Anastasia Musical Is in the Works—Get the Details!

The fan favorite 1997 film starred Meg Ryan as Anya, the long-lost Russian princess Anastasia Romanov

By Corinne Heller Apr 25, 2015 11:04 PMTags
AnastasiaTwentieth Century Fox Pictures

One of the most beloved '90s animated films is coming to the theatre! And nope, it's not another Disney show.

A show inspired by Anastasia is in the works and will premieres at Hartford Stage in Connecticut in May 2016 and run for a month, organizers announced this week.

The cast of the new musical has not been announced, nor have any plans to bring the show to Broadway. Darko Tresnjak, who won a 2014 Tony Award for Best Director of a Musical for A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, is helming the Anastasia musical. Others leading the production are playwright Terrence McNally, composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens. The latter two worked on the music of the fan favorite 1997 animated movie.

Loosely based on a true story, the film, produced by Twentieth Century Fox Pictures, starred Meg Ryan as the long-lost Russian princess Anastasia Romanov, who was raised as an orphan known as Anya and lost her memory as a child after she escaped an attack on her royal family by an evil sorcerer (Christopher Lloyd), which sparked the Russian Revolution (make that, very loosely based on a true story...).

Helping her to find her relatives are a couple of con artists, Vladimir (Kelsey Grammer) and the handsome Dimitri (John Cusack), who's pretty darn adorable. And kissable.

The movie also starred legendary actress Angela Lansbury as Anastasia's grandmother Marie, the Dowager Empress, and Broadway icon Bernadette Peters as the girl's cousin, Sophie.

Twentieth Century Fox Pictures also produced a 1956 live-action, non-musical movie based on the story of Anastasia, which starred Ingrid Bergman. The theater's website states that the new stage musical is "Inspired by the Twentieth Century Fox motion pictures."

"The new musical Anastasia is the romantic and rousing story of one brave young woman attempting to discover the mystery of her past while finding a place for herself in the rapidly changing world of a new century," the theater's website states. "With a rich and sweeping musical score that evokes the opulence of Russian aristocracy and the energy of Paris street life, Anastasia is the ultimate journey of a woman caught between the pull of the past and the promise of the future."

The soundtrack contains songs such as the ballad "Journey to the Past," which Aaliyah famously performed at the 1998 Oscars, three years before her death at age 22. The song was nominated for an Academy Award. Another popular track is "Once Upon a December, which received a Golden Globe nomination.