New York City Center, which is currently closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, is posting daily highlights from former Encores! productions.
The third week of the series spotlights musicals set in New York. Encores! Artistic Director Jack Viertel says, "Since its inception, Encores! has done 16 shows set in the Big Apple, and the city has been portrayed in every way imaginable from glamorous Manhattan penthouses to working class Brooklyn pawnshops, and all stops in between. Great people live here, as do villains and thieves, hippies, heiresses, and political grifters, and a remarkable number of them keep falling in love. This week we give you a taste of the City in its infinite variety."
The week kicked off with Tony nominee Kate Baldwin singing "When Did I Fall in Love?" from the 2013 City Center Encores! production of Fiorello! and continued with Brian Stokes Mitchell and Heather Headley in Do Re Mi.
The New York salute continues with Laura Benanti and Donna Murphy singing "Ohio" from the 2000 City Center Encores! production of Wonderful Town. Watch the performance below:
The Encores! production was also assembled in a hurry (aren’t they all?) and was so successful that a Broadway transfer was inevitable. #EncoresArchives
��: @DMurphyOfficial & @LauraBenanti "Ohio"
— New York City Center (@NYCityCenter) April 8, 2020
Encores! Wonderful Town 2000 pic.twitter.com/lakdDS8t80
The famed Manhattan venue launched the series March 22, Stephen Sondheim's 90th birthday, with two songs from the Encores! production of Sondheim and James Goldman's Follies: Tony winner Donna Murphy singing "Could I Leave You?" and Tony winner Victoria Clark singing "Losing My Mind." Other Sondheim offerings included: Sutton Foster and Murphy in Anyone Can Whistle, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Colin Donnell, Celia Keenan-Bolger, and Betsy Wolfe in Merrily We Roll Along, Melissa Errico in Do I Hear a Waltz?, Patti LuPone in Gypsy, Bernadette Peters in A Bed and a Chair: A New York Love Affair, Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford in Sunday in the Park With George, and Victoria Clark, John Ellison Conlee, Shuler Hensley, and Steven Pasquale in Assassins, and Brandon Uranowitz and Jin in Road Show.
The second week of the series saluted the work of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart and featured Patti LuPone singing “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” from the 1995 City Center Encores! production of Pal Joey, Rebecca Luker, Debbie Gravitte, and Sarah Uriarte Berry in The Boys From Syracuse, Christopher Fitzgerald and Jessica Stone in Babes in Arms, Judy Blazer and Steven Sutcliffe in A Connecticut Yankee, Shonn Wiley and Irina Dvorovenko in On Your Toes, and Mark Evans in I Married an Angel.
