Don't Wait for Tomorrow Plan Now to Spend the Holidays in New York with Annie the Musical

Warning: I will be singing along from my seat! I have just received the special announcement, from a very reliable source that the "Strictly Limited" 16-performance engagement of the National Tour of Annie the Musical will be headlining in New York this holiday season. Now is the time to get your tickets for this family classic debuting from December 15 - 27, 2015 at Brooklyn’s newly restored, 3,000 seat Kings Theatre. If you happen to get seats near our family, I have already given advanced warning that I will be singing! Don't Wait for Tomorrow Plan Now to Spend the Holidays in New York with Annie the Musical!

Don't Wait for Tomorrow Plan Now to Spend the Holidays in New York with Annie the Musical

Our family has yet to attend an event at Brooklyn’s newly restored Kings Theatre, the state-of-the-art venue for the all new, United States tour of Annie the musical. We are beyond thrilled to visit the historic Kings Theater to attend Annie and experience the transformation of all of the award-winning modernized renovations. Annie the Musical will be the first major theatrical event in the history of this former movie theater, which re-opened in 2015 after a multi-million dollar restoration project to accommodate and produce full-scale theatrical productions.

“We are thrilled to welcome the Brooklyn community and families from all over New York City to the Kings Theatre as we play host to this outstanding production of Annie in December,” said Matthew Wolf, Executive Director of the Kings Theatre. “Annie opened on Broadway in 1977, the same year the Kings Theatre originally shut its doors. We are excited to mark the Kings’ inaugural year back on Flatbush Avenue with this classic production, suited for all ages.”

Here's a little Annie theatrical trivia- the original production of Annie opened on April 21, 1977 at the Alvin Theatre. Annie has won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, seven Drama Desk Awards including Best Musical, the Grammy for Best Cast Show Album and seven Tony Awards®, including Best Musical, Best Book (Thomas Meehan) and Best Score (Charles Strouse, Martin Charnin). The show remains one of the biggest Broadway musical hits ever. The production of Annie ran for 2,377 performances, and has been performed in 28 languages and has been running somewhere around the world for 37 years. 

The national tour of this new production features a 25 member company, featuring in the lead role of Annie, Issie Swickle, a 10-year-old actress making her tour debut.  The cast of Annie includes-
* Gilgamesh Taggett as Oliver Warbucks
* Lynn Andrews as Miss Hannigan
* Ashley Edler as Grace
* Garrett Deagon as Rooster
* Lucy Werner as Lily 
* Jeffrey B. Duncan as FDR
* Sunny (5-year-old rescue Terrier mix) as Sandy 

The celebrated design team includes-

* Scenic Design by Tony Award® winner Beowulf Boritt (Act One, The Scottsboro Boys, Rock of Ages) 
* Costume Design by Costume Designer’s Guild Award winner Suzy Benzinger (Blue Jasmine, Movin’ Out, Miss Saigon)
* Lighting Design by Tony Award® winner Ken Billington (Chicago, Annie, White Christmas)
* Sound Design by Tony Award® nominee Peter Hylenski (Rocky, Bullets Over Broadway, Motown)
* The lovable mutt “Sandy” is once again trained by Tony Award® Honoree William Berloni (Annie, A Christmas Story, Legally Blonde)
* Musical Supervision and Additional Orchestrations are by Keith Levenson (Annie, She Loves Me, Dreamgirls)
* Casting is by Joy Dewing CSA and Holly Buczek CSA, Joy Dewing Casting (Soul Doctor, Wonderland, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat)
* The tour is produced by TROIKA Entertainment, LLC. 


The Kings Theatre Perfomance Schedule is as follows-

December 15 – 20 
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings at 7:30 p.m. Friday at 8:00 p.m.
Saturday at 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m.
Sunday at 1:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. 

December 21 – 27*
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday at 10:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m.
Sunday at 1:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. 

*There are no scheduled performances on December 24 - 25.

If you are looking for the best seats in the house, tickets for are available online at KingsTheatre.com, Ticketmaster.com, by phone at 800-745- 3000, and in person at the Kings Theatre Box Office (Monday through Saturday, 12:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.). Ticket prices start at $35 and groups of 10 or more may call 800-BROADWAY x2 for special pricing.

The Kings Theatre is easily accessible via the MTA, LIRR and offers free parking. Visit The Kings Theatre for additional parking and transportation information.

cornerstone of the Flatbush community and a major fixture to Brooklyn’s vibrant cultural landscape. The Kings Theatre was originally designed by Rapp & Rapp in 1929 and was one of the five Loew’s ‘Wonder Theatres’ built in New York and New Jersey during that period. Featuring high curved ceilings, ornate plaster walls, wood paneling, and a glazed terra-cotta ornamental façade, the classic 20th-century movie palace was inspired by the French Renaissance Revival style of the Palace of Versailles and the Paris Opera House. Spearheaded by ACE Theatrical Group and designed by Martinez+Johnson Architecture, with Gilbane Building Company serving as construction manager, the redevelopment project both revives the historic structure’s original splendor and transforms the Theatre into a state-of-the- art facility with over 3,000 seats—the largest of its kind in Brooklyn. The Theatre was recently selected as a recipient of the 2014 New York State Historic Preservation Award for excellence in preservation and revitalization, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.

