Anastasia
Overture Center-Overture Hall 201 State St., Madison, Wisconsin 53703
Members of Russia’s last royal family, the Romanovs, were executed by their Bolshevik captors in 1918. But beginning in 1920, more than 20 different women came forward claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, who had miraculously escaped the fate of the rest of her family. Although the theories of a surviving Romanov were officially debunked with DNA testing in the 1990s, the Anastasia fantasy lives on. It was the subject of a musical animated film by Don Bluth (An American Tail, The Land Before Time), with a score by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens (Ragtime, Once on this Island). Anastasia was retooled for the stage with 16 new musical numbers, added by the original composition team. It ran for two years on Broadway. Now Madison audiences can revel in the “what if” story of a missing princess, an amnesiac orphan, two con men, and a ruthless Soviet officer, set against the backdrop of the last days of the Russian Empire and the roaring 1920s in Paris.
7:30 pm on 7/30-8/1, 8 pm on 8/2, 2 & 8 pm on 8/3 and 1 & 6:30 pm, 8/4.