Theatre Press Releases If/Then will have its world premiere in a pre-Broadway out-of-town engagement at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C., beginning preview performances on Tuesday, November 5, 2013 and officially opening on Sunday, November 24, 2013. The production will begin previews on Broadway on Tuesday, March 4, 2014 and will officially open on Thursday, March 27, 2014 at a Nederlander Theatre to be announced. On-sale dates, performance schedule, and ticket information will be announced shortly. For more information, please visit www.ifthenthemusical.com.
On the verge of turning 40, Elizabeth moves to New York City, the ultimate city of possibility, intent on a fresh start – new home, new friends, and hopes for a resurgent career. But even in her carefully planned new life, the smallest decision or most random occurrence will impact her world in ways she never dreamt possible. Set against the ever-shifting landscape of modern day Manhattan, If/Then is a romantic and original new musical about how choice and chance collide and how we learn to love the fallout.
“Producing Next to Normal was one of the most gratifying experiences of my career, and I am deeply honored to have been working once again with Tom, Brian, and Michael on developing their next Broadway musical,” said producer David Stone. “Tom and Brian have written an ambitious, challenging, and very moving musical with a tour-de-force role at its center. I am thrilled to have Idina Menzel, whom I consider one of the most exciting stage talents of our time, leading the company and returning to musical theatre with this production.”
“I’ve experienced the beauty of working on original musicals and was eager to find a project where the material was exciting and new and spoke to my heart. I’m thrilled to have finally found it - an original musical with a complex, flawed, and surprising central character that I cannot wait to bring to life onstage,” says Tony Award-winner Idina Menzel. “I have loved collaborating with Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey on the creation of this character. And it is such a blessing to be reunited with Michael Greif, who launched my career with Rent, and David Stone, who took such good care of me with Wicked. I am extremely excited about If/Then and very much look forward to returning home to Broadway.”
“We started writing If/Then shortly after Next to Normal opened on Broadway, and through all the exciting things that have happened since then, we’ve been so thrilled to keep coming back to this show, our partnership, and our work with Michael and David – it feels like home,” said composer Tom Kitt and lyricist/book writer Brian Yorkey. “And we couldn’t ask for a more exciting leading lady than Idina Menzel, whose unbelievable talent, professionalism, humor and spirit have completely infused this character.”
ABOUT THE COMPANY AND CREATIVE TEAM
IDINA MENZEL recently concluded a highly successful international concert tour with a sold out performance at Carnegie Hall in January. She made her Broadway debut in Pulitzer Prize-winner, Rent, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award, and followed that with her Tony Award-winning performance in Wicked, which she subsequently brought to London’s West End. Other New York stage work includes See What I Wanna See (Public), The Wild Party (MTC), and Hair (Encores). Menzel is currently working on the Disney animated musical, Frozen, opening in November. She recreated her role in Chris Columbus’ film version of Rent, and appeared in movies as varied as Enchanted and Ask the Dust. On television, Menzel recurred over multiple seasons of Glee and has guest-starred in numerous other shows. In addition to cast albums, Menzel’s prolific recording career includes solo albums: “Barefoot At the Symphony,” a companion to her PBS Special; “I Stand;” “Here;” and “Still I Can’t Be Still.”
TOM KITT received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama as well as two Tony Awards for Best Score and Best Orchestrations (with Michael Starobin) for Next to Normal. His music for Next to Normal also received the 2009 Frederick Loewe Award for dramatic composition and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Score. Tom was also a co-composer (with Lin-Manuel Miranda) of the recent Broadway musical Bring it On. He is responsible for the music supervision, arrangements and orchestrations for Green Day's American Idiot, and provided additional arrangements for their Grammy Award-winning album 21st Century Breakdown and the CD trilogy, ¡Uno! ¡Dos! ¡Tré! Tom is also the composer of High Fidelity (Broadway); The Winter's Tale and All's Well That Ends Well (The Public's NYSF); From Up Here (MTC); and The Retributionists (Playwrights Horizons.) As a musical director, conductor, arranger and orchestrator, his credits include 13, Debbie Does Dallas, Everyday Rapture, Hair, Laugh Whore, Pippin (Deaf West), and Urban Cowboy. He is the proud leader of the Tom Kitt Band, whose songs have been featured in film and TV.
BRIAN YORKEY received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as the 2009 Tony Award for Best Score, for Next to Normal. Brian was also nominated for the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Next to Normal, and his work on the show earned him the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Score. Other theatre credits include Making Tracks, which has played off-Broadway and regionally, the musical adaptation of Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet, the country musical Play It By Heart, and a musical adaptation of The Visitor. Film projects in active development include Score! for Team Downey and Warner Bros., Undercover for Pandemonium Films, and Chase for Anonymous Content and Rosenzweig Films. Brian has directed off-Broadway and regionally and for seven years was associate artistic director at Village Theatre in Washington state, one of the nation’s leading producers of new musicals. He’s a graduate of Columbia University, where he was artistic director of the Varsity Show, an alum of the BMI/Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and the WGA.
MICHAEL GREIF most recently directed Frankel, Korie, and Greenberg's Far From Heaven (Williamstown Theatre Festival 2012 / Playwrights Horizons Spring 2013) and LaChiusa'sand Pearson's Giant (Public Theater Fall 2012 / Dallas Theater Center). Other recent work includes Tony Kushner’s Angels in America Part I and II (Signature Theater Company) and The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures (Public Theater, Signature Theater); Winter’s Tale and Romeo and Juliet for the Public’s Delacorte Theater. On Broadway, he directed the Pulitzer Prize--winning musicals Next to Normal (also at Second Stage Theatre and Arena Stage) and Rent (also at New York Theatre Workshop, 1996, New World Stages, 2011), as well as Grey Gardens (also at Playwrights Horizons), receiving Tony nominations for each, and Never Gonna Dance. Other Off-Broadway work includes premieres by John Guare, Neal Bell, Theresa Rebeck, Nilo Cruz, Suzan-Lori Parks, Noah Haidle, Jose Rivera, Diana Son, Constance Congdon, and Jessica Hagedorn at The Public, Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, Manhattan Class Company, and Roundabout Theatre. Michael received Obie Awards for his productions of Machinal, Rent, and Dogeaters. His revival of Angels in America received the Lortel Award for Best Revival.
DAVID STONE is currently represented around the world by Wicked. He has also produced Next to Normal, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Three Days of Rain, Man of La Mancha, The Vagina Monologues, Fully Committed, Lifegame, The Diary of Anne Frank, Full Gallop, The Santaland Diaries and Family Secrets. David serves on the boards of the Broadway League and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. He also serves on the advisory boards of VDay and Second Stage Theatre. David has lectured on theatre at the Juilliard School, NYU, Yale, Columbia and his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania.
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