It's Official: Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury to Star in A Little Night Music

After months of speculation, producers have confirmed that Oscar winner Catherine Zeta-Jones and five-time Tony winner Angela Lansbury will co-star with Olivier Award nominee Alexander Hanson in the first Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s A Little Night Music. The production, directed by Trevor Nunn, will begin previews on November 24 and open on December 13 at the Walter Kerr Theatre.

Zeta-Jones will make her Broadway debut as Desirée Armfeldt, with Lansbury as Madame Armfeldt and Hanson as Fredrik Egerman, a role he created in Nunn’s production at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory and in the West End. Also featured are Aaron Lazar (Les Misérables, A Tale of Two Cities, A Light in the Piazza) as Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm, Erin Davie (Grey Gardens, Curtains) as Countess Charlotte Malcolm, Leigh Ann Larkin (Gypsy) as Petra, Hunter Ryan Herdlicka as Henrik Egerman, and Ramona Mallory (The Fantasticks) as Anne Egerman, a role created by her mother, Victoria Mallory.

The cast also includes Bradley Dean, Marissa McGowan, Betsy Morgan, Karen Murphy, Jayne Paterson and Kevin David Thomas. Additional casting, including the role of Fredrika Armfeldt, will be announced at a later date.

A Little Night Music is based on the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night. Set in Sweden at the turn of the twentieth century, it follows three lovestruck couples as they lose, and find, each other during a long midsummer night on a country estate.

Featuring a score by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Hugh Wheeler, A Little Night Music originally opened in 1973 at the Shubert Theatre and ran for 601 performances. Produced and directed by Harold Prince, the production won six Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Original Score. The score features “Send in the Clowns,” “Every Day a Little Death,” “The Miller's Son” and “A Weekend in the Country.” Nunn’s London revival debuted in November 2008 and transferred to the West End where it played a successful limited engagement through July 25, 2009 at the Garrick Theatre.

Zeta-Jones began her professional stage career at age 11 in a production of Annie. Two years later she was on the West End stage in the musical Bugsy Malone. She also appeared in a tour of The Pajama Game, before landing her big break playing Peggy Sawyer in a West End revival of 42nd Street. Her film credits include Out of the Blue, The Phantom, The Mask of Zorro, Entrapment, The Haunting, High Fidelity, Traffic, America's Sweethearts, Ocean’s Twelve, No Reservations, Death Defying Acts and The Rebound. She won an Academy Award and was nominated for a Golden Globe for portraying Velma Kelly in the 2002 film adaptation of Chicago.

Lansbury won a 2009 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in Blithe Spirit and previously won Tonys for Sweeney Todd, Gypsy, Dear World and Mame. Her stellar stage career also includes the Broadway productions of A Little Family Business, The King and I, Anyone Can Whistle, A Taste of Honey and Hotel Paradiso. During a long film career, Lansbury received Oscar nominations for The Manchurian Candidate, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Gaslight. From 1984-1996 Lansbury starred as mystery-writing sleuth Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote, for which she won four Golden Globe Awards.

In addition to A Little Night Music, Hanson received an Olivier Award nomination for Marguerite and starred onstage in The Sound Of Music, The Merchant Of Venice, Troilus and Cressida, Sunset Boulevard, Arcadia and We Will Rock You, among many other credits.

The creative team includes Lynne Page (choreography), Caroline Humphris (musical supervision), David Farley (set and costume design), Hartley T A Kemp (lighting design), Dan Moses Shreier and Gareth Owen (sound design), Paul Huntley (wig design), Jason Carr (orchestrations) and Tom Murray (musical direction).

A Little Night Music will be produced on Broadway by Tom Viertel, Steven Baruch, Marc Routh, Richard Frankel, the Menier Chocolate Factory, Roger Berlind, David Babani, Andrew Fell and Sonia Friedman Productions.