Encores!: The Wild Party

The Encores! concert series's 2026 season continues with a very welcome staging of one of best-scored musicals of the 2000s: Michael John LaChiusa's adaptation (co-written with George C. Wolfe) of Joseph Moncure March's poem about a Jazz Age fête that goes terribly out of tune—not to be confused with Andrew Lippa's Off Broadway version of the same poem, which debuted the same year and which Encores! presented in 2015. Boop!'s Jasmine Amy Rogers continues her meteoric rise as Queenie, the party's hostess, and Tina's Adrienne Warren is Kate, the frenemy who throws the night into mayhem by bringing a too-attractive date; the large ensemble also includes Jordan Donica, Jelani Alladin, Lesli Margherita, Claybourne Elder, Andrew Kober and—in a brilliant stroke of casting—Tonya Pinkins (the original cast) in the role first played by Eartha Kitt. The Chicago-based director Lili-Anne Brown oversees the mounting mayhem, and Daryl Waters (Pirates!) is the guest conductor.