10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Billy Porter in ‘La Cage aux Folles' Highlights City Center Season
A musical comedy about a half-boy, half-bat creature, directed by a Tony winner, and an all-Black revival of the farce 'La Cage aux Folles,' starring Billy Porter, will highlight the 2025-26 Encores! season at New York City Center.
The four-show lineup is the first chosen by the center's new vice president and artistic director of musical theater, Jenny Gersten, who is taking over programming from Lear deBessonet, who was named the artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater.
Gersten, who had for three years been the artistic director of the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts before joining New York City Center as vice president and producer in 2020, said she aimed to focus on the original mission of the 32-year-old concert series, which stages short-run productions of decades-old musicals, many of which are rarely revived.
'A lot of people think about the Encores! series as being for revivals of musicals that you might not otherwise see, but the rationale for Encores! was always the chance to hear the orchestrations as they were originally intended,' she said.
First up is the annual gala presentation, which will be 'Bat Boy: The Musical' (Oct. 29-Nov. 9). This irreverent horror-rock musical, inspired by stories from a supermarket tabloid, centers on a cave-dwelling creature (Bat Boy) who searches for acceptance and love in a small town. It will be helmed by Alex Timbers, who won a Tony Award in 2021 for directing 'Moulin Rouge! The Musical.' The story and book are by Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming, with music and lyrics by Laurence O'Keefe ('Legally Blonde: The Musical').
Next, the Encores! series will begin with a production of the supernatural musical comedy 'High Spirits' (Feb. 4-15), based on Noël Coward's 1941 play 'Blithe Spirit' about a man coping with his dead wife's ghost. Though the musical, whose score and book are by Hugh Martin ('Meet Me in St. Louis') and Timothy Gray, was nominated for eight Tonys, it won none and was never revived on Broadway. It will be directed by Jessica Stone ('Kimberly Akimbo,' 'Water for Elephants').
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