Theatre News

Jason Robert Brown Concert Parades at Garrick

Tony Award-winning actress Anika Noni Rose will make her West End debut in a concert performance of music by Jason Robert Brown at the Garrick theatre on 24 and 25 September 2010.

The concert will include performances of songs from Brown’s four major musicals; Songs For A New World, 13, Parade and The Last 5 Years, as well as new work. The Caucasian Rhythm Kings, Brown’s band, will provide support.

Noni Rose will be known to viewers of the BBC’s The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in which she plays Grace Makutsi. She also played Lorrell Robinson in the Oscar winning film musical Dreamgirls. Noni Rose was most recently seen on Broadway starring opposite James Earl Jones and Phylicia Rashad in the all-black production of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof which transferred to London’s Novello Theatre late last year. She has also appeared as the voice of the Princess in Disney’s recent animated feature The Princess and the Frog.

Jason Robert Brown is best known for spearheading the new generation of contemporary American musical theatre composers but is also a singer and pianist. His four major works as composer and lyricist are: 13, a musical written with Robert Horn and Dan Elish which had a short lived appearance on Broadway in 2008; The Last 5 Years, which was produced on the West End as part of Notes from New York, held on three consecutive Sundays at the Theatre Royal Haymarket and starring Julie Atherton; Parade, which premiered at Lincoln Center Theatre in 1998 directed by Harold Prince for which Brown won the Tony Award for Best Original Score; and Songs for a New World, a theatrical song cycle which played Off Broadway in 1995, and is regularly revived for amateur and Fringe productions.

The concert is produced by Neil Eckersley and Speckulation Entertainment, and will join two other concerts they are presenting at the Garrick this autumn. Lynda Carter performs songs from her new album At Last on 17 and 18 September, while Caroline O’Connor presents her one woman show, The Showgirl Within from 27 September to 3 October 2010.

Jason Robert Brown has lighting design by Mike Henderson and sound design by James Tebb.