New York City Center, which is temporarily closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, is posting daily highlights from its musical theatre vault, including selections from Encores!, Encores! Off-Center, and Gala productions.
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." Also offered: 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 salutes the work of Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart and kicks off with the 1995 City Center Encores! production of Pal Joey, starring Tony winner Patti LuPone and Tony nominee Peter Gallagher. In the video below, LuPone, who played Vera, sings “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.”
First up, the 1995 Encores! production of Pal Joey.
— New York City Center (@NYCityCenter) March 30, 2020
: @PattiLuPone "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” #EncoresArchives pic.twitter.com/9DQLJ4EAIY
"Even in a cautious world of social distancing, City Center wants to make sure you still get your musical theatre fix while our theatre is closed," the New York institution posted on Instagram. "We’ll choose a different theme each week, maybe focused on a composer or an era, or a performer who selects their favorite moments or…well, why not wait and see? We’ve done more than 80 Broadway shows and over a dozen from Off-Broadway."
