Mary J. Blige May Move to Broadway Via Brooklyn
Blige got her start in the late '80s as a back-up singer after a casette tape that she made in a karaoke machine at a mall was passed onto a record executive. Sean Combs, currently making his debut on Broadway in A Raisin in the Sun, took Blige under his wing in 1991, working on her critically acclaimed debut album What's the 411? Follow-up albums like My Life, Share My World, Mary, No More Drama and Love and Life cemented Blige's relationship with both critics and audiences alike. Blige has had limited experience acting, having appeared in the 2001 film Prison Song and the TV-movie Angel: One More Road to Cross. Last year, she made her stage debut in the off-Broadway reading-style play The Exonerated. In June, Blige appeared as a performer at the Tony Awards, singing "What I Did For Love" from the musical A Chorus Line.
Brooklyn, which features book, music and lyrics by Mark Schoenfeld and Barri McPherson, will start performances at the Plymouth Theatre on September 23 in preparation for an October 21 opening. The musical centers on a young girl from Paris Espinosa whose search for the father she never knew lands her in America, in the city with the same name as her, Brooklyn.
The show, directed and choreographed by Jeff Calhoun, had its world premiere engagement at the Denver Civic Theatre on May 7, 2003 with Caroline, or Change's Ramona Keller in the role of Paradice. The musical received mixed reviews from area critics. The Denver Post's John Moore review stated, "What Brooklyn has today is the cast, creative vision, production values, costumes and staging concept to open there tomorrow. But what it lacks for now is a truly effective story. It needs to seriously address over the next six months how to toughen up a pretty ordinary plot that lacks the power, depth and originality to move and lift its audience as effectively as its music already does."