Tony Sheldon Will Join Brian Stokes Mitchell, Laura Osnes & More in The Band Wagon at Encores!

Tony Sheldon will join the previously announced Brian Stokes Mitchell, Roger Rees, Tracey Ullman, Michael McKean and Laura Osnes in The Band Wagon. Michael Berresse and Don Stephenson will also appear in the Encores! special event, based on the classic movie of the same name. Directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall, the production will play a limited engagement November 6 through November 16 at City Center.

Sheldon will play Jeffrey Cordoba. A Tony nominee for his Broadway debut in Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert, additional stage credits include Dirty Rotten, Scoundrels, The Producers, My Fair Lady, Hello Dolly! and Camelot.

The Band Wagon is a classic backstage musical: A washed-up Hollywood star trying to make a comeback by doing a Broadway show, a British director who is a genius but has no business directing a musical, a leading lady who’s never done a show before, and a composer and a lyricist who are at each other’s throats. All the things that could never happen in the New York theater today.

The production will have a book by Douglas Carter Beane, adapted from the screenplay by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, with music by Arthur Schwartz and lyrics by Howard Dietz. Music direction will be by Todd Ellison, with sets by Derek McLane, costumes by William Ivey Long, lighting by Peter Kaczorowski and sound design by Brian Ronan.

Comden and Green, Broadway’s ultimate insiders, penned the 1953 film using Schwartz and Dietz’s songs to tell their story. The movie took its title from the famed 1931 Broadway revue written by Schwartz, Dietz, and George S. Kaufman.