Encores! to Produce Little Me With Christian Borle and Most Happy Fella Starring Shuler Hensley in 2014 | Playbill

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News Encores! to Produce Little Me With Christian Borle and Most Happy Fella Starring Shuler Hensley in 2014 Tony Award winner Christian Borle will star in the Cy Coleman-Carolyn Leigh musical Little Me as part of the 2014 City Center Encores! season, which will also include Tony winner Shuler Hensley in The Most Happy Fella and a John Doyle-helmed production of Irma La Douce.

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Christian Borle Photo by Monica Simoes

John Rando (A Christmas Story, Urinetown) will stage Little Me, which launches the season Feb. 5-19, 2014. Borle (Peter and the Starcatcher, "Smash") will take on the central male roles in the 1962 musical comedy. According to Encores!, "Little Me is the story of the glamorous Belle Poitrine, a self-invented celebrity who has spent her life in pursuit of wealth, culture and social position. Her seven oddball lovers are played by one actor: seven plum roles, from an innocent college boy to an octogenarian lecher to the dying king of a tiny European country that doesn’t seem to exist."

Featuring a score by Coleman and Leigh, the musical has a book by Neil Simon. Songs include "I've Got Your Number," "Real Live Girl" and "The Other Side of the Tracks." It is based on the novel "Little Me: The Intimate Memoirs of that Great Star of Stage, Screen and Television/Belle Poitrine" by Patrick Dennis.

Frank Loesser's sweeping 1956 musical The Most Happy Fella will feature Hensley (Oklahoma!, The Whale) as Tony. Tony winner Casey Nicholaw (The Book of Mormon) will direct and choreograph the production that runs April 2-6, 2014.

Featuring book, music and lyrics by Loesser, the musical "tells the heart-stopping story of a love triangle between an aging Napa Valley farmer, a young waitress and a handsome, restless ranch hand." Songs in the lush, operatic score include "Joey, Joey, Joey," "Somebody Somewhere," "My Heart Is So Full of You," "Big D" and "Standing on the Corner."

Encores! will chart new territory with the 1956 French musical Irma La Douce, marking the first non-American musical to be produced in the history of the series. Tony Award winner John Doyle (Company, Sweeney Todd, Passion) will direct the May 7-11, 2014, run. It has music by Marguerite Monnot and English book and lyrics by Julian More, David Heneker and Monty Norman. According to Encores!, Irma La Douce tells "the tale of a Parisian lady of the evening and the law student who falls in love with her." Songs include "Our Language of Love," "The Valse Millieu" and "Dis Donc."

Encores! subscriptions go on sale Aug. 5. Visit NYCityCenter.org

 
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