Disney Hit-Makers' First Musical

Back before their work on Disney's Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid, the songwriting duo Howard Ashman and Alan Menken collaborated on a far more atypical work. Their first musical was an adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's 1979 novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. It's the story of a millionaire with a conscience, who decides to give away his fortune to the needy inhabitants of a small town of Rosewater, Indiana. His generosity not only attracts the poor and forgotten, but also invariably, the greedy and the conniving.

Ashman and Menken's score is a dizzying patchwork of different influences and genres, from ragtime to Gilbert and Sullivan. This Encores! staging features orchestrations by Disney's go-to arranger Danny Troob, which will be heard for the first time.