Sutton Foster to Star in Anyone Can Whistle at Encores! in April

Tony winner Sutton Foster is set to star in Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents’ Anyone Can Whistle, directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw. The show, which will be the final Encores! production of the 2009-2010 season, will play five performances from April 8 to April 11, 2010 at City Center. Foster will play Nurse Fay Apple, the role originated by Lee Remick.

Foster, who currently stars as Princess Fiona in Shrek, received the Tony, Outer Critics, Drama Desk and Astaire Awards for her performance in Thoroughly Modern Millie. She was been nominated for Tony and Drama Desk Awards for Shrek (for which she won an Outer Critics Award), as well as The Drowsy Chaperone and Little Women. Her other Broadway credits include Young Frankenstein, Les Miserables, Annie, Scarlet Pimpernel and Grease!. Her debut album, Wish, was released on Sh-K-Boom Records earlier this year.

Anyone Can Whistle is Sondheim and Laurents’ 1964 experimental satire of the American cultural scene of that time. Their targets included conformity, psychology, race relations, greed, religion and politics. The title song and “With So Little to Be Sure Of” have survived as cabaret classics, but the rarely heard complete score is a riot of jazzy, showbiz razzmatazz, waltzes, gospel numbers and Broadway pastiche. The original production opened on April 4, 1964 at the Majestic Theatre, starring Angela Lansbury, Remick and Harry Guardino, directed by Laurents. It ran for 12 previews and nine performances.