NEWSLETTER. subscriber. ANNIE Ed Mirvish Theatre. AN AMERICAN IN PARIS Princess of Wales Theatre. THE KING AND I Princess of Wales Theatre

Transcription

1 subscriber NEWSLETTER NOVEMBER 2017 ADDED TO THE SEASON! SEE INSIDE FOR MORE DETAILS It s guaranteed that you will want to whistle a happy tune after leaving the final three shows in the 2017/18 Mirvish Subscription Season! Each of these shows contains some of musical theatres most beloved songs, written by the genres most accomplished songwriters George and Ira Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein and Charles Strouse. Get ready for a musical feast! ANNIE Ed Mirvish Theatre AN AMERICAN IN PARIS THE KING AND I YOU SHOULD NOW HAVE ALL OF YOUR TICKETS FOR THE SEASON Please make sure you have received all your tickets for the 2017/18 Mirvish Subscription Season and that you have noted the date and time of each of your performances. If you requested home tickets, check your inbox and print your tickets before coming to the theatre. If you require a change to any of the dates of your performances, please call Mirvish Subscriptions and enjoy the benefit of free ticket exchange. Thank you for Subscribing! ALL WEDNESDAY MATINEES BEGIN AT 1:30 PM Jose Llana and Laura Michelle Kelly in Rodgers & Hammerstein s THE KING AND I. Photo by Matthew Murphy. Mirvish Subscriptions 284 KING STREET WEST, SUITE 310 TORONTO, M5V 1J2 HOURS MONDAY FRIDAY 8:30 AM 7:00 PM SUBSCRIPTIONS@MIRVISH.COM TICKET EXCHANGES & ADDITIONAL TICKET PURCHASES can be made through TicketKing during these extended hours: MONDAY FRIDAY: 9:00 AM 8:00 PM SATURDAY: 10:00 AM 8:00 PM SUNDAY: 12:00 PM 4:00 PM

2 A GLORIOUS REVIVAL THE TIMES ANNIE April 3 May 6, 2018 Ed Mirvish Theatre Running Time: 2 hours 15 minutes (includes intermission) SUBSCRIBER NOTICE: The main series was to include the musical stage adaptation of the Australian film MURIEL S WEDDING, which would have been coming to Toronto from its Australian season. Due to scheduling conflicts, the show will not be able to make it to Toronto this season and will be delayed to a subsequent year. Instead, David Mirvish will present the new production of the beloved musical ANNIE, which opened to rave reviews at the Piccadilly Theatre in London this past June. 40 TH ANNIVERSARY PRODUCTION DIRECT FROM LONDON S WEST END When ANNIE opened in London in May 2017 The Times declared it a Glorious Revival, going on to say it is Slickly staged, buoyantly performed, motored by cracking musical set pieces and an expert mixture of naivety, whimsy and wit, it puts a smile on your face and a tear in your eye. The Daily Telegraph exclaimed that this is just what London needs right now! Set in 1930s New York during The Great Depression, brave young Annie is forced to live a life of misery and torment at Miss Hannigan s orphanage. Her luck changes when she is chosen to spend Christmas at the residence of famous billionaire, Oliver Warbucks. Meanwhile, spiteful Miss Hannigan has other ideas and hatches a plan to spoil Annie s search for her true family. ANNIE BOOK BY THOMAS MEEHAN MUSIC BY CHARLES STROUSE LYRICS BY MARTIN CHARNIN BASED ON "LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE" BY PERMISSION OF TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC *See website for details Designed and printed by Dewynters. THE CREATOR OF A LITTLE ORPHAN NAMED ANNIE Harold Gray was born January 20, 1894 in Kankakee, Illinois. After graduating from Purdue University in 1917, Gray joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune, to which he returned after brief service in the U.S. Army. After leaving the Tribune in 1919, he did commercial art and for a five-year period assisted Sidney Smith with his strip, The Gumps, carried by the New York Daily News. Little

