Sutton Foster Will Headline Sweet Charity Revival for New Group; Full Off-Broadway Season Announced

Two-time Tony winner Sutton Foster will headline a 50th anniversary revival of Sweet Charity this fall. The production will kick off the New Group’s 2016-17 off-Broadway season. Also on the lineup is the U.S. premiere of Wallace Shawn's Evening at the Talk House and world premieres by Erica Schmidt and Hamish Linklater.

Sweet Charity will begin performances in November. Leigh Silverman, who directed Foster in the recent revival of Violet, is set to helm the production; Joshua Bergasse will choreograph. The Cy Coleman, Dorothy Fields and Neil Simon musical follows the romantic ups and downs of Charity, a dance hall performer in Times Square. The tuner premiered on Broadway in 1966 and was last revived in New York in 2005.

Foster’s stage credits include Tony-winning turns in Anything Goes and Thoroughly Modern Millie, as well as Violet, Shrek, Young Frankenstein and The Drowsy Chaperone. Fans can catch her as 40-year-old-but-pretending-to-be-26 Liza Miller on TV Land’s Younger, which is set to return for a third season next year, as well as the upcoming Netflix revival of Gilmore Girls.

Beginning January 2017, the New Group will present Shawn’s Evening at the Talk House, helmed by artistic director Scott Elliott. The play explores the reunion of a group of actors and a playwright on the tenth anniversary of their flop. It first premiered at the U.K.'s National Theatre in 2015.

Next, Schmidt will helm the world premiere of her play All the Fine Boys. The show is set in a South Carolina suburb in the late ‘80s and follows fourteen-year-old best friends Jenny and Emily as they contemplate their sexual awakening. Performances will start in February 2017.

The season concludes with Linklater’s The Whirligig, featuring Girls star and off-Broadway alum Zosia Mamet and recent Golden Globe winner Maura Tierney. Elliott will direct the production, which begins previews in May 2017. Tierney will star as Kristina, who heads back to Berkshire County to care for her estranged daughter alongside her ex-husband. As word of her return travels, several familiar faces, including her childhood best friend Trish (Mamet), attempt to reconnect.

Performances of the four productions are set for the Pershing Square Signature Center. Additional casting and creative team members will be announced at a later date.