London shows hit Broadway

From London to New York: Priscilla, Sister Act, War Horse and Jerusalem to open on Broadway

Four big West End shows are opening on Broadway in the coming weeks. Priscilla Queen of the Desert is currently in previews at the Palace Theatre on Broadway (and the Palace Theatre, London!), starring Will Swenson as Tick. Swenson appeared in the recent Broadway and London productions of Hair, and is joined in Priscilla by Tony Sheldon, who revisits the role of Bernadette after wowing audiences in Australia and London, and Nick Adams (La Cage Aux Folles) as Adam.

Over at the Broadway Theatre previews start on 24 March for Sister Act, which wings its way to America following a decent run at the London Palladium. The star of the London show, Patina Miller, will reprise her role as nightclub singer Deloris Van Cartier, joined by Victoria Clark (The Light in the Piazza) as Mother Superior.

Also transferring to Broadway, the National Theatre’s production of War Horse will start previews at the Lincoln Center in New York from 15 March, and the Royal Court’s smash-hit production of Jez Butterworth’s play Jerusalem will play the Music Box theatre from 2 April. The play will feature its Olivier Award-winning London star Mark Rylance, who is sure become a major Tony Awards contender for his tour de force performance as Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron.

Book tickets to Priscilla Queen of the Desert at the Palace Theatre, New York

Book tickets to Sister Act at the Broadway Theatre, New York

Book tickets to War Horse at the Lincoln Center in New York

Book tickets to Jerusalem at the Music Box theatre, New York

 

Broadway Theatre Spring Round-up

Our USA round-up of what’s hot on Broadway and beyond, including Daniel Radcliffe in How To Succeed…, transfers of Priscilla and Sister Act, Elaine Paige in Follies and much more.

Catch Me If You Can

Previews begin this week for major new Broadway musical Catch Me If You Can at the Neil Simon Theatre (opens 10 April), based on the Stephen Spielberg movie and the true story that inspired it. The show is led by rising new Broadway star Aaron Tveit (Next to Normal, Wicked) as con-man Frank Abagnale, and also stars Kerry Butler and Norbert Leo Butz. Aaron is featured in this month’s issue of Vanity Fair and there is a real buzz about him. The musical comes from the Hairspray and Love Never Dies creative team of Jack O’Brien (director) and Jerry Mitchell (Choreography), with a book by Terence McNally (The Full Monty), and score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman.

Spider-Man: Julie out?

The New York Times is reporting that Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark director Julie ‘The Lion King’ Taymor may have to fall on her sword and depart the production if she doesn’t seek help. Apparently the producers of the troubled, multi-million dollar show would like her to work with an expanded creative team to try and bring work on the production to a close – or she may have to leave the show. Other current decisions being made on the show include to what extent the script and music should be overhauled. The five-times rearranged opening night of 15 March now seems almost certain to be… rearranged!

London to Broadway: Priscilla, Sister Act, War Horse, Jerusalem

Four big West End shows are opening on Broadway in the coming weeks. Priscilla Queen of the Desert is currently in previews at the Palace Theatre on Broadway (and the Palace Theatre, London!), starring Will Swenson as Tick. Swenson appeared in the recent Broadway and London productions of Hair, and is joined in Priscilla by Tony Sheldon, who revisits the role of Bernadette after wowing audiences in Australia and London, and Nick Adams (La Cage Aux Folles) as Adam.
Over at the Broadway Theatre previews start on 24 March for Sister Act, which wings its way to America following a decent run at the London Palladium. The star of the London show, Patina Miller, will reprise her role as nightclub singer Deloris Van Cartier, joined by Victoria Clark (The Light in the Piazza) as Mother Superior.
Also transferring to Broadway, the National Theatre’s production of War Horse will start previews at the Lincoln Center in New York from 15 March, and the Royal Court’s smash-hit production of Jez Butterworth’s play Jerusalem will play the Music Box theatre from 2 April. The play will feature its Olivier Award-winning London star Mark Rylance, who is sure become a major Tony Awards contender for his tour de force performance as Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron.

Daniel Radcliffe in How To Succeed in Business…

Life after Harry Potter is going to be particularly glamorous for Daniel Radcliffe as he is currently starring in How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre (now in previews, opens 27 March). The show has hit the press recently over rumours that Warner Bros. are furious with the show’s producers for not letting Radcliffe out of performances to promote the final Harry Potter film later in the year.

Elaine Paige in Follies

Not long to go until the Eric Schaeffer revival of Sondheim’s Follies at the Kennedy Center in Washington (7 May – 19 June) starring Bernadette Peters as Sally, Jan Maxwell as Phyllis, Danny Burstein as Buddy, Ron Raines as Benjamin Stone – and our very own Elaine Paige as Carlotta. The casting of Paige caught many off guard (she’s TOO YOUNG you cry!) and it will be interesting to see if Paige turns up in Trevor Nunn’s mooted revival of the show at the Theatre Royal Haymarket later this year.