3 David Mirvish and Aubrey Dan present AN AMERICAN IN PARIS March 27 April 29, 2018 Running Time: 2 hours 35 minutes (includes intermission) AN AMERICAN IN PARIS is the new Tony Award -winning musical about an American soldier, a mysterious French girl, and an indomitable European city, each yearning for a new beginning in the aftermath of war. Orphan Annie was conceived by Gray and Joseph Medill Patterson, editor of the News. Gray s choice of a girl as the central character was unusual at that time. He named her Annie for a bright Chicago street urchin he had known. Annie is tougher than hell, with a heart of gold and a fast left, who can take care of herself because she has to. She s controversial, there s no question about that. But I keep her on the side of motherhood, honesty, and decency. Harold Gray As an orphan, Gray s Annie was free to have adventures that enlarged her circular eyes and raised her frizzy hair. Her dog Sandy was her constant companion, and she was frequently rescued by Daddy Warbucks, a bald billionaire who often expressed Gray s conservative political leanings. Annie had courage, determination, and honesty, and Gray kept her at her original age around 10 or 12. At the time of his death on May 9, 1968, Little Orphan Annie was one of the most popular comic strips of all time appearing in more than 400 newspapers across Canada, the United States and around the world. Other cartoonists continued with the strip after Gray s death, but many thought the comic was never the same. The resilient redheaded teenager made her last appearance in newspapers on Sunday, June 13, 2010 just two months shy of celebrating an 86-year run. The New York Times best described AN AMERICAN IN PARIS in its review of the Broadway production: This gorgeously danced and just plain gorgeous production pays loving tribute to the 1951 movie, to the marriage of music and movement, and to cherished notions about romance that have been a defining element of the American musical theater practically since its inception. Just about everything in this happily dance-drunk show moves with a spring in its step, as if the newly liberated Paris after World War II were an enchanted place in which the laws of gravity no longer applied. Even the elegant buildings on the grand boulevards appear to take flight. The Brothers Gershwin George and Ira Gershwin will always be remembered as the song writing team whose voice was synonymous with the sounds and style of the Jazz Age. From 1924 until George s death in 1937, the brothers wrote almost exclusively with each other, composing over two dozen scores for Broadway and Hollywood. Though they had many individual song hits, their greatest achievement may have been the elevation of musical comedy to an American art form. With their trilogy of political satires Strike Up the Band, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Of Thee I Sing, and its sequel, Let Em Eat Cake (all three written with playwrights George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind) they helped raise popular musical theatre to a new level of sophistication. Their now-classic folk opera, Porgy and Bess (co-written with DuBose Heyward), is constantly revived in opera houses and theatres throughout the world. Concurrently with the Gershwins musical theatre and film work, George attained great success in the concert arena as a piano virtuoso, conductor, and composer of such celebrated works as Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris and the Concerto in F. After George s death, Ira continued NOTE EARLY ANNIE CURTAIN TIMES: 1:30 & 7:30PM