The renovation and restoration of the Kings Theatre is a partnership between the New York City Economic Development Corporation and the Kings Theatre Redevelopment Company—a consortium of ACE Theatrical Group, Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group, and the National Development Council. Public sector funding is provided by the City of New York, through the Office of the Mayor, the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President, the New York City Council and District 40 Council Member Dr. Mathieu Eugene, and by the State of New York. Additionally, the Kings Theatre is a Federal and New York State Rehabilitation Tax Credit project and a Federal New Markets Tax Credit project in partnership with Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group, United Fund Advisors, and the National Development Council.

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Visit www.KingsTheatre.com for more information.



MARTIN CHARNIN (Director, Lyrics) is celebrating his 57th year in the entertainment industry,
which began in 1957 when he created the role of Big Deal (one of Jerome Robbins' authentic juvenile delinquents) in the original company of West Side Story. He played the role for exactly 1,000 performances. Since then, he has been involved in over 140 theatrical, television, film, and night club productions as a director, producer, composer, or lyricist. He is one of the dozen people who have won Emmys, Tonys, and Grammys, and the Peabody Award for Broadcasting. Annie, which came
to Broadway in 1977, originally ran for 2,377 performances, and has been revived there three times. He has directed Annie 19 times (after directing the original production in New York), in London, Montreal, Amsterdam, and Melbourne as well as Annie's 14 national U.S. companies. He has collaborated with Charles Strouse, Vernon Duke, Marvin Hamlisch, Mary Rodgers, and twice with Richard Rodgers on I Remember Mama and Two by Two. He has written for, or directed, Fred Astaire, Ethel Merman, Jack Lemmon, Ann-Margaret, Jack Benny, Anne Bancroft, Betty Hutton, Sutton Foster, Sarah Jessica Parker, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Bebe Neuwirth, Barbra Streisand, Johnny Mathis, Larry Kert, Chita Rivera, Jane Lynch, Tony Bennett, Jason Alexander, and Jay-Z, among countless others, and for his wife, Shelly Burch (who originated a leading role in the original company of Nine), and who opened her new one-woman-show at the famed Broadway Bistro, 54 Below, this past October. He currently has 3 new musicals (Love is Love, Robin Hood, Something Funny’s Going On) that are “circling over Kennedy” getting ready for production in 2014 and 2015, in New York, including a revival of Annie Warbucks, which opened Off-Broadway in New York in 1993 and will move to Broadway in 2015. This year, “Tomorrow” from Annie became one of the 100 most performed musical numbers in the last century.

THOMAS MEEHAN (Book) is a three-time Tony Award-winning book writer for the Broadways musicals Annie, The Producers and Hairspray. In addition, he has written the books of a dozen or so other Broadway musicals, including Richard Rodgers’ I Remember Mama, Cry-Baby, Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, Elf, Chaplin and most recently Rocky (with Sylvester Stallone). A long-time contributor of humor pieces to The New Yorker magazine and an Emmy Award-winning TV comedy writer, he has also written a number of screenplays, most notably for To Be or Not to Be and Spaceballs. He is a member of the Council of the Dramatists Guild.

CHARLES STROUSE (Music) A graduate of New York’s P.S. 87, Townsend Harris H.S., and the Eastman School of Music, Charles has studied composition with Aaron Copland, Arthur Berger, and David Diamond in the US and Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Charles has composed copious chamber music, two piano concertos, a string quartet and two operas. After which, being broke like most composers, he was a rehearsal pianist and dance arranger for many shows, played in bar rooms, ballet classes, at weddings and strip joints (a particular boon for one who was to write the music for the film The Night They Raided Minsky’s). One morning in 1960 he awoke to find he had written (with Lee Adams and Mike Stewart) Bye Bye Birdie (Tony Award), which is still among the most performed musicals in America, followed by Golden Boy with Sammy Davis, Jr. (Tony Nomination). Then came, Applause (Tony Award), It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman, Rags (Tony Nomination) and Annie (Tony Award). In-between, there have been scores for movies including Bonnie and Clyde and All Dogs Go to Heaven. Throughout his career, Charles has received the Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Frederick Lowe and the Leonard Bernstein Awards for musical achievement. He is married to director/choreographer Barbara Siman and is the father of Benjamin (attorney, author, composer), Nicholas (psychotherapist), Victoria (screen writer) and William (also a screen writer.)

LIZA GENNARO (Choreographer) choreographed the critically acclaimed Broadway revival of The Most Happy Fella directed by Gerald Gutierrez, and the Broadway revival of Once Upon a Mattress starring Sarah Jessica Parker. She has choreographed Off-Broadway and in regional theaters across America including: Roundabout Theatre, Actor’s Theatre Of Louisville, The Old Globe, Hartford Stage, Guthrie Theater, The Goodspeed Opera House, Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, Paper Mill Playhouse and The St. Louis “Muny” Opera. She collaborated with Stephen Flaherty and Frank Galati on their chamber musical Loving, Repeating: A Musical of Gertrude Stein for the About Face Theater in Chicago. Last year she choreographed Elf: The Musical at Pioneer Theatre, the 20th Anniversary Concert of Titanic: The Musical at Avery Fisher Hall, and she created a dance-pantomime of A Charlie Brown Christmas for the New York Pops Christmas Concert at Carnegie Hall. She is a member of the Tony Award Nominating Committee and on the Executive Board of the Stage Director and Choreographers Society. Liza has taught at Barnard College, Princeton University, Yale University and is currently on faculty at Indiana University. Her essay, “Evolution of Dance in the Golden Era of the American 'Book Musical'” appears in The Oxford Handbook of the American Musical.