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It’s been called summer stock for the A team: Find a fine but forgotten musical, recruit ace actors and musicians, and put on some shows!
City Center’s Encores! has been doing just that since 1994. Along the way, stars have been born (or rediscovered) and great scores played the way God — or Bernstein, Porter and Sondheim — intended them: with a full orchestra.
No wonder it’s such a hot ticket, drawing subscribers every bit as fervent as the Yankees’ Bleacher Creatures. “I’ve heard that people leave these subscriptions in their wills,” says artistic director Jack Viertel, who’s had the same 212 families on his list since Encores! began. “I’m watching me and them get older over time. It’s a lovefest!”
The love’s coming not just from the audience, but a who’s who of great performers — Patti LuPone, Nathan Lane, Martin Short, Kristin Chenoweth, Bebe Neuwirth, Megan Hilty — who compare the Encores! experience to being shot out of a cannon.
“You don’t think you have a net, but you do,” says five-time Encores! star Christine Ebersole. “Everybody’s looking out for each other, and the audience knows the art form, and it’s thrilling for them, too, because anything can happen.”
And many things have. As it kicks off its 20th season Wednesday with an encore take on “Fiorello!” — the very musical that the series started with — troupers recall their highlights.
* Tyne Daly gets on board
The “Cagney & Lacey” star had sung “Gypsy” on Broadway but didn’t know what Encores! was when asked to star in 1995’s “Call Me Madam.” “[‘Gypsy’ co-star] Jonathan Hadary said, ‘Do it! You’ll have the time of your life!’ ” recalls Encores! stalwart Ted Chapin. “And when she stepped onstage, it was the first time people took us seriously.”
* Anne Hathaway sings!
“She wasn’t the best singer we heard that day,” Viertel says of the future Fantine’s audition for “Carnival” 11 years ago. “But she inhabited the role in such a way that we threw up our hands and said, ‘We have to have her play this part. She is this part!’ It never occurred to us she’d become a major movie star. We thought she’d still be coming back to Encores!”
* Patti LuPone feels the love
She’d just been let go from London’s “Sunset Boulevard” when Encores! cast her in “Pal Joey,” where, Viertel says, “her first entrance was greeted with the kind of applause usually reserved for returning war heroes.”
* Christine Ebersole feels the heat
“There are no understudies in Encores!,” says Ebersole, which is how the Tony award winning actress wound up starring in “Applause” with a fever of 103. “You start hallucinating, but you’re onstage, doing the dances. The show must go on!”
* A “Dreamgirl” is born
“It was tight, hectic and electric,” says Anika Noni Rose of her plunge into “Purlie.” Not only were her co-stars the great Lillias White and Blair Underwood, but she came offstage one night and learned that the producers of “Dreamgirls” were in the house. Next thing she knew, she was singing on-screen with Beyoncé.
* “Who knew Sutton Foster could be so incredibly sexy?”
So says Jay Binder, who cast every one of Encores’ 57 productions. When he put the wholesome “Thoroughly Modern Millie” star in Sondheim’s “Anyone Can Whistle,” she showed a new side of herself. Next stop? Broadway’s “Anything Goes,” in which she snagged a Tony playing a sexy Reno Sweeney.
* Liza cancels, “Chicago” kills!
“At the very last minute, her agent called. She’d booked something else,” Binder recalls. “[Director] Walter Bobbie and I turned to Ann Reinking, the choreographer, and said, ‘Annie, you’re on, kid!’ We’d just gone through the OJ Simpson trial, and the timing was perfect!” “Chicago” moved to Broadway in 1996. It’s still there.
* Love knocks (twice)
For 1999’s “Babes in Arms,” director Kathleen Marshall staged a number in which Christopher Fitzgerald and Jessica Stone had what Binder calls “one of the longest stage kisses ever!” They wed soon after. And at the closing-night party for “On the Town,” star Leslie Kritzer met musical director Vadim Feichtner. They’re getting married Feb. 22 in the very place they met — City Center’s mezzanine lobby!