Raul Esparza Will Whistle With Sutton Foster and Donna Murphy at Encores!

Raul Esparza, Edward Hibbert, Jeff Blumenkrantz and John Ellison Conlee have joined the cast of Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents’ Anyone Can Whistle, to be presented by Encores! at New York City Center. The show, directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw and featuring musical direction by Rob Berman, will play from April 8 through April 11.

Esparza is a four-time Tony Award nominee of shows such as Speed-the-Plow, The Homecoming, Company and Taboo. He has been honored with three Broadway.com Audience Awards, for off-Broadway's tick, tick...BOOM! (Favorite Breakthrough Performance), Cabaret (Favorite Replacement) and The Homecoming (Favorite Featured Actor in a Broadway Play). His additional Broadway credits include Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Rocky Horror Show.

Hibbert has appeared on Broadway in Curtains, The Drowsy Chaperone, Noises Off, The Green Bird, Me and My Girl and Marlene. He previously appeared at City Center in Encores’ Lady in the Dark.

Blumenkrantz’s Broadway credits include A Class Act, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Damn Yankees, The Threepenny Opera and Into the Woods. Also a songwriter, he was nominated for a Tony Award for contributing songs to the musical Urban Cowboy.

Conlee was nominated for a Tony Award for his work in The Full Monty. His additional Broadway credits include The Constant Wife and 1776. He also appeared at City Center in Encores’ A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

The quartet of actors joins previously announced stars Donna Murphy and Sutton Foster. The cast also features Clyde Alves, Tanya Birl, Holly Ann Butler, J. Austin Eyer, Sara Ford, Lisa Gajda, Stephanie Gibson, Linda Griffin, Karen Hyland, Natalie King, Grasan Kingsberry, Max Kumangai, Michael Marcotte, Joseph Medeiros, Denny Paschall, Monica L. Patton, Steve Schepis, Eric Sciotto, Tally Sessions, Brian Shepard, Dana Steingold, Brandon Tyler, Anthony Wayne and Patrick Wetzel.

Anyone Can Whistle opened on April 4, 1964, at the Majestic Theatre and closed after nine performances. With a score by Sondheim and a book and direction by Laurents, the experimental satire took aim at every target on the American cultural scene—conformity, psychology, race relations, greed, religion and politics. The title song and “With So Little to Be Sure Of” have survived as a cabaret classic, but the rarely heard complete score is a riot of jazzy, showbiz razzmatazz, waltzes, gospel numbers and Broadway pastiche.