drinking. The original Broadway production opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on March 9, 1959, starring Shirley Booth and Melvin Douglas, directed by Jose Ferrer, and choreographed by Agnes de Mille. It played 16 performances. Songs include “I Wish It So,” “We’re Alive” and “One Kind Word.”

The 2008 Encores! season will conclude with No, No, Nanette, running May 8 – 12, and starring Rosie O’Donnell and Tony Award-winner Beth Leavel (The Drowsy Chaperone). Walter Bobbie, who served as Artistic Director of the series in 1995 and 1996, and directed the multi-award winning Chicago for Encores! on Broadway and around the world, will return to direct; music direction will be by Encores! founding music director Rob Fisher. Based on the comedy My Lady Friends by Frank Mandel and Emily Nyitray, No, No, Nanette is a light-hearted tale of millionaires, misunderstood wives, innocent young girls, beautiful women and betrayal, with lots of tap dancing.

No, No, Nanette has had two major Broadway productions; the show originally opened in 1925, and was revived and reconceived in 1971 in a production supervised by Busby Berkeley and adapted and directed by Bert Shevelove. Encores! will present the 1971 version of Nanette, which has music by Vincent Youmans, lyrics by Irving Caesar and Otto Harbach, and book by Otto Harbach. The show features such classic songs as “Tea for Two” and “I Want to Be Happy.”

Rob Berman succeeds Paul Gemignani. Gemignani turned over the baton to Berman at the end of the 2007 season, when he found his music directing obligations for Broadway and film made him unavailable.

Rob Berman is no stranger to Encores!, having served as music director for last season’s Encores! production of Stairway to Paradise. He worked as founding music director Rob Fisher’s associate on a number of productions at City Center and took over the podium from Maestro Fisher during the Broadway transfers of Wonderful Town and The Apple Tree, both of which originated at Encores! He was the conductor of the Broadway revival of The Pajama Game and music director of the Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration’s Sunday in the Park with George (Helen Hayes Award, Best Musical Direction). Berman is music supervisor of Irving Berlin's White Christmas and music director for the Kennedy Center Honors.

Newman’s Own is the Season Sponsor for the 2008 Encores! season. Paul Newman and the Newman’s Own Foundation donate all profits and royalties after taxes for educational and charitable purposes. Paul Newman and the Newman’s Own Foundation have given over $200 million to thousands of charities worldwide since l982. For years, Paul Newman filled old wine bottles with his homemade salad dressing for Christmas gifts. One day, he reckoned that what was good enough for his pals was good enough for the public, and Newman's own all-natural line of food products was born. It has grown to include pasta sauce, microwave popcorn, salsa, lemonade and steak sauce. For more information about Newman’s Own, please visit www.newmansown.com.

Major support for the New York City Center Encores! 2008 season is provided by the Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Charitable Trust.

New York City Center Encores!(Jack Viertel, Artistic Director) has, since 1994, celebrated the rarely-heard works of America’s most important composers and lyricists. Conceived as “concert versions,” each Encores! season gives three scores the chance to be heard as originally intended by their creators. Over the years, Encores! has presented the works of the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Kurt Weill, Bock and Harnick, Burt Bacharach, Kander and Ebb, Comden and Green, and many more. The program is the recipient of a special 2000 Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre, as well as an Outer Critics Circle Award, Lucille Lortel Award and Jujamcyn Theaters Award.

New York City Center (Arlene Shuler, President and CEO) has long been known and beloved by New York audiences not only as one of the City’s preeminent performing art institutions but also as an accessible and welcoming venue for dance and theater. New York City Center produces the Tony-honored Encores! musical theater series, and is home to some of the country’s leading dance companies, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, Paul Taylor Dance Company and now for its inaugural season, Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company, as well as Manhattan Theatre Club, one of New York’s leading theater companies. Continuing to fulfill its mission to make the arts accessible to the broadest possible audience, in 2004 New York City Center launched the acclaimed Fall for Dance Festival. In 2006, New York City Center formed partnerships with both London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre to facilitate the exchange of innovative dance works, and with Carnegie Hall to work together on exciting new programming initiatives between the two neighboring institutions. In 2007 New York City Center introduced the Encores! Summer Stars series with the critically-acclaimed production of Gypsy.

Tickets for the 2008 Encores! season are available at the New York City Center Box Office (West 55th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues), through CityTix® at 212-581-1212, or online at www.nycitycenter.org. Tickets for the Orchestra, Grand Tier are $95; Mid-Mezzanine tickets are $90; tickets for the Rear Mezzanine and Front Gallery are $50; tickets for the Rear Gallery are $25.