Zaks, Bruni & Nicholaw to Direct 2009-2010 Encores! Musicals

Jerry Zaks, Marc Bruni and Casey Nicholaw have been tapped to direct the trio of musicals being presented at the New York City Center Encores! series for 2009-2010. Zaks will direct Girl Crazy, Bruni will helm Fanny and Nicholaw will direct and choreograph Anyone Can Whistle. In addition, Rob Fisher will return as guest music director for Girl Crazy, and current Encores! music director Rob Berman will do the honors for Fanny and Anyone Can Whistle.

Girl Crazy opens the season and is set to run November 19-22. Four-time Tony Award winner Jerry Zaks (Guys and Dolls, Six Degrees of Separation, Lend Me a Tenor, The House of Blue Leaves, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) will helm George and Ira Gershwin’s 1930 tuner, which features a book by Guy Bolton and Jack McGowan. It’s the tale of a sophisticated New Yorker marooned in a dusty Western cowtown with no one who understands him but the Yiddish-speaking cabbie who brought him there and no one to love but the only woman within 50 miles.

Fanny is being directed by Marc Bruni, who will helm the new musical Ordinary Days for Roundabout Underground this fall. A vet of St. Louis Muny, he was featured on MTV’s Legally Blonde: The Search for Elle Woods and has worked with Broadway directors including Zaks, Kathleen Marshall, Walter Bobbie and Jerry Mitchell. Fanny, a sweeping love story with a book by Joshua Logan and S.N. Behrman and a score by Harold Rome, will run February 4-7, 2010.

Anyone Can Whistle, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents’ 1964 experimental satire, will be directed by Tony nominee Casey Nicholaw (The Drowsy Chaperone, Spamalot, the forthcoming Minsky’s, Elf and Robin and the 7 Hoods). The rarely seen musical will run April 8-11, 2010.