Let there be...a NYC concert of Stephen Schwartz and John Caird's Children of Eden! Manhattan Concert Productions, will present the Biblical Stephen Schwartz-John Caird musical at Lincoln Center's David Geffen Hall February 18, 2024.
Tony nominee Tony Yazbeck (On the Town) will hang up his proverbial dancin' shoes to direct the concert, with Kimberly Grigsby music directing and leading New York City Chamber Orchestra.
Starring will be Auli'i Cravalho as Yonah, Nikki Renée Daniels as Eve and Mama Noah, Jordan Fisher as Cain and Japheth, Norm Lewis as Father, and Paul Alexander Nolan as Adam and Noah. Further casting is to be announced. Casting is by The Telsey Office's Craig Burns.
Based on the book of Genesis, Children of Eden has a book by Caird and a score by Schwartz and provides a unique telling of the Biblical story of creation through the epic of Noah and the flood. The musical had its world premiere in London's West End in 1991, later playing in a revised form at New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse in 1997. Though the musical has not yet made it to Broadway, it has become a favorite at regional theatres, schools, and churches. The score includes such Schwartz favorites as "The Spark of Creation," "Lost in the Wilderness," "Stranger to the Rain," and "In Whatever Time We Have." Plans for a Broadway-bound full production of the musical in Chicago, the follow-up to a two-performance concert staging, were announced last year. The concerts were held last fall, but no further information about a future production has surfaced.
The upcoming concert will be at least the second time the musical has been performed in Manhattan. York Theatre Company presented a one-night-only benefit concert staging marking World AIDS Day in 2003, also starring Lewis as Father.
Manhattan Concert Productions has been largely on pause since the pandemic shutdown in 2020, which came just weeks after the company produced a concert staging of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat starring Noah Galvin. The group has also staged Lincoln Center concerts of Ragtime, Titanic, Parade, The Secret Garden, Crazy For You, and The Scarlet Pimpernel.
This production of Children of Eden is licensed by Music Theatre International.
