Preview 2004-2005: Off-Broadway and Other Events
But one such company is planning the world premieres of two musicals, and it's Vineyard Theatre, the company that co-produced last season's Tony winner, Avenue Q. First up at the Vineyard is the rock musical People Are Wrong!, concerning the adventures of a young New York City couple who buy a house in the country. A co-production with Target Margin Theatre, People Are Wrong! is the work of Julia Greenburg and Robin Goldwasser, and will be directed by David Herskovits. John Flansburgh, of the rock band They Might Be Giants, will star, and musicians from The Loser's Lounge will also be present.
Kirsten Childs, who won some strong reviews with her Playwrights Horizons musical of several seasons back, The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin, is the sole author of the second Vineyard musical, Miracle Brothers, to be directed by Tina Landau. This one is described as a swashbuckling adventure involving brothers in 17th-century Brazil who are bound by blood but separated by race.
In addition to its Broadway productions of The Frogs and The Light in the Piazza at the Vivian Beaumont, Lincoln Center Theater will be mounting two productions downstairs, at the Mitzi E. Newhouse. The first, La Belle Epoque, is a collaboration between Martha Clarke and Charles L. Mee combining dance, music, and text. It depicts the life of French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, to be played by Mark Povinelli, and opens November 21.
The other Newhouse musical sounds like a more traditional show, Dessa Rose, the latest collaboration between librettist-lyricist Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty, whose last local musical, A Man of No Importance, was also staged at the Newhouse. Based on a novel, Dessa Rose has a mid-nineteenth-century setting and tells of a runaway slave and a woman who helps her. La Chanze will play the slave. In a workshop, Donna Murphy was the other woman. Graciela Daniele is both director and choreographer, and Dessa Rose opens at the Newhouse on March 21.
It's only a "comedy with songs," but Quincy Long's People Be Heard, about a controversy over the teaching of evolution in the schools, features such musical folk as Annie Golden, Dashiell Eaves, Kathy Santen, and Conrad John Schuck. Previews began last week at Playwrights Horizons; the music is by Michael Roth, and the director is Erica Schmidt, who staged another comedy with songs, Debbie Does Dallas.
In November, Manhattan Ensemble Theatre will present Fire on the Mountain by Randal Myler and Dan Wheetman, combining interviews with coal miners from West Virginia and Kentucky with traditional American songs. If The Frogs wasn't enough musicalized Aristophanes for one season, Aquila Theatre Company is offering in March a new musical adaptation of Aristophanes' Clouds, written by Peter Meineck and Anthony Cochrane.
One commercial off-Broadway musical scheduled is The Immigrant, based on Mark Harelik's play about a young Jewish immigrant who fled the pogroms of Russia to arrive in the Baptist community of Hamilton, Texas in 1909. Jacqueline Antaramian, Walter Charles, Adam Heller, and Cass Morgan will appear in the show, which begins performances in October at Dodger Stages. Directed by Randal Myler, The Immigrant has a book by Harelik, music by Steven M. Alper, and lyrics by Sarah Knapp. The show was previously seen in New York at Cap 21 in 2000 with the same performers, who also played the show at the Denver Center and Coconut Grove. Also at Dodger Stages next month is the return of one of last season's off-Broadway musicals, the pop opera Bare.
Seen at several regional theatres and at one time announced for Broadway, Lone Star Love is a musical Western that resets Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor in post-Civil War Texas. Adapted by John L. Haber, the score is by Red Clay Rambler Jack Herrick. In addition to those Ramblers, the cast will include Gary Sandy, Beth Leavel, and Clarke Thorell. It opens in December at AMAS Musical Theatre.
Clearly Side By Side By Sondheim, Marry Me a Little, You're Gonna Love Tomorrow, and Putting It Together were not enough. There's always room for another Stephen Sondheim songbook revue, and although this one is scheduled for only ten performances, Sondheim fans will be interested in Opening Doors, the latest compilation of the composer-lyricist's work, which will play Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall from September 30 to October 9. Directed by David Kernan Side By Side By Sondheim, the Opening Doors cast will include Kate Baldwin, Victoria Clark who will be seen later this season in A Light in the Piazza, Gregg Edelman, Jan Maxwell, and Eric Jordan Young.
