THE 25th anniversary production of Kander and Ebb’s The World Goes Round opens at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough on Thursday.

The show promises "the very best of Kander and Ebb, all in one go", as performed by prominent musical theatre performers Phoebe Fildes, Laura Jane Matthewson, Nigel Richards, Ashley Samuels and Shona White in Lotte Wakeham's production for the SJT.

Showstoppers such as New York, New York, All That Jazz, Maybe This Time and Money, Money will be sung alongside lesser-known numbers such as Mr Cellophane, Arthur In The Afternoon and Coffee In A Cardboard Cup.

Conceived by Scott Ellis, Susan Stroman and David Thompson, the show was staged originally at Manhattan’s off-Broadway Westside Theatre in 1991, when esteemed New York Times critic Frank Rich called it "a handsome, tasteful, snazzily staged outpouring of song and dance that celebrates all the virtues of the Kander-Ebb catalogue; sophisticated enough to satisfy aficionados and welcoming enough to convert new audiences to the Kander-Ebb fold".

Wakeham is joined in the SJT production team by designer Simon Kenny, lighting designer Jason Taylor and musical director Neil McDonald for a show set on a glamorous, New York-inspired set.

York Press:

Shona White in rehearsal for The World Goes Round. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

Phoebe Fildes has just completed a two-year Globe to Globe tour, playing Ophelia, Gertrude, Horatio and Rosencrantz in the Globe Theatre’s Hamlet, directed by Dominic Dromgoole, which visited 197 countries while travelling over 310,000km. She has starred in the West End musical Once too.

Laura Jane Matthewson won the 2014 Evening Standard Award for best Emerging Talent for her performance in Dogfight, a musical set during the Vietnam War. Last year, she was named by The Stage newspaper’s lead critic, Mark Shenton, as one of his top ten musical theatre actresses, alongside Imelda Staunton and Beverley Knight.

Nigel Richards has starred as The Phantom in The Phantom Of The Opera at Her Majesty’s and as a result of his work with Tom Waits on The Black Rider, he headlined with Jarvis Cocker and Damon Albarn in Drifting And Tilting: The Songs of Scott Walker at the Barbican, London.

Ashley Samuels was in the West End hit The Book Of Mormon and the rock'n'roll musical comedy The Toxic Avenger and Shona White played Florence Vassy in Craig Revel-Horwood’s production of Chess.

Lotte Wakeham has directed Jon Brittain’s The Happiest Days Of Your Life in New York and the 2014 London revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ben Elton's The Beautiful Game and was associate director of Matilda for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

John Kander, now 89, and Fred Ebb, who died in 2004, were one of the most successful songwriting teams ever, responsible for Cabaret and Chicago and Frank Sinatra's signature song New York, New York, scored for Martin Scorsese's movie of the same name. They also wrote plenty more for actresses and singers Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera.

The World Goes Round runs in the SJT summer rep from Thursday to September 3. Box office: 01723 370541 or at sjt.uk.com