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NEWS: Ordway Announces New Season With Return of SIX, Beauty and the Beast, Patti LuPone

by Twin Cities Arts Reader -

Broadway legend Patti LuPone, of numerous Sondheim and other musicals’ fame, will headline a concert in the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts’ upcoming season. Photo by Axel Dupeux.

The Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota announced its latest season this evening. The 2022-2023 theatrical season will include productions of the musical SIX (now playing on Broadway), an Ordway Original production of Beauty and the Beast, the Lincoln Center production of My Fair Lady, and the spoken drama A Soldier’s Play. The concert side will include performances by Nachito Herrera and the Havana Jazz All Stars, Sounds of Blackness, Damien Sneed, and Broadway legend Patti LuPone.

“We’re back with a bold new season of shows,” said Ordway Producing Artistic Director Rod Kaats. The first of these, SIX, is the fulfillment of part of Kaats’ vision of the Ordway as a truly national stage, preparing shows that go on to New York. SIX played at the Ordway in 2019 before heading off to Broadway’s Brooks Atkinson Theatre, where – pandemic restrictions notwithstanding – the international phenomenon has become a bestseller, regularly playing at or near capacity.

The Ordway’s self-produced production of Beauty and the Beast will feature a cast including local actors Rajané Katurah as Belle, Jorie Kosel as Babette, Thomasina Petrus as Madame de la Grande Bouche, and Max Wojtanowicz as Cogsworth. (Additional casting details will be announced later.) A Soldier’s Play, which won the Pultizer Prize for Drama in 1984, will feature Broadway actor Norm Lewis (known, among other things, for playing Caiaphas in the nationally televised concert performance of Jesus Christ Superstar in 2018) in the leading role.

“We’re excited to bring these amazing, world-class artists to our stages in 2022-2023,” said Ordway Vice President of Programming and Education Dayna Martinez.

Season subscriptions – which include guaranteed access to see SIX – start at $168 and are on sale now at Ordway.org/events/subscriptions.

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Press Release

Broadway @ the Ordway 2022-2023 includes the following four productions:

  • SIX (Oct. 25, 2022 – Nov. 6, 2022) History is about to get over-throne…again! SIX, the new musical, is the crowning glory of Broadway and the global sensation everyone’s losing their head over. The SIX wives of Henry the VIII are the Tudor Queens who reclaimed their crowns as Pop Princesses in the Ordway’s triumphant sold-out pre-Broadway production in 2019. They’ll be back as the opening show of Broadway @ the Ordway for 2022-2023. Don’t miss your chance to see them remix five hundred years of historical heartbreak into an exuberant celebration of 21st century girl power!

Vogue magazine raved that SIX is “a riotous explosion of wit that speaks strongly and vibrantly to today.” The Washington Post says SIX is “exactly the kind of energizing, inspirational illumination this town aches for! The Broadway season got supercharged!”

  • Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (Nov. 30, 2022 – Dec. 31, 2022) Step into an enchanted world this holiday season as Broadway @ the Ordway proudly presents Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, the beloved Broadway musical stage adaptation of the Academy Award-winning animated film.

Belle, a bright, beautiful and independent young woman is taken prisoner in a castle by a beast – really an unfortunate young prince trapped in an evil spell. With the help of singing teapots, clocks and candlesticks, she breaks the spell and frees the prince with a simple act of love. Brought to life in a spectacular new production, this “tale as old as time” is told in a fresh new way – a magical adventure about finding you can change, learning you were wrong, tune as old as song, Beauty and the Beast.

  • A Soldier’s Play (Feb. 8, 2023 – Feb. 12, 2023) “Breathe slowly and keep your heartbeat steady…,” A Soldier’s Play is a “…knock-your-socks-off drama with intense emotional passion and intellectual courage,” says Variety.

In 1944, on a Louisiana Army base, two shots ring out. A Black sergeant is murdered. And a series of interrogations triggers a gripping barrage of questions about sacrifice, service, and identity in America.

A Soldier’s Play, the 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning thriller by Charles Fuller, has rocketed back into the spotlight, thanks to this 2020 Tony Award®-winning Best Revival from Roundabout Theatre Company. Broadway’s Norm Lewis leads a powerhouse cast in the show The Chicago Tribune calls, “a highly entertaining, strikingly taut drama that you don’t want to end,” directed by Tony Award® winner Kenny Leon.

  • My Fair Lady (March 21, 2023 – March 25, 2023) “My Fair Lady takes you to showtune heaven…” raves The Daily News. Boasting classic songs like “I Could Have Danced All Night,” and “On the Street Where You Live,” My Fair Lady tells the story of Eliza Doolittle, a young Cockney flower seller, and Henry Higgins, a linguistics professor who is determined to transform her into his idea of a “proper lady.” But, in this new staging of the show, brilliantly directed by Bartlett Sher, you might ask yourself who is really being transformed?

Lincoln Center Theater’s new production of My Fair Lady is “thrilling, glorious and better than it ever was,” says The New York Times. Be our guest for the season finale of Broadway @ the Ordway and see what Entertainment Weekly says is “the most perfect musical of all time.”

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The Ordway Presents Series 2022-2023 includes the following four concerts:

  • Nachito Herrera and the Havana Jazz All Stars performing CUBA LIVE (Sept. 24, 2022) Minnesota jazz icon Nachito Herrera returns to the Ordway stage for the third time, leading a band made up of superstars from the Cuban music scene. They will bring the sounds of Havana to the Twin Cities, playing a program of both original and well-beloved tunes that will have audiences dancing in their seats.
  • Damien Sneed’s Our Song, Our Story (Nov. 18, 2022) Created and directed by composer, conductor and multi-genre musician Damien Sneed, Our Song, Our Story is an evening of music highlighting some of the world’s most well-known operatic arias, art songs and spirituals. The concert brings together two of today’s most exciting operatic voices in a diverse and powerful event featuring Raehann Bryce-Davis and Brandie Inez Sutton accompanied by a string quartet and Damien Sneed on piano. This concert is an Arts Partnership co-presentation.

 Sounds of Blackness: Music for Martin (Jan. 13, 2023) Jazz, blues, spirituals, rock & roll, R&B, gospel, hip hop and soul – these are the Sounds of Blackness! Sounds of Blackness has performed at the Olympics, the World Cup, Ryder’s Cup, the NFL, NBA, MLB, Grammy Awards, Denver Summit of 8, the NAACP National Convention and the Super Bowl. Winner of three Grammy® Awards, their new single “Sick & Tired” is the anthem for today’s movement for justice and equality.

During their Music for Martin concert, hear stylized arrangements of the music that fueled the Civil Rights Movement along with poignant narration and audio-visual elements interwoven into excerpts from the great speeches of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.

  • Patti LuPone in Concert: Don’t Monkey with Broadway (Apr. 14, 2023) Patti LuPone, “The queen of Broadway, goddess of the modern musical” (The Guardian) indelibly interprets classic Broadway show tunes, featuring music by the likes of Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Jule Styne, Stephen Schwartz, Charles Strouse, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin. Ms. LuPone also takes you behind the curtain on her life-long love affair with Broadway.

Individual show tickets will go on sale this summer. Subscriptions are available online or by calling the Ordway Ticket Office at 651-224-4222. For groups of 10+, call 651-282-3111 or send an email to groups@ordway.org.

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