White Christmas May Be Headed for Holiday Run on Broadway

Kevin McCollum and Jeffrey Seller are eyeing a holiday engagement at Broadway's Marquis Theatre for their production of White Christmas, which has played at theaters in Boston, Los Angeles and Toronto since debuting at San Francisco's Curran Theater in 2004, according to Variety. Based on the 1954 film starring Bing Crosby, White Christmas features classic songs by Irving Berlin and an updated book by David Ives. Walter Bobbie Chicago is the director.

"I'd love to have it come in," McCollum told Variety. "The timing is right for it to happen if everyone gets on board. But it's an economic Rubik's cube right now because I don't have the rules in place that could make it work." With a run of nine performances a week for seven and half weeks, McCollum says that the show would have to play close to capacity at the 1,600 seat Marquis, which most recently housed Cry-Baby, to be successful. He feels that a new economic structure is needed to support limited engagements of large-scale musicals.

For the past two holiday seasons, Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! has been presented on Broadway, first at the Hilton Theatre and then at the St. James. That show managed to squeeze in 12 performances a week, but suffered last year due to the stagehands' strike, which cancelled performances over Thanksgiving weekend. No plans have been announced so far for a third engagement of The Grinch.

McCollum told Variety that even if White Christmas doesn't break even in its initial Broadway run, bringing it to New York strengthens the value of the show in the long run. White Christmas was recorded on Ghostlight Records with its San Francisco cast, which included Brian d'Arcy James, Anastasia Barzee, Jeffry Denman, Meredith Patterson and Karen Morrow.