Do not miss George and Ira Gershwin’s satirical comedy about a presidential election, the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The original Broadway production opened at the Music Box Theatre in NYC (designed by the architect of the State Theatre, C. Howard Crane) in December 1931. This concert-style production will shine a spotlight on the Gershwin brothers’ music and feature U-M faculty, performers from U-M’s Musical Theater Program, and a Broadway scale orchestra. Contemporary theater critic Charles Isherwood said, "the laughter that greets the show today is tinged with surprise at how eerily some of its jokes seem to take precise aim, from decades back, at current affair. A politician dismisses Abraham Lincoln's pronouncement about not being able to fool all of the people all the time by remarking: 'It's different nowadays. People are bigger suckers.' ...it serves as a sigh-inducing argument for the enduring follies of American politics." This very special election year presentation is one-night only.

Sponsored by Arbor Brewing, Michigan Medicine, the U-M Arts Initiative, and the U-M Gershwin Initiative.