Stephen Schwartz and John Caird's Children of Eden takes the stage at Lincoln Center's David Geffen Hall for a concert performance February 18. Tony Yazbeck is directing the Biblical musical.
Leading the cast are Auli'i Cravalho as Yonah, Nikki Renée Daniels as Eve and Mama Noah, and Norm Lewis as Father. The cast also includes David Phelps as Adam and Noah, Donald Webber, Jr. as Cain and Japeth, and Lucas Pastrana as Abel and Ham, along with Jennifer McGill, Jesse Nager, Marcus Paul James, Rema Webb, Runako Campbell, Dylis Croman, Karli Dinardo, Tyler Hanes, Jakob Karr, and Zelig Williams. Casting is by The Telsey Office's Craig Burns.
Yazbeck, who is also choreographing, is joined on the creative team by music director and conductor Kimberly Grigsby, scenic designer Nate Bertone, lighting designer Carolyn Wong, sound designer Andrew Keister, and costume designer Ryan Park.
Based on the book of Genesis, Children of Eden has a book by Caird and a score by Schwartz. It provides a unique telling of the Biblical story of creation through the epic of Noah and the flood. The musical had its world premiere in London's West End in 1991, later playing in a revised form at New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse in 1997. Though the musical has not yet made it to Broadway, it has become a favorite at regional theatres, schools, and churches. The score includes such Schwartz favorites as "The Spark of Creation", "Lost in the Wilderness", "Stranger to the Rain", and "In Whatever Time We Have." Plans for a Broadway-bound full production of the musical in Chicago, the follow-up to a two-performance concert staging, were announced in 2022. The concerts were held later that year, but no further information about a future production has surfaced.
The Lincoln Center concert is at least the second time the musical has been performed in Manhattan. York Theatre Company presented a one-night-only benefit concert staging marking World AIDS Day in 2003, also starring Lewis as Father.
Manhattan Concert Productions has been largely on pause since the pandemic shutdown in 2020, which came just weeks after the company produced a concert staging of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat starring Noah Galvin. The group has also staged Lincoln Center concerts of Ragtime, Titanic, Parade, The Secret Garden, Crazy For You, and The Scarlet Pimpernel.
This production of Children of Eden is licensed by Music Theatre International.