4 ONCE YOU VE SEEN IT, YOU LL FIND IT HARD TO SETTLE FOR LESS EVER AGAIN. The Wall Street Journal to work in film and theatre with collaborators ranging from Kurt Weill and Jerome Kern to Harold Arlen, Burton Lane, Vernon Duke, and Harry Warren, among others, writing such standards as Long Ago (and Far Away) and The Man That Got Away, both nominated for Academy Awards. The New York Times The 1950 MGM Motion Picture The idea for AN AMERICAN IN PARIS came to producer Arthur Freed when he attended a concert of George Gershwin s An American in Paris. Freed liked the title and from that he built a musical with Gershwin tunes after months of negotiations with Ira Gershwin (George was deceased by this time), estate trustees, and two different music publishers. As further developed by the artistic triumvirate of choreographer and star Gene Kelly, director Vincente Minelli, and screenwriter Alan J. Lerner, An American In Paris became one of the most famous film musicals in the history of Hollywood and went on to win six Academy Awards in In approaching the film s choreographic sequences, Kelly took the opportunity to make cinematic choices that broke new ground, including the legendary 17 minute final ballet sequence. He also discovered co-star Leslie Caron after seeing her in Paris s Ballet des Champs Elysees. AN AMERICAN IN PARIS MUSIC AND LYRICS BY GEORGE GERSHWIN AND IRA GERSHWIN BOOK BY CRAIG LUCAS DIRECTED AND CHOREOGRAPHED BY CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON PHOTOS (L-R) by Matthew Murphy: An American in Paris Touring Company; Emily Ferranti and Garen Scribner in An American in Paris; Garen Scribner and Sara Esty in An American in Paris; An American in Paris Touring Company; Nick Spangler, Garen Scribner and Etai Benson in An American in Paris. Illustration: Don Oehl; Logo: Esther Wu The magnificent legacy that originated with George Gershwin s composition in 1928 and continued with the breakthrough 1950 motion picture has inspired a generation of artists and audiences, and continues to inspire this further re-imagining today. George Gershwin s Paris Described by George Gershwin as an extended symphonic tone poem, the 1928 music composition, An American In Paris, was written by Gershwin on commission from the New York Philharmonic and soon became one of his most famous compositions. Inspired by his time spent in Paris during the 1920 s, Gershwin noted, My purpose here is to portray the impression of an American visitor in Paris as he strolls about the city and listens to various street noises and absorbs the French atmosphere. At approximately 20 minutes in length, the composition premiered on December 13, 1928 at Carnegie Hall under the orchestration of Walter Damrosch. The piece was hailed by the critic Isaac Goldberg as being an American Afternoon of a Faun.

5 THE KING AND I July 10 August 12, 2018 Running Time: 2 hours 50 minutes (includes intermission) Two worlds collide in the Lincoln Center Theater production of THE KING AND I, directed by Bartlett Sher. Winner of the 2015 Tony Award for Best Musical Revival, THE KING AND I is one of Rodgers & Hammerstein s finest works, boasting a score that features such beloved classics as Getting To Know You, I Whistle a Happy Tune, Hello Young Lovers, Shall We Dance and Something Wonderful. INSIGHTS FROM THE CREATIVE TEAM Ira Weitzman, the Mindich Musical Theater Associate Producer at Lincoln Center Theater, has played an integral part in bringing this revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein s THE KING AND I to the stage. Weitzman has spent a lifetime developing and producing musicals, new and old. Before rehearsals began for THE KING AND I, Weitzman shared insights into the process of reviving this classic musical. After spending over thirty years in the musical theatre industry, much of that time developing new musicals, what is it like being a part of this revival of THE KING AND I? I was raised on Rodgers and Hammerstein s original cast albums as a kid. They gave me a sense of the possibilities of what grown-up musical theatre could accomplish. LCT s Artistic Director André Bishop and I share that early Rodgers and Hammerstein influence. In the 1990s we produced a beautiful, revelatory revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein s second musical, Carousel, directed by Nicholas Hytner in the Vivian Beaumont Theater. In 2008, we staged the first Broadway revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein s fourth show South Pacific, originally done in It was a distinguished and gorgeous production directed by Bartlett Sher. In 2015 we completed the trilogy of Rodgers and Hammerstein revivals with THE KING AND I. Our approach with THE KING AND I, particularly under the direction of Bart Sher, is to revive the show with as fresh an eye as we would apply to a new production, while being reverent of the material. The amazing thing about Rodgers and Hammerstein is that their work is still relevant and resonant to today s audiences. Have there been any changes made to the script and/ or score? How has the team gone about making the changes? There s a lot of material that was cut from THE KING AND I before it originally opened on Broadway in The first performance out-of-town was four hours long! Most of the cuts were for the best but there are lines here and there that we want to try to incorporate. We combed through every draft of the script to see if there was useful material that could serve to deepen the characters and the themes of the show. For example, we discovered some lines between the King and the Kralahome (the Prime Minister) which detail Siam s place in Asia at the time. It gave the King an importance politically that we thought might help the audience understand Siam in the 1860 s. There s also a fun exchange from Margaret Landon s book (Anna and the King of Siam, on which the musical is based) between Anna and the King when they first meet. It s a little sparring match back and forth to set up the relationship of these two strong-willed characters. The King asks Anna quite bluntly how old she is. One hundred and fifty-three, she replies! What year were you born? he quickly retorts. She responds with the correct year without missing a beat. For some reason that dialogue, which is also in the film version of the musical, was omitted in the stage script. You ve said before that one of the first musicals you fell in love with as a kid was Rodgers and Hammerstein s South Pacific. Do you remember your first experience with THE KING AND I? I fell in love with South Pacific through the original cast recording. I first saw THE KING Jose Llana and Laura Michelle Kelly in Rodgers & Hammerstein s The King and I. Photo by Matthew Murphy.

