Andrew Lippa and Brian Crawley's musical adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Little Princess—which will premiere in Sydney, Australia, in November 2002 and then travel to Melbourne and Brisbane — will star Anthony Warlow.

The composer of the Manhattan Theatre Club musical, The Wild Party, talked about his new project in the pages of the program accompanying the Kennedy Center's current "Sondheim Celebration." Lippa also mentioned that the musical which will come to New York after playing Down Under. As previously reported on Playbill On-Line, Susan Schulman will direct and Heidi Ettinger will design and co-produce the musical.

Native Aussie Warlow is an opera singer in his country. He studied singing at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and won the Joan Sutherland Scholarship for singing.

Schulman and Ettinger's partnership goes back more than a decade to the 1989 Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd. They went on to work on The Secret Garden and the 1998 Broadway revival of The Sound of Music starring Rebecca Luker.

Lippa's other credits include the Off-Broadway tuner john & jen and adding songs to the last Broadway revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. He's also been writing songs for an upcoming TV version of The Wiz. "The Little Princess," by the author of "The Secret Garden," tells of a fanciful little girl coming up against real-world spite and treachery. The material became a Shirley Temple film vehicle in 1939 and was updated for a 1995 remake.

—By Robert Simonson