Dessa Rose

Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s 'Dessa Rose' arrived Off-Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in 2006 as an elegant, deeply moving, and critically lauded masterwork of the musical season. Adapted from Sherley Anne Williams’ novel, the rhythm-and-blues-infused narrative spans decades in the antebellum American South, tracking the profound, cross-racial alliance that forms between Dessa, a fierce young pregnant runaway slave girl sentenced to execution, and Ruth, an abandoned, lonely white society woman who shelters her on a remote farm. Directed with precise naturalistic nuance by Graciela Daniele, the production starred LaChanze in a tour-de-force performance alongside Rachel York.