Revivals: An Update
Let's first get out of the way a list of titles that have already been announced. For next season, there's the Roundabout's Threepenny Opera and Trevor Nunn's A Little Night Music, starring Glenn Close. The Wiz was announced for the current season, but may happen next. A Chorus Line has been announced for the fall of 2006. Other revivals announced or mentioned include The Pajama Game; Camelot; West Side Story; and Dreamgirls.
Most of those titles would appear to be decent bets for success. The Pajama Game seems to me somewhat questionable, as was the revival of another classic '50s musical comedy, Wonderful Town. The recently announced casting of Harry Connick, Jr. in The Pajama Game could help. Camelot is a notoriously problematic show, rewarding when superbly produced as it was originally, much less satisfying when routinely mounted as in three previous Broadway revivals.
Beyond these, what titles would seem to have strong revival potential? There's Pal Joey, with a fine Rodgers and Hart score, a colorful nightclub milieu, and vivid central characters. Although Pal Joey probably requires some book revision, it remains surprising that no one has announced a Broadway revival of this adult classic. Note that Encores! staged the show during its second season, in 1995. Some years back, Terrence McNally was working on a revised book. That plan seems to have been abandoned, but I suspect we will eventually see a new Pal Joey.
And I feel certain that we'll get Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Evita again within the next decade. Unlike such other British pop operas as Cats, Les Miz, and Miss Saigon, Evita had only an average-smash Broadway run of four years, so it has already been gone from Broadway for more than twenty years. And Evita's examination of politics as show business is timeless. The central question: Should Hal Prince's original staging be reproduced, as it is in the current national tour, or should some current hot-shot director be allowed a crack at a show that might lend itself to reinterpretation?
One blockbuster title that remains a problem is Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific. One of the biggest and most acclaimed hits of its era, South Pacific has had a number of New York returns City Center, Music Theatre of Lincoln Center, City Opera but no official Broadway revival. Just a few years ago, two revivals of South Pacific---one directed by Trevor Nunn for London's National Theatre, the other a Jerry Zaks-supervised U.S. tour starring Robert Goulet--- were believed to have New York potential. Neither proved worthy of transfer, but someone will probably try again.
I've had numerous occasions to note that Bye Bye Birdie remains perhaps the most popular musical hit of its day never to have a Broadway revival. A revival might have happened this season, as the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. had been scheduled to mount a Christmas production. But those plans seem to have been put on hold after Encores! did the show and the results were only middling. I still maintain that Birdie would have been better off mounted in a first-class staging directly for Broadway.
Several other titles are no doubt under consideration. Surely some producer out there is thinking about, or will soon be investigating, the possibility of bringing back Oliver!, Pippin, Promises, Promises, Barnum, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, They're Playing Our Song, and Me and My Girl.
Our second category of revival represents a new brand that has emerged in recent years, one that has become the trademark of the Roundabout Theatre Company. This non-profit institution possesses the wherewithal to mount full-scale if often scaled down revivals of musicals for runs of just two or three months. Roundabout has managed to offer brief engagements of Company, Follies, Big River, Assassins, and Pacific Overtures. Artistically speaking, the results have been mixed. Yet it's unlikely that these works would have been revived in commercial situations. And it now appears that the Roundabout will be reviving yet another Sondheim musical, one that seems never to disappear from our stages, Sweeney Todd, in a current London staging.
What other interesting works might be mounted for short runs by Roundabout or, for that matter, Lincoln Center Theater, should it wish to pursue musical revivals? If Roundabout wishes to continue putting on Sondheim musicals, the best bets would be Merrily We Roll Along and Sunday in the Park with George.
It's rather early to be reviving late '80s Broadway musicals, but one can imagine Grand Hotel already revived at London's Donmar Warehouse and City of Angels as Roundabout possibilities. The same company might also eventually wish to investigate such recent titles as The Secret Garden, Falsettos, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Once on This Island, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Side Show, and Ragtime. I believe it unlikely that any of these shows would thrive in a commercial Broadway return. But in a Roundabout run of a couple of months, they might work well.
Finally, our third category, consisting of musicals that have been revived on Broadway in recent years but that are likely to return again. The Royal National Theatre's recent revival of Anything Goes another Trevor Nunn staging is scheduled to play Los Angeles' Ahmanson Theatre later this year, with John Barrowman repeating his London role of Billy Crocker. And it's not hard to imagine the production moving on from there to New York. This version uses more or less the same text as the last New York revival, the Lincoln Center Theater revision that ran from 1987 to 1989. Other than Porgy and Bess, which surely ranks as opera, Anything Goes continues to be the only musical from the '30s that is regularly revived.
The 1992 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls lasted until early '95. Still, everyone adores the show, and ten years may not be too soon for another return. Guys and Dolls seems especially likely because of the forthcoming London revival, directed by Michael Grandage and starring Ewan McGregor and Jane Krakowski.
My Fair Lady, revived on Broadway as recently as 1993, will surely be back again, but the situation here is trickier. Trevor Nunn's recent revival for the National Theatre won acclaim as well as the approval of New York Times critic Ben Brantley. With the right leads, it might have been a success on Broadway. But producer Cameron Mackintosh appears to have abandoned his plans to bring this particular Fair Lady to Broadway. Which leaves the show in search of another major director to do it justice.
Another Alan Jay Lerner/Frederick Loewe musical, Brigadoon, had a well-received but short-lived 1980 Broadway revival. But a smart team of creators might be able to rethink the entrancing show for a new production.
Because of their status as family perennials, certain musicals revived in recent years will surely be back. These include Peter Pan Cathy Rigby's current farewell tour in the musical could have her playing Peter Pan on Broadway for the fifth time, Annie, The Sound of Music, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
With the noted exceptions of South Pacific and The Sound of Music, the Rodgers and Hammerstein canon seems to have been temporarily exhausted. In terms of revivals, their strongest entry beyond The Sound of Music is The King and I, and that show is bound to return at some point, surely before we get another Oklahoma! or Carousel. It will take a dazzling directorial concept indeed to follow Nicholas Hytner's '90s reimagining of Carousel for the National and Lincoln Center Theater.
When the right lady comes along Bette Midler has been asked, Hello, Dolly! will doubtless be back. That other Jerry Herman great-lady show, Mame, has been announced for a return, but it seems to me a riskier venture, particularly as no current star seems ideal for it. Christine Baranski has been mentioned more than once. And audiences never seem to get enough of Grease, so that title is likely to eventually return.