'Prince of Broadway' Picks His Court: Linda Lavin, Shuler Hensley, LaChanze, Emily Skinner Will Star in Hal Prince Show

The cast of Prince of Broadway, the Broadway musical retrospective of shows directed by Harold Prince, will star Tony Award winner Linda Lavin, Sebastian Arcelus, Sierra Boggess, Daniel Breaker, Josh Grisetti, Tony winner Shuler Hensley, Richard Kind, Amanda Kloots-Larsen, Tony winner LaChanze, Caroline O'Connor, David Pittu and Emily Skinner. Opening night will be in November at a theatre to be named.

The producers Aubrey Dan, Martyn Hayes and Peter W. Lamb for Dancap Productions Inc. announced the cast and creative team on March 20. The production is directed by 21-time Tony Award winner Harold Prince, co-directed and choreographed by five-time Tony Award winner Susan Stroman, and features a book by Tony Award nominee David Thompson.

Prince of Broadway will celebrate one of the most successful careers in the American theatre of the past 60 years. It "will look at the circumstances and fortune, both good and bad, that led to Hal Prince creating some of the most enduring and beloved theatre of all time," according to producers.

Expect "words and music from some of the shows that have earned Hal Prince a record 21 Tony Awards." His resume includes The Pajama Game, West Side Story, Fiorello!, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Evita and The Phantom of the Opera, among others.

The creative team includes scenic designer Beowulf Boritt, Tony-winning costume designer William Ivey Long, Tony-winning lighting designer Howell Binkley and sound designer Jonathan Deans.

The production features musical supervision, incidental music, vocal and dance arrangements by Tony Award winner Jason Robert Brown (Prince's Parade), orchestrations by Don Sebesky and musical direction by Eric Stern.

Director-choreographer Stroman's Broadway credits include The Producers, Contact, Crazy for You, Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Young Frankenstein, The Frogs, The Music Man, Thou Shalt Not, Steel Pier, Big, Picnic and, most recently, The Scottsboro Boys.

Lavin won the Best Actress Tony Award for Neil Simon's Broadway Bound, and is headed to Broadway in the coming weeks in Nicky Silver's The Lyons; Arcelus was Elf in Broadway and appeared in Stroman's Lincoln Center Theater production of Happiness; Boggess has experience as Christine Daae in both The Phantom of the Opera and its sequel, Love Never Dies, and was Ariel in Broadway's The Little Mermaid (and was previously announced for Rebecca, which has been postponed until the fall — when she's preoccupied with Prince of Broadway; Breaker is a Tony nominee for Passing Strange and was Donkey in Shrek the Musical; Grisetti scored points in Off-Broadway's Enter Laughing, the Musical; Hensley won the Tony as the brooding Jud Fry in the Stroman-choreographed Oklahoma!, and appeared in Tarzan and Young Frankenstein; character actor Kind appeared in The Producers and TV's "Spin City"; Kloots-Larsen was in the recent Broadway Follies; LaChanze won the Best Actress Tony for The Color Purple and made a splash in Once on This Island; Australian actress O'Connor has worked on Broadway and in the West End (Chicago, for starters); Pittu received a Tony nomination for Prince's Lovemusik; and Skinner earned her Tony nomination for Side Show.