Hot tip: Gavin Creel in Prometheus Bound

Whilst Hair alumni Will Swenson is camping it up in Priscilla, fellow co-worker Gavin Creel, who also starred with Swenson in the London transfer of Hair, is currently wowing audiences in Prometheus Bound at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass. Rumour mills are buzzing over whether the show might transfer to Broadway. Written by Tony and Grammy Award-winning playwright and lyricist Steven Sater, who scored a huge hit with Spring Awakening on Broadway and less so in London, and with music composed by Grammy Award-winning System of a Down lead singer Serj Tankian, the show is inspired by Aeschylus’s Ancient Greek tragedy.

Stars on Broadway

There’s no shortage of stars turning up on Broadway over the next few weeks, with Frances McDormand having just opened in Good People at the Manhattan Theatre Club, Brian Cox, Chris Noth, Jason Patric and Kiefer Sutherland starring in That Championship Season at the Bernard Jacobs Theatre, Billy Crudup in Arcadia at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre (opens 17 March), Robin Williams in Bengal Tiger In The Baghdad Zoo at the Richard Rodgers Theatre from 11 March, Chris Rock in Motherf**Ker With The Hat at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre from 15 March, Kathleen Turner in High at the Booth Theatre from 25 March, Edie Falco, Ben Stiller and Jennifer Jason Leigh in The House of Blue Leaves at the Walter Kerr Theatre from 25 April, and Tyne Daly and Sierra Boggess in Master Class at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre from 24 May. Phew!

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Broadway news and gossip

Donovan and Swenson bow out of West End

Two West End stars left their roles in major shows this weekend. On Saturday night (29 May) Jason Donovan left Priscilla Queen of the Desert at the Palace Theatre and Broadway star Will Swenson left Hair at the Gielgud Theatre.

JASON DONOVAN

Fans and cast members paid tribute to Jason Donovan on Saturday 29 May as he shimmied in his fabulous shoes and frocks for the final time in Priscilla Queen of the Desert at the Palace Theatre in London, after 14 months and over 450 performances.

On Jason’s Facebook page, fan Laura Harvey said: “So sad that it’s your last Priscilla…. you will be greatly missed”. Cast mate Amy Edwards posted on Twitter that, “am going to miss him loads! He’s a fantastic performer and an amazing person”, and Oliver Thornton, who plays Adam in the show said: “So sad to lose my playmate and friend from the show”.

Ben Richards from ITV’s The Bill takes over Donovan’s role from 1 July. Richards is an accomplished musicals actor having played numerous roles in high-profile West End shows including Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls, Danny Zuko in Grease, Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever and Jerry Lukowski in The Full Monty.

Book tickets to Priscilla Queen of the Desert starring Ben Richards at the Palace Theatre in London

WILL SWENSON

In a theatrical circle of life, Saturday also saw Broadway star Will Swenson leave Hair The Musical in the West End – in order to take on Jason Donovan’s role of Tick in a new Broadway production of Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

Swenson, who was Tony Award-nominated for his performance as Berger in Hair, will open in Priscilla in Toronto in October for 12 weeks before moving the show to Broadway.

The Broadway production will also see Tony Sheldon, who played Bernadette in the Australian and London productions of Priscilla, reprise his role.

Steel Burkhardt, a company member in the original Broadway production and the West End transfer, has taken over Swenson’s role as Berger. Hair marked Burkhardt’s Broadway and West End debuts.

Hair will close at the Gielgud Theatre on 4 September 2010.

In other HAIR news, Gavin Creel, fellow Broadway and now London cast member of the show, will make his solo debut in London this summer. He will play one night only at the Pigalle Club in London’s West End on 20 July. See Facebook for further information.

Book tickets to see Hair starring Gavin Creel at the Gielgud Theatre in London

Hair – Gielgud Theatre – Reviews Round-up

There was much reminiscing at the Gielgud Theatre last night for the opening of HAIR. The award-winning Broadway revival, which has moved lock, stock and smoking doobie to London courtesy of Cameron Mackintosh, prompted much nostalgia from the critics, many of whom remembered the original production (Charles Spencer in the Telegraph was particularly sweet:  ”for old hippies like me, the show offers two and a half hours of theatrical bliss”. The critics were largely positive, with much praise heaped on Diane Paulus’s well-judged production and the enthusiasm and energy of the cast.

STAR RATINGS

The Telegraph

The Guardian

Bloomberg

The Independent

The Times

OPENING THOUGHTS

TI: It can’t and doesn’t have the freshness of the moment when Hair first hit a London that had just binned the theatrical censor. But it’s exhilarating, as well as oddly poignant… This is a production whose unstoppable energy and ebullient choreography more than compensate for what could, I suppose, still be considered flaws.

TE: More than 40 years since its premiere, this greatest of all rock musicals can still inspire violent antipathy among the straitlaced. That strikes me as being one of its strengths.

IN: The great thing about this joyous production of the mother of all rock musicals, a total transplant of the recent Broadway revival, is that it makes a bad book look better and the already good music sound great.

GU: Hair is more than just a musical: it is a social and cultural phenomenon, a jubilant assertion of life and freedom and a cry of protest against politicians who, in the late 1960s, sent a generation of young Americans to war.

