Mean Girls Tony nominee Ashley Park, on Broadway earlier this season in Grand Horizons, was scheduled to star in the title role of the City Center Encores! production of Thoroughly Modern Millie before the current pandemic closed all New York theatres.
On May 6—the day performances were scheduled to begin—Park took to Instagram to share a recording of her singing through the Jeanine Tesori-Dick Scanlan score with Encores! Music Director Rob Berman, who took on all the other roles.
"Thought I’d share a little of my first stab at singing through the score with music director Rob Berman from February pre-pandemic," she wrote. "It ain’t polished people, but it’s a sweet souvenir… Brilliant Rob ran the whole show with me vocally for the first time (he sang every other role in the show like a champ), and we looked out onto the streets of Manhattan as he played the little upright piano in a City Center practice room." Listen below.
The Tony-winning Tesori-Scanlan-Richard Morris musical, which made a Broadway star out of Younger's Sutton Foster, was scheduled to feature updates by playwright Lauren Yee, promising a “fresh perspective” to the 2002 musical comedy based on the film of the same name. Yee was collaborating with the original writers as creative consultant as part of a new Encores! initiative, allowing artists to put their personal stamp on beloved titles.
City Center has canceled the remainder of the 2019–2020 season including On the Move and Encores! Off-Center. The 2020–2021 season will be announced later this spring.
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The 2020 Encores! season kicked off with Mack & Mabel (February 19–23), starring Douglas Sills and Alexandra Socha in the title roles. The next production was meant to be Love Life, with Kate Baldwin and Brian Stokes Mitchell, but it was canceled due to the mass gathering ban.