6 AND I as a movie on television. It used to air regularly (albeit cut to shreds to fit in commercials and such) on the afternoon program that I watched when I got home from elementary school. They seemed to recycle the same movies so by the time I was in middle school I had seen THE KING AND I at least a dozen times! It always made me cry at the end. I was so moved by Anna s acceptance of the King s greatness, humanity, and her love for him. It got me every time. I first saw it onstage in the 1970s Broadway revival with Yul Brynner who by then had trademarked the role. I still cried at the end. SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE BUY TICKETS & PAY NO SERVICE CHARGES Remember, Subscribers can purchase tickets, with no service charges, to shows on and off Subscription by visiting You must login through your Subscription account in order to save on service charges. Could you share some thoughts on why Rodgers and Hammerstein were such influential (and successful) musical theatre writers? And why their work is still so relevant today? Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote popular musicals with serious themes which have appealed to people of all generations. That is certainly true of the three shows of theirs we have produced. Carousel is about spousal abuse and the importance of community to the individual. South Pacific is a love story set in World War II against a background of racism. THE KING AND I is about the modernization of an ancient culture as it takes its place among the other nations of the world. These important themes are conveyed by compelling stories with great scores that entertain as well as enlighten. That is what makes them relevant to so many people today. Richard Rodgers was an incomparable melodist whose distinctive harmonies seem to speak unconsciously to the human heart. Oscar Hammerstein II was an innovator whose work helped shape the modern musical by integrating the book, songs, dance, and direction all in service of a cohesive story. Their influence while they were alive and writing was pervasive throughout America and the world not only on audiences but on the creators of musical theatre as well. Their legacy continues by the huge number of performances of their shows that are produced each year professionally, as well in community theatres and schools. Laura Michelle Kelly as Anna and the Royal Children of Rodgers & Hammerstein s The King and I. Photo by Matthew Murphy WINNER! BEST MUSICAL ALL ACROSS NORTH AMERICA For Tickets: or HOLIDAY GIFT IDEAS! THEATRE TICKETS There is a great line-up of shows for 2018, including the return engagement of COME FROM AWAY. Treat your family and friends to the theatre this holiday season with Mirvish Theatre tickets. Subscribers save on service charges by visiting subvip or calling Mirvish Subscriptions. MIRVISH THEATRE GIFT CARD Don t know what show to give? A Mirvish Theatre Gift Card can be purchased in any denomination and can be redeemed for tickets to any Mirvish production. The theatrelover receiving the gift can choose the show, date and time that best suits them! MIRVISH SOCKS Nothing makes a better stocking stuffer then stockings? There are a limited quantity of Mirvish ankle socks now available in size small (5 8) and medium (9 11) for only $15.00 a pair. Call Mirvish Subscriptions to place your order. MIRVISH SUBSCRIPTION 2017/18 Season Ticket packages are still available, plus you can take advantage of the Mirvish Referral Program where you and the new Subscriber save! This would be the ultimate holiday gift. HOW TO ORDER Online: Phone: or In-Person: Mirvish Subscriptions 284 King St. W., 3rd Flr. Mirvish Subscription Hours: Mon Fri 8:30AM 7:00PM