Opening Doors was first seen in 2000 at London's Bridewell Theatre under the name Moving On, with Geoffrey Abbott, Linzi Hateley, Belinda Lang, Robert Meadmore, and Angela Richards. Still called Moving On, the revue had its U.S. premiere in 2001 at California's Laguna Playhouse, where it featured Christopher Carothers, David Engel, Ann Morrison, Teri Ralston, and Tami Tappan.
Upstairs at Studio 54, there's Newsical, a topical, satirical musical-comedy revue opening October 7. The creation of Rick Crom, the show spoofs current events and updates its material on a weekly basis. The cast: Kim Cea, Jeff Skowron, Stephanie Kurtzuba, and Todd Alan Johnson.
The fourth annual Actors' Fund gala benefit musical is Hair, which will be given a concert staging on September 20 at the New Amsterdam, where the high-powered Actors' Fund benefits of Funny Girl, and Chess were held. With its slim narrative and abundant tunestack, Hair easily lends itself to all-star concert performances. Seth Rudetsky is once again in charge of the musical forces, and the company will include everyone from Harvey Fierstein to RuPaul. Probably no one will mind that Hair received a perfectly respectable concert mounting from Encores! as recently as 2001.
Another concert to look forward to is Carnegie Hall's South Pacific, scheduled for June 9. For a show that received unanimous raves and was among the biggest hits of its era, South Pacific has had a hard time finding a Broadway revival. It's been produced at City Center, Jones Beach, and New York City Opera. Lincoln Center offered a concert version of it several years ago, and a U.S. tour a few years back starring Robert Goulet coincided with a Trevor Nunn staging at London's National Theatre. But unlike Carnegie Hall's previous Rodgers and Hammerstein musical-in-concert, Carousel, South Pacific has never had a Broadway revival.
Speaking of musicals in concert, there is, of course, the 2005 season of City Center's Encores! to look forward to. Strongly rumored for some time now is Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents's 1964 Anyone Can Whistle, to be presented by Encores! in honor of Sondheim's seventy-fifth birthday. Like Hair, Whistle had a previous New York concert revival, in 1995 at Carnegie Hall, with Bernadette Peters, Madeline Kahn, Scott Bakula, and narration by Angela Lansbury.
I'm told that Encores! has also been considering such other titles as Purlie 1970, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 1951, and George M. Cohan's Little Johnny Jones 1904. Last year at this time, six titles were mentioned for Encores!, and the three that didn't happen were Lerner and Loewe's Paint Your Wagon and Kander and Ebb's Flora, the Red Menace and 70, Girls, 70.
New York City Opera, which recently gave us Sweeney Todd, has two shows of interest to musical-theatre fans. From November 12 to 21, the company revives its New York premiere staging of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella. The Hal Prince version of Candide returns to City Opera from March 4 to 19.
Coincidentally, both of these show have a connection to PBS's upcoming season. The network intends to air the 1957 Julie Andrews kinescope of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella. And in January, PBS will telecast its taping of last spring's New York Philharmonic Candide, starring Kristin Chenoweth and Patti LuPone.
Mandy Patinkin will perform in concert at the new off-Broadway complex Dodger Stages. And we should also mention two solo Broadway shows that will include music. From his appearances in such attractions as The Goodbye Girl, Little Me, Promises, Promises, and The Producers, we all know that Martin Short is a fine musical man in addition to being one of the funniest talents around. If I'd Saved, I Wouldn't Be Here: Martin Short on Broadway is written by Short and the Hairspray songwriters, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, with Wittman also directing. It will arrive on Broadway in the spring, and will include Short recreating some of his celebrated TV characters.
In November, there's Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance at the Music Box Theatre. As we all know, Dame Edna always warbles a ditty or two in her glorious shows, and this one will also include back-up performers both female the Ednaettes and male the TestEdnarones.
Millburn, New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse opens an unusually ambitious season in September with the Gershwin's Of Thee I Sing, directed by Tina Landau and featuring Ron Bohmer, Wally Dunn, Garrett Long, and Sarah Knowlton. Next up is She Loves Me, then Estelle Parsons in the Tom Jones-Joseph Thalken musical version of Harold and Maude. The season's final musicals are The Baker's Wife in April and Ragtime in June.
And we might as well mention two titles opening in London's West End, Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White and the Cameron Mackintosh-Disney production of Mary Poppins. At least one of those titles seems certain to eventually make its way to Broadway. Lloyd Webber's last two shows, Whistle Down the Wind and The Beautiful Game, never made it to New York. In the meantime, many Americans will no doubt be traveling to London to check them out.
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