Busker Alley Broadway Plans Scrapped

Busker Alley’s long road to Broadway appears to be over. According to Variety, the producing team that had hoped to bring the long-gestating musical to the Great White Way has cancelled a proposed production starring Jim Dale and directed and designed by Tony Walton. In the fall of 2007, an announcement was made that Busker Alley would open on Broadway in the 2008-2009 season.

The latest setback for the show, which features songs by Richard and Robert Sherman (Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), comes after the 2007 death of book writer A.J. Carothers and what Variety calls “the worsening health of one of the Sherman brothers.”

“We will be returning all of the money to our investors and release all of our sponsors from their obligations,” the producers, which include Margot Astrachan, Robert R. Blume, Heather Duke, Joanna Kerry, Kristine Lewis and Jamie Fox, said in a joint statement.

A musical version of the 1938 British film St. Martin’s Lane, Busker Alley was originally set to arrive in Broadway in 1995 as a vehicle for Tommy Tune. After a 16-city tour, Tune dropped out of the production with a broken foot, and the planned Broadway premiere at the St. James Theatre was off. The show centers on a the romance between an aging busker (a London street entertainer) and a much younger woman who longs to be a star and leaves him to follow her dreams.

Walton directed a concert version of Busker Alley in 2006 featuring Dale, Glenn Close, Jessica Grove, Simon Jones, Noah Racey, Greg Mills, Krista Rodriguez, Ann Rogers, Michael Lane Trautman and Jeff Williams, which was recorded and sparked new interest in the show.