Kristin Chenoweth to Replace Marin Mazzie in Music in the Air at Encores!

Tony Award winner Kristin Chenoweth has joined the cast of Kern and Hammerstein’s Music in the Air, the second Encores! production of the 2008-09 season. She will replace previously announced star Marin Mazzie, who has dropped out after the death of her father. This rarely seen 1932 musical will run for five performances from February 5 to 8 at New York City Center, directed by Gary Griffin.

In addition to Chenoweth, the cast of Music in the Air will include previously announced stars Douglas Sills, Dick Latessa, Tom Alan Robbins, Sierra Boggess, Walter Charles, Anne L. Nathan, David Schramm, Ryan Silverman, Robert Sella and Sally Ann Howes.

Music in the Air centers on a Bavarian music teacher Robbins, his beautiful young daughter Boggess and the daughter’s suitor Silverman, who travel to Munich where they encounter a cast of self-involved, egotistical theater folk who promise them fame, fortune and romance. Chenoweth and Sills play a Diva and an operetta librettist who take the young couple under their wings and claws. Songs include “I’ve Told Ev’ry Little Star” and “The Song Is You.”

With music by Jerome Kern, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and orchestrations by Robert Russell Bennett, Music in the Air, has not been seen in New York in its original form since its premiere Broadway engagement at the Alvin Theatre in 1932. A revised version had a brief revival at the Ziegfeld Theatre in 1951.

Chenoweth was last seen on the New York stage in Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of The Apple Tree, which began life at Encores! She received a Tony Award for her performance in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown and was nominated for a Tony for creating the role of Glinda in Wicked. Her other Broadway credits include Steel Pier and Epic Proportions and Candide with the New York Philharmonic. In addition to The Apple Tree, she has starred in Encores! productions of Strike Up the Band, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever and Stairway to Paradise. An Emmy nominee for Pushing Daisies. Chenoweth has appeared on TV in The West Wing, Kristin, Ugly Betty and The Music Man and the forthcoming Legally Mad and the animated series Sit Down Shut Up. Her films include Four Christmases, The Pink Panther, Stranger Than Fiction, Deck the Halls and Running with Scissors.

Music in the Air will feature music direction by Rob Berman and choreography by Michael Lichtefeld.