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A Must See

Cabin In The Sky Will Be Resurrected By New York City Center Encores

New York City Center will kick off its 2016 Encores! Great American Musicals In Concert season with Cabin in the Sky. This production was last seen on Broadway March 8, 1941, with a cast that included blues/jazz songstress Ethel Waters, film/tv actor Rex Ingram, dancer Katherine Dunham and composer/singer J. Rosamond Johnson, famous for his rendition of the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

cabin-in-the-sky-broadway-movie-poster-1941-1020407285While Broadway will take on Shuffle Along, or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed, next spring, the 55th Street Moorish Revival theater – famous as an inexpensive venue for classic revivals and recent Broadway musicals – will celebrate Black History Month through gospel sounds and modern dance. The production will run from Feb. 10-14. The cast has yet to be announced.

Cabin in the Sky, based on the story “Little Joe” and inspired by the Faust legend, follows gambler Little Joe Jackson, who pays the consequences of his debts only to gain a second chance (six months to be exact) to redeem his soul and become worthy to enter heaven. His life in the hands of The Lord’s Angel and The Devil’s Son, Little Joe becomes a better husband to his God-fearing wife Petunia until he wins the lottery, and then meets and runs off with the gold-digging Georgia Brown. Determined to win her husband back, Petunia finds him at a nightclub. A fight breaks out and what happens next is the stuff that dreams are made of.

The Broadway run of Lynn Root’s Cabin in the Sky – directed by Albert Lewis and staged and choreographed by George Balanchine – included 156 performances, opening Oct. 25, 1940, at Martin Beck Theatre. In April 1943, the all African-American musical made its way to the big screen thanks to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during a time when many movie theaters – especially those in southern states – refused to show films with prominent Black performers. The film starred Ethel Waters, Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson, Tony Award winner Lena Horne, Rex Ingram, & Louis Armstrong.cabin-in-the-sky

Encores! continues to keep Black musical theatre alive as its orchestra – under the direction of Rob Berman – will restore the original Broadway score of Vernon Duke and John La Touche. The music’s revival is made possible with support of the Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Broadway Musical Restoration Fund.

Tickets will go on sale Oct. 5. and can be purchased online or through CityTix at 212-581-1212.

The final moments of the original Broadway production of Cabin in the Sky. George Karger/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images

The final moments of the original Broadway production of Cabin in the Sky. George Karger/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images

Listen to the original Broadway Cast recording on Spotify.

Written By

www.broadwayblack.com

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