Off-Broadway's York Theatre Company will present the New York premiere of Exactly Like You, the musical by Cy Coleman and A.E. Hotchner seen last year in a workshop production at Goodspeed Opera House's Norma Terris Theatre. The show will run March 31-May 9, with an April 14 opening.

Patricia Birch, whose choreography was recently seen in Parade at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre and who mounted Broadway's current Band in Berlin, will direct the piece, as well as provide the dancing.

Heading the 12-member cast are Lauren Ward (Violet, 1776) and Michael McGrath (Little Me). Also featured are Robert Bartley, Frank Gravis, Tony Hastings, Doug Katsaros, Donna Kelly, Donya Lane, Kate Levering, Susan Mansur (Ruthless!), Edward Staudenmayer and Blair Ross.

The musical will mark the first-ever Off-Broadway premiere of a new musical from Coleman, whose catalog includes Sweet Charity, Barnum, The Will Rogers Follies and The Life.

* The May 1998 Goodspeed production was also directed and choreographed by Birch, who choreographed the original Grease, A Little Night Music and Pacific Overtures. Featured in the cast were Barbara Walsh ( Big and Falsettos) and McGrath (Forbidden Broadway, Swinging on a Star and The Coconuts).

Exactly Like You, which Coleman described as "a courtroom drama, but very funny," has lyrics by Coleman and A.E. Hotchner, his collaborator on the short-run 1988 musical Welcome to the Club, which dealt with another part of the legal system, an alimony jail. Coleman told Playbill On-Line that the two musicals are closely related, dealing the many of the same issues, having some of the same characters (including country singer Winona Shook) and rescuing some of the earlier show's songs, including the ballad "At My Side."

--By Robert Simonson