Cyndi Lauper to Make Broadway Debut

The Threepenny Opera' will begin previews Friday, March 24th, 2006 and opens officially on Thursday, April 20th, 2006. This is a limited engagement through June 11, 2006. Grammy and Emmy Award-winning Cyndi Lauper most recently performed at Roundabout Theatre Company's 2005 Spring Gala honoring Stephen Sondheim with a special performance of 'Anyone One Whistle.' Her 25-year recording career includes four top five singles from her debut album 'She's So Unusual' and a #1 single of the title track 'True Colors.'

The design team for 'The Threepenny Opera' includes Derek McLane (sets), Isaac Mizrahi (costumes), Jason Lyons (lights) and Ken Travis (sound). Kevin Stites is the music director.

'The Threepenny Opera' serves up a deliciously dark satire of "respectable" society, with dashing thieves, saucy prostitutes, and lingering melodies. Based on Elizabeth Hauptmann's German translation of John Gay's eighteenth-century 'The Beggar's Opera,' 'The Threepenny Opera' thrusts the audience into the seedy underworld of Mack the Knife, a dapper criminal and his wry love affair with Polly Peachum.

Scott Elliott is an Associate Artist of the Roundabout Theatre Company. For the Roundabout Theatre Company, he has directed Chekhov's 'Three Sisters' and Clare Boothe Luce's 'The Women.'

Alan Cumming returns to Roundabout Theatre Company where he most famously made his Broadway debut and won a 1998 Tony Award for his role as the "Emcee" in Kander & Ebb's 'Cabaret.' In 2001, he played "Otto" in Joe Mantello's production of Noël Coward's 'Design For Living.'

Isaac Mizrahi made his Broadway debut as a costume designer in Roundabout Theatre Company's 2001 production of 'The Women,' also directed by Scott Elliott and starring Kristen Johnston, Cynthia Nixon and Jennifer Tilly.

Cyndi Lauper (Jenny) -- The vibrant talent of Cyndi Lauper has graced our world for 25 years. Beginning in 1980 Cyndi and her band at the time, Blue Angel released a self-titled album but in 1983 as many artists do, Cyndi decided to depart the group and take on the world as a solo artist. It was in 1984 with the release of her debut album, 'She's So Unusual' that Cyndi scored massive success - 9 million copies sold worldwide - and quite literally became an overnight success. She's So Unusual was the first debut album and the first debut album by a solo artist to garner four top five singles, 'Girls Just Want To Have Fun,' 'All Through The Night,' 'She Bop,' and 'Time After Time.' 'She's So Unusual' earned Cyndi a Grammy Award for Best New Artist.

And this was just the beginning... From there Cyndi went on to release and co-produce 'True Colors,' of which came it's #1 title track, and another Grammy nomination for the artist. Three years later in 1989, 'A Night To Remember' was born on which Cyndi wrote or co-wrote eight of the eleven tracks and co-produced most of the album herself. 'A Hat Full Of Stars,' 'Sisters Of Avalon,' 'Merry Xmas Have a Nice Life,' 'Shine' and Cyndi's most recent critically acclaimed 2003 release,'At Last' all followed suit. In addition to proving herself as a Grammy-winning artist, Cyndi Lauper has spent much of the past twenty-five years as a devoted advocate and philanthropist for such organizations as AMFAR, Aids Research, Planned Parenthood, Women's Rights as well as for gay communities all over the world. She has been twice nominated for the Emmy Award - has won once - and has established herself as one of America's most loved fashion icons.

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956). Poet, playwright, and theatre director, born in Augsburg, Germany. His early plays, marked by a revolt against bourgeois values, won him success, controversy, and the Kleist Prize in 1922. Popularity came with 'Die Dreigroschenoper' (1928, 'The Threepenny Opera'), an adaptation of Gay's 'The Beggar's Opera' (1728), and from then until 1933 his work was particularly concerned with encouraging audiences to think rather than identify, and with experimentation in epic theatre and alienation effects. Hitler's rise to power forced him to leave Germany, and he lived in exile for 15 years, chiefly in the USA. During this period, he wrote some of his greatest plays, including 'Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder' (1938, 'Mother Courage and her Children') and 'Der Kaukasische Kreidekrei's (1945, 'The Caucasian Chalk Circle'). After his return to East Berlin in 1948, his directorial work on these and other plays with the Berliner Ensemble firmly established his influence as a major figure in 20th Century theatre. In 1955 he received the Stalin Peace Prize.

'The Threepenny Opera' premiered on Broadway at the Empire Theatre on April 13, 1933. The last Broadway revival began at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on November 5th, 1989.