Theater Latté Da Opens 2012-2013 Season with COMPANY Tonight, 10/25

Theater Latté Da announced that a season of fourmusicals and the launch of a major new work development program will comprise its 15th Anniversary Season.

Slated for production are Company at the Ordway McKnight Theatre (tonight, October 25 – November 18, 2012), the holiday classic All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914 at the Pantages Theatre (December 19-22, 2012), Elton John and Tim Rice’s Aida, a co-production with Hennepin Theatre Trust at the Pantages Theatre (January 3-27, 2013), and The Light in the Piazza at the Ordway McKnight Theatre (March 14 – April 7, 2013). On April 12, 2013, the company will launch NEXT, a major new works program to develop new musical theater in the Twin Cities.

Theater Latté Da opens their fifteenth anniversary season with the musical comedy Company at the Ordway McKnight Theatre tonight, October 25 – November 18, 2012. As Minnesota grapples with defining marriage, Latté Da presents Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s insightful and hilarious examination of marriage in contemporary society. On the night of his 35th birthday, confirmed bachelor Bobby contemplates his unmarried state. Surrounded by “those good and crazy people, his married friends,” Bobby weighs the pros and cons of married life, leading to one of the most profound conclusions in the American Theater. Company showcases Sondheim at his brilliant, witty best, including the songs Another Hundred People, Side by Side, The Ladies Who Lunch and Being Alive. The original Broadway production won six Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Score, Best Lyrics and Best Book. The production will be directed by Latté Da’s artistic director Peter Rothstein and will star Twin Cities’ favorite Dieter Bierbrauer in the role of Bobby. Bierbrauer starred in Theater Latté Da productions of Violet, Parade, Floyd Collins, and A Christmas Carole Petersen.

Back by popular demand, Theater Latté Da will once again join forces with Hennepin Theatre Trust and the renowned vocal ensemble Cantus to present All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914. In 2007 Rothstein created what has become a holiday classic by melding European carols and war songs together with found text to tell the remarkable story of the World War I Christmas Truce. All Is Calm premiered on Minnesota Public Radio to great success, and has since been broadcast around the globe through American Public Media and the European Broadcast Union. All Is Calm will tour across the country ending with six performances at the historic Pantages Theatre in downtown Minneapolis, December 19-22, 2012.

Theater Latté Da returns to the Pantages Theatre with a re-imagining of Elton John and Tim Rice’s Aida, January 3-27, 2013, a co-production with Hennepin Theatre Trust. With a book by Linda Woolverton, Robert Falls and David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly, Yellow Face), Aida is a contemporary spin on Giuseppe Verdi's grand opera about love and hate, slavery and freedom, war and peace. Featuring one of the most compelling scores of the Broadway stage by the legendary Elton John (Billy Elliot, The Lion King) and Tim Rice (Evita, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat), Aida won four Tony Awards and the Grammy for Best Musical Show Album. The production will be directed by Rothstein, choreographed by Michael Matthew Ferrell, and will feature Jared Oxborough as Captain Radames and Cat Brindisi as Princess Amneris. Oxborough appeared as Che in Theater Latté Da’s record-breaking production of Evita, and Brindisi appeared last season in Theater Latté Da’s productions of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and Spring Awakening.

Theater Latté Da returns to the Ordway Center’s intimate McKnight Theatre for a production of The Light in the Piazza, book by Craig Lucas, music and lyrics by Adam Guettel (March 14 – April 7, 2013). Based on a novella by ElizaBeth Spencer, this romantic tale revolves around Margaret Johnson, a wealthy Southern woman, and her curiously innocent daughter, Clara, who spend a summer together in Florence. When Clara falls in love with a young Italian man, Margaret is forced to reconsider not only Clara’s future, but her own deep seated hopes and regrets as well. The Light in the Piazza will be directed by Rothstein, with musical direction by Latté Da’s co-founder Denise Prosek. The Light in the Piazza won six Tony Awards in 2005 and is perhaps the most celebrated score of the past decade.

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