DM: Big and fuzzy, that’s Hair. An energetic revival of the 1960s anti-war musical has just reached London and the striking thing, apart from the noise and spectacle, is that the Vietnam era’s youth were so much bolder than recent Western youngsters in their reaction to American warfare.

ON THE CAST

TI: With the marvellously febrile Will Swenson to the fore, shaking his long black locks at zombie America, I was time-warped to the turbulent, anarchic feel of 1968.

TE: The verve and energy of the company, who frequently make forays into the audience, ruffling the spectators’ hair and kissing them on the cheek, is irresistible… Will Swenson’s comic but deliberately un-endearing performance in the leading role of Berger… Caissie Levy is tender and touching as the girlfriend he treats so cruelly, Gavin Creel deeply moving as the confused Claude

IN: Will Swenson’s bestial Berger – you couldn’t say he was a ham Berger – exudes a rugged charm even when mooning bare-bottomed at the audience. He has the dark good looks of Oliver Tobias, who played the role here, and doesn’t seem to be “acting” at all. There are some great voices as well as his, notably Sasha Allen’s gorgeous Dionne, who take us back to the Age of Aquarius and Darius Nichols’s Afro-wigged Hud with a big creamy bass.

GU: I can only salute the cascading energy of her cast led by Gavin Creel as Claude, Caissie Levy as the demonstrating Sheila, Will Swenson as the shaggily stoned, self-consciously hammy Berger and Sasha Allen as the brass-lunged Dionne.

DM: [But] the lack of narrative is balanced by the panache of the actors. Only the most reactionary grump could fail to applaud their professionalism. The sheer stamina needed to keep that wall of noise going all evening is remarkable.

BOOK AND MUSIC

TI: Gerome Ragni and James Rado’s book might often have been improvised by stoned beatniks, but Galt MacDermot’s songs, with their tributes to sodomy, onanism and (weirdly) “Manchester, England”, still zing.

IN: …the score by Galt MacDermot, with a handful of chart-topping numbers and a bountiful mix of great jazz ballads, raw blues and choric anthems, remains as irresistible as ever: the “Hare Krishna” chorus elides into the “Where Do I Go?” Act I finale in which the cast’s nudity is now delivered as a graceful and moving statement of helplessness and vulnerability.

DM: That hits you, as does the paucity of plot. The first 40 minutes are almost entirely unexplained – it’s just one high-pulse introductory solo after another – and the second half suffers a long, heinously dull hallucination scene.

ON THE DIRECTOR

TE: Diane Paulus’s production brilliantly succeeds in letting the audience imagine it is present at a Sixties happening where sex and drugs and rock and roll (not to mention full-frontal nudity) combine to create a world of bleary bonhomie, naive idealism and political radicalism.

IN: Diane Paulus’s production pulls the clever stunt of turning the protest into a lament for Claude as the tribe “let the sunshine in” and disperse through the stalls, leaving a corpse in uniform out in the snow. It’s a stunning conclusion, managing to avoid both glutinous sentiment and mawkish piety.

GU: The great thing about Diane Paulus’s revival, which imports an entire Broadway company to London, is that it sees the show in two ways. It recognises that Hair was a product of its time, yet it also presents it as a vibrant, joyous piece of living theatre.

GU: Without attempting to emulate the pyrotechnic, strobe-lit dazzle of Tom O’Horgan’s original production, Paulus also makes this a genuinely tribal show in which the spirit of the ensemble is greater than any individual. Above all, Paulus and her music director, Richard Beadle, give full value to Galt MacDermot’s 40 songs

FINAL THOUGHTS

TI: And, boy, can these performers sing. It doesn’t wholly matter that the show needs a less traditional playhouse than the Gielgud when they celebrate freedom by sprawling into the aisles and the stalls. They do something better. They raise the old theatre’s roof.

TE: …this is essentially an ensemble show in which the whole company shines, while also suggesting the dark shadows of the hippie dream.

IN: It is, sui generis, one of the great musicals of all time, and a phenomenon that, I’m relieved to discover, stands up as a period piece with as much vitality and appeal as, in their own way, do No, No Nanette and The Boy Friend.

GU: But what matters is that it celebrates a period when the joy of life was pitted against the forces of intolerance and the death-dealing might of the military-industrial complex. As Shakespeare once said: “There’s sap in’t yet.”

DM: Forty years on, we are wiser about the sapping, ruinous effects of hallucinogenic drugs. We have also started to realise that the baby-boomer generation was spoilt and, in numerous ways, destructive and fake. When you consider that the draft-dodgers included later warmongers such as Bill Clinton and George W Bush, it doesn’t do much for the brand. And yet here, albeit with great gusto, albeit to shrieking acclaim, such creeps are being romanticised as enlightened and somehow brave. Despite the admirable production values, that stinks.

KEY TO CRITICS:

TE: The Telegraph – Charles Spencer

DM: Daily Mail – Quentin Letts

GU: The Guardian – Michael Billington

BL: Bloomberg – Warwick Thompson

IN: The Independent – Michael Coveney

TI: The Times – Benedict Nightingale

Book tickets to Hair at the Gielgud Theatre in London