The York Theatre Company in Manhattan, purveyor of small cast musicals in its intimate setting in the Theatre at St. Peter's, will present three new works in the 2000-2001 season.

Fermat's Last Tango, about a professor who tackles the famous math problem, opens Dec. 7. Joanne Sydney Lessner and Joshua Rosenblum penned the tuner.

Suburb, David Javerbaum and Robert S. Cohen's warm musical comedy about a couple's jitters as they look to leave the city for the 'burbs, opens March 1, 2001. The musical had a reading with Kate Baldwin and Danny Burstein earlier this year at the York. It won the 2000 Richard Rodgers Development Award.

The It Girl, drawn from "It," the 1927 picture that made Clara Bow a sensation, opens April 26, 2001. Book is by Michael Small and B.T. McNicholl, music is by Paul McKibbins, with lyrics by McNicholl. Jerry Zaks is listed as production consultant. McNicholl is the rising director who assisted Zaks on several shows.

The season will also include staged readings in the popular "Musicals in Mufti" series, a dress-casual script-in-hand tradition of spotlighting so called "underappreciated" musicals. On the slate for three-day runs are Sheldon Harnick and Richard Rodgers' Rex, about Henry VIII; Kurt Weill's Johnny Johnson; Hallelujah, Baby! by Betty Comden, Adolph Green Jule Styne and Arthur Laurents; Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt's Celebration; and Jerome Coopersmith, Raymond Jessel and Marian Grudeff's Baker Street, about Sherlock Holmes.

-- By Kenneth Jones