Will Barbara Cook Return to Broadway in Roundabout's Sondheim Revue?

By Andrew Gans
28 Aug 2009

Barbara Cook
Barbara Cook

Tony Award winner Barbara Cook, who hasn't appeared in a Broadway musical in over 30 years, may be heading back to the stage later this season.

The New York Post reports that Cook will likely be part of the Roundabout Theatre Company's upcoming production of iSondheim, the Stephen Sondheim revue that had been scheduled to make its world premiere at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre in April. Tony winner James Lapine, who directed and wrote the libretto for Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods, will direct.

Roundabout has made no official announcement about the production or casting.

Lapine (Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Passion) created iSondheim, an innovative multimedia revue that incorporates original and archival commentary from Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Sondheim. The new work, according to earlier Alliance Theatre press notes, promises to take audience members "to the very heart of Sondheim's life and work."

The Alliance production was canceled because of "difficulties encountered by the commercial producers attached to the project, the Frankel/Viertel/Baruch/Routh group, in raising the necessary funds for the multi-media musical revue of Sondheim's life and career," according to an earlier Alliance statement.

Barbara Cook has starred on Broadway in Flahooley, Candide, The Gay Life, The Music Man and She Loves Me. She received a Best Featured Actress in a Musical Tony Award for her performance in The Music Man, and her one-woman show, Mostly Sondheim, was nominated for a Tony in the Best Special Theatrical Event category. Cook was most recently on the New York stage in Barbara Cook's Broadway. Both Mostly Sondheim and Barbara Cook's Broadway were recorded for DRG. Cook made her solo debut at the Metropolitan Opera, which was also released on DRG Records. Her newest CD, also on DRG, is titled "Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder."