Musical Theatre

The Kleban Foundation has announced the recipients of the 34th annual Kleban Prize for Musical Theatre. The 2024 Kleban Prize for the most promising musical theatre lyricist has been awarded to Rona Siddiqui. The 2024 Kleban Prize for the most promising musical theatre librettist has been awarded to Lisa Loomer.

Rona Siddiqui is a composer/lyricist based in NYC. A Grammy nominated artist, Rona Siddiqui is a recipient of the Jonathan Larson Grant and Billie Burke Ziegfeld award and was named one of Broadway Women's Fund's Women to Watch. Her musicals include Salaam Medina: Tales of a Halfghan, an autobiographical comedy about growing up bi-ethnic in America, One Good Day, Hip Hop Cinderella, and Treasure in NYC. She is the recipient of the ASCAP Harold Adamson Lyric Award, the ASCAP Foundation Mary Rodgers/Lorenz Hart Award and ASCAP Foundation/Max Dreyfus Scholarship. She has been in residency at Musical Theatre Factory and Ars Nova. Rona also served as Music Supervisor of A Strange Loop on Broadway. www.RonaSiddiqui.com

Lisa Loomer is a playwright whose work has been produced at major theaters across the country and is taught in both Women's Studies and Latine Studies classes. Her recent play Roe, about Roe v. Wade, debuted at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and went on to such theaters as Arena Stage, The Goodman, and Berkley Rep. Other plays include The Waiting Room (Williamstown, Vineyard), Living Out (Mark Taper, Second Stage), Distracted (Mark Taper, Roundabout), ¡Bocón! (Mark Taper Forum) and Café Vida (LATC). Ms. Loomer is an alumna of New Dramatists and the recipient of The American Theater Critics Award (twice), Pen award, Jane Chambers award (twice), Kennedy Center New Plays Award, Susan Smith Blackburn, and an Imagen Award for positive portrayals of Latine people in all media. Screen credits Girl, Interrupted. She is the bookwriter of the musical adaptation of Real Women Have Curves which is currently running at the American Repertory Theater in partnership with the producers Jack Noseworthy and NAMCO. Current projects include the musical of Like Water for Chocolate and a new play, Side Effects May Include...about Pharma.

Since its inception, Kleban Prize winners have been selected by judging panels comprised of the theatre’s most respected artists and administrators. The trio of celebrated judges making the final determination this year were Tony Award-winning playwright, composer, and lyricist Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop), Elissa Adams (Associate Artistic Director ,Theater Latte Da; Producer, NEXT Festivals), and award-winning actor and playwright Chistine Toy Johnson (The Music Man, Pacific Overtures, Falsettoland).

The Kleban Foundation was established in 1988 under the will of Edward L. Kleban, best known as the Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning lyricist of the musical A Chorus Line. Kleban’s will made provisions for annual prizes, which in recent years have totaled $100,000 each, payable over two years, to be given to the most promising lyricist and librettist in American musical theatre. For over 30 years, the Kleban Prize has recognized and honored some of the American musical theatre’s brightest developing talents.

"The Kleban Prize for Musical Theatre is one of the theatre's most distinctive honors,” says Tony Award winner Richard Maltby Jr., President of the Kleban Foundation. “After the last few challenging years, Ed Kleban's legacy may be more important than ever in supporting the creators of tomorrow's American musicals. Ed Kleban recognized that theatrical wordsmiths have the hardest time supporting themselves while honing their craft, and so the Kleban awards are specifically for librettists and lyricists. It is notable that the Kleban Prize is not given to a specific work, as other awards are, but instead, it is given for work yet to be written. With a uniquely generous endowment, the Kleban Prize identifies, celebrates and supports promising writing talent in the theatre, just when emerging writers -- and established writers -- need help the most. Kleban Prize winners are going to define the art form for years to come. The Kleban Foundation is proud to carry on Ed Kleban's enlightened legacy.”

Over more than three decades, the annual Kleban Prize for Musical Theatre has awarded over $6,000,000 to 83 artists who collectively have garnered seven Tony Awards (with nearly 30 Tony nominations), 59 Emmy Awards, three Grammy Awards, 10 Drama Desk Awards, nine Outer Critic Circle Awards, five Obie Awards, two Olivier Awards, and two Pulitzer Prizes. The list of previous Kleban Prize winners includes Lisa Kron (Fun Home), Robert L. Freedman and Steven Lutvak (A Gentleman’s Guide To Love and Murder), David Lindsay-Abaire (Kimberly Akimbo, Shrek), Jason Robert Brown (Parade, The Last Five Years), John Bucchino (A Catered Affair, It’s Only Life), Gretchen Cryer (I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road, The Last Sweet Days of Isaac), Michael Korie (Grey Gardens, Happiness), Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez (Avenue Q), Michael John LaChiusa (Giant, See What I Wanna See, The Wild Party), Glenn Slater (The Little Mermaid) and John Weidman (Pacific Overtures, Road Show, Assassins).

Broadway singers, the vocal virtuosos of the theater world, bring the magic of musicals to life through their exceptional voices and dramatic flair. These performers are the heart and soul of Broadway productions, enchanting audiences with their ability to convey emotion, tell stories, and showcase unparalleled vocal talents.

The list consists of:

1. Ethel Merman
2. Julie Andrews
3. Barbara Cook
4. Patti LuPone
5. Bernadette Peters
6. Audra McDonald
7. Angela Lansbury
8. Kristin Chenoweth
9. Lin-Manuel Miranda
10. Mandy Patinkin
11. Lea Salonga
12. Idina Menzel
13. Brian Stokes Mitchell
14. Hugh Jackman
15. Leontyne Price

Hard to argue with the likes of Julie Andrews, Barbara Cook and Audra McDonald, but some of the choices on this list are... interesting. Lin-Manuel Miranda is a top-tier talent, a real polymath, but his singing is at best acceptable. Same with Hugh Jackman. Strange choices for a website called "The Singers Room". And has Leontyne Price done any musicals other than Porgy and Bess (which a lot of people, including the Gershwins, classify as an opera)?

You’d be forgiven if you thought butter was a carb, just like it’s totally understandable if you didn’t know the new “Mean Girls” is a musical.

Paramount, which released the movie over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, chose not to explicitly market it as a song-and-dance spectacle, according to the studio’s president of global marketing and distribution Marc Weinstock.

“To start off saying musical, musical, musical, you have the potential to turn off audiences,” he says. “I want everyone to be equally excited.”

The PG-13 film triumphed in its box office debut with $33 million over the four-day weekend. But despite the cultural prominence of Tina Fey’s 2004 comedy, which propelled Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried to stardom, Weinstock’s job – selling the masses on (and clearing up any confusion about) “Mean Girls” – was trickier than trying to make fetch happen.

The story is the same, following Cady Heron as she moves to Illinois from Africa and navigates the lawless jungle of high school. But this rendition – adapted from the Broadway show – has singing and dancing. It isn’t a remake or sequel, and there are new actors (“Sex Lives of College Girls” star Reneé Rapp and “Spider-Man: No Way Home” actor Angourie Rice led the cast) embodying the Plastics.

“This is a movie within the ‘Mean Girls’ world,” Weinstock says. “We didn’t want to distill it down to one thing, because it’s not one thing.”

Where do you start with marketing such a familiar property?

There are two audiences: the audience that grew up with “Mean Girls,” and the audience that didn’t. On “Mean Girls” Day, which is Oct. 3, we released the entire movie on TikTok in 23 separate clips. Non-fans started watching and were like, “Wait, this is a great movie.” They immediately got familiar with the world.

Some fans of the original felt strongly about the tagline, “This is not your mother’s ‘Mean Girls.'” What were you trying to convey?

People kind of misconstrued it and took offense. All we meant to say was that it’s a new twist. People took it literally. “What do you mean? I’m not a mom!” We moved away from that and toward “A new twist from Tina Fey.” It’s her vision, and it’s fantastic.

Did you intentionally avoid advertising the movie as a musical?

We didn’t want to run out and say it’s a musical because people tend to treat musicals differently. This movie is a broad comedy with music. Yes, it could be considered a musical but it appeals to a larger audience. You can see in [trailers for] “Wonka” and “The Color Purple,” they don’t say musical either. We have a musical note on the title, so there are hints to it without being overbearing.

How did you make it clear from the first trailer that new actors are playing Regina George and Cady Heron?

Our first teaser was Reneé Rapp to the camera singing “My name is Regina George.” It did so much for us because immediately it said, “This is your new Regina. Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams are not in this movie.” We did have Tim [Meadows] and Tina in the spots to show familiarity.

Did you take any lessons from another very pink movie, “Barbie”?

It was the campaign of the year. They did a great job in ubiquity, and that’s the one thing we tried to do: be anywhere and everywhere. I get excited when people come up to me and say, “It’s on my [social media] feed every two seconds.”

What kind of fun did you have with quotable lines from the 2004 film?

We didn’t want to copy the lines exactly because we didn’t want people to think they were getting a version of the old movie. We used odes to it, like a bus ad that says “Look both ways, Regina!” It’s a funny line for those who know, and those who don’t know want to investigate it. We were conscientious that we weren’t like, “Here are all the lines from the first movie! It’s back again!” We wanted to show there was something fresh.

I saw that people online were upset the premiere was held on a Monday and not a Wednesday.

I know. That was due to talent availability. It’s a boring answer.

Douglas Lyons, the writer of “Chicken and Biscuits,” is adapting “Big River” as a film. The show, which features music influenced by country and gospel, is based on Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” It opened on Broadway in 1985 and won seven Tony awards, including best musical, and seven Drama Desk awards.

“It is my deepest honor to adapt this beloved Broadway classic for the big screen,” Lyons said. “With its legendary score and moving tale, ‘Big River’ invites us all to remember there’s more beauty in humanity than hate.”

“Big River” is being developed in partnership with Mary Miller and William Hauptman, as well as by the musical’s original producer Rocco Landesman, Emily Baer and Jason Seagraves under his Prod Co. banner. “Chicken and Biscuits” opened on Broadway in 2021 at the Circle in the Square Theatre.

“Big River” follows Huck and Jim as they race down the mighty Mississippi to secure Jim’s freedom. Lyons will reimagine the story so that it centers on the perspectives of both Jim and Huck, instead of just focusing on Huck’s story. The musical features songs such as “Free at Last,” “Muddy Water” and “World’s Apart.” The show’s hit song “River in the Rain” reached No. 36 on the U.S. country music charts and has been re-recorded by Alison Krauss.

Landesman conceived of the idea of adapting Twain’s novel for the stage and persuaded Roger Miller, an 11-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, to write the music and William Hauptman to write the book. The show was a box office hit, running for 1,005 performances, and was revived on Broadway in 2003 by Deaf West Theatre, going on to win another Tony in 2004. Landesman believes Lyons has found a fresh way to tell the story.

“Douglas has taken the greatest American novel of all time and made it relevant to our time,” Landesman said in a statement.

https://archive.md/rJt6Z

“The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel of garish glamour and dashed dreams, is coming to Broadway as a musical this spring.

The show — the latest in a long string of adaptations of this widely read story — had a pre-Broadway run last fall at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., where it opened to mixed reviews. (As it happens, the book also arrived to mixed reviews, and is now widely considered a great classic of American literature.)

The lavish production will join a spring Broadway season packed with new musicals at a moment when many industry leaders are concerned that there do not seem to be enough patrons to keep most of the shows afloat.

This new “Gatsby” musical is backed by Chunsoo Shin, a Korean producer hungering for a Broadway hit after a spate of unsuccessful ventures here. He most recently was part of the producing team for “Once Upon a One More Time,” the short-lived show featuring Britney Spears songs; previous endeavors included a stage adaptation of “Doctor Zhivago” and a Tupac Shakur musical, “Holler if Ya Hear Me.”

The “Great Gatsby” musical features songs by Nathan Tysen and Jason Howland, who collaborated on the 2022 musical “Paradise Square,” and a book by the playwright Kait Kerrigan (“The Mad Ones”). (Tysen and Kerrigan are married to each other.) The director is Marc Bruni, whose previous Broadway outing, “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” which opened in 2014, was a significant hit.

The musical will star two Broadway fan favorites. Jeremy Jordan, a Tony nominee for “Newsies,” will play the nouveau riche title character, Jay Gatsby, while Eva Noblezada, a two-time Tony nominee, for “Miss Saigon” and “Hadestown,” will play Daisy Buchanan, the young woman with old money whom Gatsby has long desired.

“The Great Gatsby” is scheduled to begin previews March 29 and to open April 25 at the Broadway Theater, one of Broadway’s largest houses.

The novel has been explored in other media many times, including in a glitzy 2013 Hollywood film directed by Baz Luhrmann that starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan. On Broadway, there was a “Great Gatsby” play staged in 1926, the year after the novel’s publication; Off Broadway there was a highly acclaimed seven-hour version, called “Gatz,” developed by Elevator Repair Service and staged at the Public Theater in 2010.

The novel entered the public domain in 2021, opening the door to any number of adaptations. Most significantly, at least for theater audiences, is another musical adaptation in development. It’s called “Gatsby” and is scheduled to start performances in May at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass. That production, which also has Broadway aspirations, has a book by the Pulitzer-winning playwright Martyna Majok (“Cost of Living”), songs by the rock star Florence Welch (of Florence and the Machine) and Thomas Bartlett (also known as Doveman), and direction by Rachel Chavkin (a Tony winner for “Hadestown”).

In the original 2004 Mean Girls, gossip plays out through word of mouth or surprise three-way phone calls. But in the film adaptation of the Mean Girls musical, vicious teen backstabbing gets a social media makeover.

The film, which was also written by Tina Fey, moves the classic 2000s flick to the present day, trading Y2K aesthetics for Gen Z vibes. With that shift comes the need to bring modern-day tech and social media into the movie — because how can you accurately depict the 2020s high school experience without it?

For directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., the challenge became incorporating social media into this new take on Mean Girls in a way that would ring true with audiences today (especially younger viewers).

"You can't overdo it," Perez Jr. told Mashable in a video interview.

"It's a balance, right?" Jayne added. "If you go too hard with it in scenes where it doesn't count, it feels superfluous."

They found inspiration in the framing device of the musical on which the film is based, which sees Janis (Auli'i Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey) recounting Cady's (Angourie Rice) encounter with the Plastics as a "cautionary tale." With that in mind, Perez Jr. said, the vision for Mean Girls became: "Let's do this film as if Janis and Damian directed it."

We see this right from Mean Girls' opening moments. Janis and Damian film themselves vertically on a phone while singing in a garage. Seconds later, the screen widens into a CinemaScope aspect ratio as we journey to Cady's home in Africa. Throughout the film, we'll see these aspect ratio changes time and time again, as the format jumps between widescreen and vertical phone screens. Sometimes these changes even happen mid-musical number.

How can social media shape a Mean Girls musical number?

Take Karen's (Avantika) Halloween costume banger "Sexy." In the original stage musical, the song opens with a gag that involves Karen appearing onstage, realizing she's messed up her song, and leaving. Seconds later, in one of the musical's biggest applause breaks, she returns to the stage and starts all over again.

"We're huge fans of the musical. We love how she walked out on stage, then left, and that was the joke there," explained Jayne. "But that just wouldn't translate [to film]. So, what would she do?" Mean Girls solves that problem by having Karen singing into her phone camera while preparing for the Halloween party, only to restart her recording when she screws up.

"We pitched that ['Sexy'] should start as a Karen 'Get Ready With Me' video," Jayne said.

From there, Karen's "Sexy" dance is picked up by other performers in their own videos, mimicking how TikTok dances spread. These dances come courtesy of the film's choreographer Kyle Hanagami, whose viral dance combos are an internet staple. "He is so beloved by the internet, and he speaks internet," Jayne said, "so he just knew how to do all of these fun transitions that all the kids do."

Capturing the overwhelming nature of social media

Beyond being a tool to add new flair to musical numbers, social media becomes a key storytelling device in Mean Girls. Think of it as an evolution of the talking heads in the original, where North Shore students tell the camera things like, "I saw Cady Heron wearing army pants and flip flops, so I brought army pants and flip flops." The new Mean Girls sees these kinds of observations texted between friends or brought up in TikTok videos.

The role of social media becomes especially prominent in key montages, like reactions to Regina George (Reneé Rapp) falling over at the Christmas talent show or to her getting hit by a bus. Since these incidents were filmed by other students, the magnifying glass on people like Regina and Cady grows a hundredfold. Their every move is replayed and dissected for the whole world to see. (You can spot several cameos in these sequences, including rap superstar Megan Thee Stallion and influencers like the Merrell Twins and Alan Chikin Chow.) The scope and potential reach of these posts makes Cady's experience more overwhelming than the gossip of the original, or even in the musical, which projected an onslaught of posts onto the back of the stage.

"When we dive into these barrages of social media posts, we wanted it to feel like these characters are scrolling through their phone. It's in your face. We wanted it to feel violent, in a way," Jayne said of the montages.

"Yeah, if you're getting bullied, that's what it feels like," Perez Jr. added.

"When people are talking well of you, it feels euphoric. And when people are disparaging you and making jokes about you, it feels devastating," Jayne said. "We wanted that to feel as real as we could make it."

That sense of overwhelming emotion in the face of relentless social media scrutiny came in part from Jayne and Perez Jr.'s scouting of real high schools. There, they saw the impact of technology on teen life firsthand. They cited things like phones always being out and plugged in to charge in classrooms as guidance for the ubiquity of tech in Mean Girls. But what surprised them most about current teen culture was the difference between interactions in real life and online.

"[The students] kind of seemed nicer. I heard a lot of people be really nice to each other," said Perez Jr. "So I would ask, 'What's going on here?' And the kids were like, 'Oh no, no one's mean to your face anymore. They're vicious to you online.'"

"I do not have the mental fortitude to go back to high school and experience it that way, with social media. I would just crumble!" Jayne laughed. "But it was really interesting speaking to [students] and trying to understand their experience now, and bring it to the movie [in a way that would] resonate with today's audience."

Clinical psychologist Emilio Amigo, who runs a counseling center for autistic people in Columbus, Ohio, had a big idea: "Many of my clients never went to their homecoming or prom because they weren't welcomed," he said. "I'm like, 'How many of you guys would love to go to a big formal?'"

Putting on a prom involved teaching his clients new skills, like dancing or asking someone out. Their journey was the subject of a 2015 documentary called "How to Dance in Ohio."

That story is now a Broadway musical.

The new Broadway musical "How to Dance in Ohio" tells the real-life story of a group of autistic young people who are getting ready for their first formal dance. In a trailblazing first, the autistic characters are all played by autistic actors. "How to Dance in Ohio"

"All of us who work on the show get messages from autistic individuals saying, 'I've seen myself represented onstage.' That's what we do it for," said Sammi Cannold, the show's director. She was not, however, its first one. That was the legendary Hal Prince, director of shows like "Phantom of the Opera," "Evita," "Cabaret," and many Sondheim musicals. He sadly passed away in 2019.

"Hal's granddaughter is autistic; my brother is autistic," said Cannold. "For him the show was very personal; for me the show is very personal."

But "How to Dance in Ohio" isn't just about autistic people. All of the autistic characters are played by autistic actors.

Cannold said feedback she got from people saying, "I don't think you're gonna find the actors that you're looking for," implied that there aren't enough Broadway-caliber actors with autism. But, she said, "We could've cast the show three times over."

Ashley Wool, Imani Russell and Liam Pearce are among the show's autistic actors. "I think you've picked the perfect three people, because all three of us are so different," said Pearce.

Pearce was diagnosed as being on the spectrum when he was age five; Wool was a junior in college. And Russell said it was May 2021 when they were diagnosed: "And I was really excited, 'cause I finally had a word for something that I think I knew about myself, internally, for a long time, but I didn't have the language for."

Autism comes in a huge variety of forms; it's described as a spectrum for a reason.

Amigo said, "The great enemy of someone who's autistic is social anxiety and anxiety. And that comes from, 'I don't know what to expect, I don't know what I'm supposed to do, I don't know what to say.'"

Wool said, "People like me are more sensitive to a lot of different things, like lights or sounds."

"I think another thing, when it comes to being autistic, is the concept of masking," said Russell, "which is sort of having to hide the movements that we do, or the sounds that we make, or having to speak at times that you don't want to speak to make other people feel comfortable."

The actors were encouraged to blend their own expressions of autism with their characters'. Pearce said, "Sammi Cannold, our director, was very open and supporting of being, like, 'If you, onstage, feel the need to let out your energy or, like, show your excitement in your own, individual, physical ways that you do outside of this rehearsal space, feel free.'"

The rehearsal process offered unusual accommodations for the cast and crew, like someone saying they have a sensitivity to scented soap: "And then our company management team will say, 'Okay, we're gonna replace all the scented soap in the building with unscented soap,'" said Cannold. "And so, it's hundreds of little things like that."

For autistic showgoers with sensory sensitivities, the show offers cool-down areas, sunglasses, and headphones.

And for non-autistic audience members, there's a message.

Do I only exist on this planet
to make somebody else feel inspired?
–"Nothing at All," from "How to Dance In Ohio"

Pogue said, "While the characters explicitly sing, 'We don't want to be objects of pity, we don't want to be inspiring,' at the same time, there's probably not an audience member who doesn't say, 'It's about people with challenges succeeding,' which is inspiring."

Russell said, "I like to pose the question, is your feeling of inspiration just infantilization? They're so inspiring because they're autistic, but they did that? Autistic, but they did that? It's not that our disabilities are the hurdles. It's other people's expectations for us that are the hurdles."

Wool added, "The point that we're making is, it's not an 'In spite of…' It's a 'Yes, and…'"

"How to Dance in Ohio" has earned itself an army of fans. Wool recalled at the very first preview, "The seven of us came on stage to do the prologue -- standing ovation, for like a minute-and-a-half. I was like, 'Wait a minute. We haven't done anything yet! We haven't earned this!'"

"It's so cool, at our stage door and stuff, like, young kids have come up to me like, 'I'm autistic, too!'" said Pearce.

But some of the biggest fans are the real people from the documentary. Sammi Cannold introduced them on opening night, including the real-life Drew – Pearce's character. "It was a really crazy, awesome, surreal experience to be able to, like, look at him and be like, 'Hey, thank you for existing, because my entire life and what I do here every night, is because of you.'"

Dr. Amigo liked it, too. He said he's seen it "a few times. if I'm counting right, it's about 13."

Do the show and the documentary help his clients in any way? "Every day," he said. "Because it's a story about them. It builds our self-esteem. It builds our sense of significance."

When cast members were asked how they hope their show will be perceived in the future, Russell said, "Oh, 'How to Dance in Ohio,' that was one of the beginnings."

"A turning point," said Wool.

Amigo said, "I hope that in ten years, it's no longer a big deal that there are seven autistic actors in a cast. Like, 'Okay. So what? That's great. Let's go. Let's start working on a play!'"

The musical-comedy “Shucked” had its closing performance on Broadway Sunday night, but the show went out with an even louder set of whoops than expected, as the curtain call included the news that a feature film adaptation is in the works.

Show reps confirm to Variety that a movie version of “Shucked” is being set up with Mandalay Pictures. The producers for Mandalay will be Jason Michael Berman (AIR) and Jordan Moldo, along with Alan Fox.

“We’re all a little sad to say goodbye to this. But there’s some good news,” one of the Broadway production’s producers, Mike Bosner, said amid the cast’s final farewells. “We don’t have to say goodbye just yet. Because I’m happy to announce that we will be making a feature film of ‘Shucked,'” he said, as the crowd’s cheering began to drown him out.

Robert Horn, who wrote the show’s book, is writing the screenplay adaptation. Horn is one of the executive producers, as well, along with Jack O’Brien, who directed the Broadway production, and Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, who composed the music.

Horn, O’Brien, Clark and McAnally were all Tony-nominated for their work, and Clark and McAnally won the Drama Desk Award for outstanding music.

No casting has been revealed.

“Shucked” was already set to enjoy an after-life in the wake of the Broadway closing, as a North American tour was announced in the fall, with the first dates set for Nashville. Further U.S. dates have not yet been announced, but productions in London and Australia are planned as well.

The Broadway cast album is currently up for the Grammy for best musical theater album.

At Sunday’s closing performance, Alex Newell, who won a Tony for featured male performer in a musical, playing Lulu, received what attendees said was a three-minute standing ovation for the showcase number “Independently Owned”… an uptick on the minute-plus ovation that performance regularly earned throughout the run.

Theatreland is taking a gamble on a wave of quirky little shows to challenge the big but tired box office beasts

A fresh kind of musical theatre show, set apart by having started life on the fringe or in a small-scale provincial production, is challenging the established order in London’s West End this season.

A wave of new, quirky productions will be taking their places alongside Phantom of the Opera-style classics and all those big, popular musicals that rework a familiar film title or milk a superstar legacy.

Latest to graduate to the major league is Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), an acclaimed British musical which has just been rewarded this weekend with a run at the Criterion theatre on Piccadilly from April. “It has not sunk in yet,” said its writer Kit Buchan. “Hearing that it will be on in the West End is a bit like the answer to a prayer. But it feels so unlikely: I am not sure I will really believe it until I see the curtain go up.”

Buchan wrote the show with his friend Jim Barne after they decided to branch out from writing songs for the band they have played in together since school. Audiences and critics responded enthusiastically. The show, developed over seven years and now finishing a sold-out run at the Kiln in north London, has earned rave reviews. The Evening Standard critic said the two-hander musical “matches its wide-eyed hero and sardonic heroine with just the right mix of sugar and sour”.

There are high hopes, too, for another unconventional show, Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder!. It impressed critics at the Edinburgh fringe, and is now poised for a West End run.

“New British musicals are having a moment, and that is really exciting,” said its producer, Francesca Moody, who brought Phoebe Waller Bridge’s Fleabag to the stage. “This is the riskier end of a risky market, but there are a group of producers who are prepared to take it up a gear by backing writers with shows that are not based on existing book or film titles. And the West End is making room for them in the ecosystem.”

An affectionate whodunnit parody, Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder!, began as a lockdown project for writers Jon Brittain and Matthew Floyd Jones. Moody is aware that keeping the charm of this small production when it’s in a big London theatre will be crucial. “You have to hold on to the things that have made it successful, like the reusing of the set and the multi-casting. Those elements, the pace and the velocity of movement, make it satisfying.”

By transferring to the West End, these small shows will follow a path recently laid by new musicals including Jack Godfrey’s Babies, which is tipped to return to the West End after a tryout last year, and Operation Mincemeat, a word-of-mouth hit which has won huge audience loyalty. Leading the charge was Six, the musical about the wives of Henry VIII. Written by two students for the Edinburgh festival, it has gone on to reach big audiences internationally. Next up in the West End will be Starter for Ten, adapted by Emma Hall & Charlie Parham from the David Nicholls book and 2006 film, with songs by pop-punk composer Tom Rasmussen.

“There is an interest in musicals from younger audiences now,” said Barne. The show he has created with Buchan, a funny riff on the romcom, has already won two industry prizes. In the lead roles are Dujonna Gift and award-winner Sam Tutty – who both starred in Dear Evan Hansen – as young wedding guests who meet at JFK airport. The show, originally called The Season, ran in several provincial theatres before catching the eye of the Kiln’s artistic director, Indhu Rubasingham, who will be taking over from Rufus Norris at the National Theatre.

According to the old joke, the fastest route to the bright lights of the West End is “practice, practice, practice”. In recent years, though, it has seemed quicker to simply string together a juke-box musical, or adapt a hit film. Musicals based on the songs of Tina Turner, Whitney Houston or Frankie Valli, together with all-singing, all-dancing versions of films such as Mrs Doubtfire, Back to the Future and Pretty Woman, have recently dominated.

But these small, new musicals are reassuring proof that practice and new creative talent can still count: “We made a joke that if we ever had a show on in the West End, we would both get a tattoo,” said Buchan, a performance poet, who has also written for the Observer. That tattoo now looks like a certainty, and will be of a small bat, not the wedding cake of the show’s title.

Neither is planning to leave their day job yet however: they claim that rumours of the money to be made with a West End musical are exaggerated. Buchan, like the hero of his show, works in a cinema, and Barne for a music publisher in Wiltshire.

Despite many younger people having a prejudice against musicals, they were drawn to the form because they wanted to write songs that “were more answerable to the story, and the characters and, of course, the audience”, says Buchan. “People do look down on musicals because they so clearly want to be loved. But we felt liberated from the pressure to be edifying. You can just be entertaining.”

Mean Girls, the movie-musical adaption that opens in theaters this weekend, feels like both an inevitable release and a bizarre confluence of trends that began long before its young cast was even born. We know that Hollywood will take any opportunity to expand an existing piece of intellectual property in a bid to make more cash; they kind of tried this already with Mean Girls’ ill-advised straight-to-ABC Family sequel in 2011. The decision to revisit the property as a straight remake but with songs is something that has only happened a handful of times. But given how recently the same thing happened with The Color Purple, we could be entering a new era of the movie to musical to movie musical pipeline. This phase is based, above all else, on the recognition of an old piece of film, but with some songs thrown in to justify its existence.

The story of how we ended up with movie-to-musical-to-movie musical adaptions of both The Color Purple and Mean Girls playing simultaneously in theaters across the country starts in 2001 with The Producers. Based on the 1968 Mel Brooks film, The Producers became the biggest hit of the 2001 Broadway season, won a record-breaking 12 Tony Awards, and made a ton of money. And even though it was a film first, when a Broadway musical is that successful, a film adaptation is all but guaranteed.

Even before The Producers, most Broadway musicals were based on something. Historically, it was common to adapt operas (Rent, Miss Saigon) biographies (Evita, Hamilton), and Shakespearean texts (Kiss Me Kate, West Side Story). There were plenty of musicals in Broadway’s Golden Age based on films, too; Nine and Sweet Charity are both based on Fellini films, and Sondheim’s A Little Night Music was based on an Ingmar Bergman film. (All three of these were later adapted back into movie musicals, too.)

Broadway figured out how to cash in on the Intellectual Property boom long before Hollywood did. In the 1990s, Disney adapted Beauty And The Beast and The Lion King into stage shows. Those were already movie musicals, so the transition was pretty natural, and The Producers was a Broadway-centric plot with a couple of existing songs, so that transition made sense too. The latter’s success, however, spawned an avalanche of successful, mainstream American films being turned into stage musicals, including Hairspray, Young Frankenstein, Legally Blonde, The Color Purple, Bring It On, and Mean Girls. Hairspray was also adapted back into a movie musical (and it remains one of the best in the genre, regardless of source material).

To anyone who has paid attention to Hollywood in the past two decades, this latest push should sound familiar. There was a spate of remakes of Baby Boom-era classics in the early 2000s (Stepford Wives, Yours, Mine, and Ours, Freaky Friday …). There were also a bunch of film series based on popular novels, kicking off with the Lord Of The Rings and Harry Potter series. Today, it’s endless sequels or endless live-action remakes of animated Disney movies. Though quality can vary with the latter, it’s fairly clear that these are exercises in brand extension, a way to bring audiences into theaters by tantalizing them with a familiar favorite. Usually, these remakes provide at least something new: updates to lyrics, new songs, updates to potentially outdated gender roles.

The thing with this most recent adaptation of Mean Girls that stands out, though, is that it only seems to have a passing interest in being a musical. The stage production, which opened on Broadway in 2018, is hardly a masterpiece, but it is decent, and it has some fun Broadway pastiche across its score. But Mean Girls 2024 cuts almost all of the group numbers, instead focusing on solos or duets, which have also been rearranged to sound like pop songs. Truthfully, it’s more like a live-action Disney remake, updated to suit modern sensibilities, where the characters occasionally burst into song at random.

It really doesn’t matter how good or bad Mean Girls (2024) is, though, because the original film has been one of the internet’s favorite movies for almost 20 years. Hairspray and Little Shop Of Horrors, another standout in the genre, were not based on wildly popular films, and live theater is inherently a niche, exclusive audience. Those film adaptations needed to stand on their own because audiences generally weren’t going to see a musical adaptation of a John Waters film (they were going to see Zac Efron, more likely). But an audience will go see something that says Mean Girls (or The Color Purple, or Matilda) because it’s a beloved film and they’re predisposed to like it.

It stands to reason that there will be more movies based on musicals based on movies. Both Spamalot and Sunset Boulevard are reportedly in development, and maybe one or both of them will be pretty good. Maybe Legally Blonde, a musical adaptation that turned out far better than anyone expected, will make a decent movie musical. But if we’ve learned anything over the past couple of years in Hollywood, it’s that it doesn’t have to be to make a lot of money; it just has to be called Legally Blonde.

On the same topic, Dan Murrell (probably my favourite critic) dissects why Hollywood is ashamed of promoting the fact the movie musicals it makes are musicals.

Mean Girls is easily winning the box office popularity contest with an estimated four-day opening of $31.5 million over the long Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, although severe winter weather saw more than 50 theaters close Friday in such hubs as Chicago and Toronto. Many of the shuttered cinemas hope to reopen Saturday.

The Paramount film arrives on the big screen 20 years after the Lindsay Lohan-led cult classic Mean Girls, which was directed by Mark Waters and written by Tina Fey, strutted into cinemas. Fey returned to pen the script for the new film, which stars Angourie Rice, Reneé Rapp, Auli’i Cravalho, Bebe Wood and Chris Briney. Fey and Tim Meadows also reprise their roles from the 2004 movie.

Females turned out in force to see the new film, making up 74 percent of Friday ticket buyers. Younger females in particular were keen to see the musical right away. Nearly 70 percent of all ticket buyers were between ages 18 and 34, including 40 percent between 18 and 24. The movie topped Friday’s chart with $11.5 million and is coming in ahead of expectations.

The original Mean Girls sports a Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score of 84 percent; the score for the new film is currently a fresh 70 percent from the first 108 reviews. While the 2004 film earned an A CinemaScore, the updated version earned a B+.

Directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., Mean Girls cost a relatively modest $36 million to produce before marketing and is the latest musical to brave the big screen after Wonka and The Color Purple.

Screenrant points out that the musical's estimated 3-day box office of about $29M and 4-day estimate of $31.5M is considerably better than the 2004 original, which had an a 3-day opening gross (not adjusted for inflation) of $24.4 million and a 4-day total of $25.6 million, though it didn't open over a holiday.

Even though the Mean Girls musical has beaten the original's opening, it still has a long way to go if it wants to outgross the 2004 movie entirely. In addition to being a much-quoted classic, 2004's Mean Girls was a box office hit, becoming the 26th highest-grossing domestic movie of the year, above blockbusters including Alien vs. Predator, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, and A Series of Unfortunate Events. Ultimately, with a domestic gross of $86 million and an international haul of $44 million, the movie grossed $130.1 million worldwide.

The new movie's success may end up depending on word of mouth. While the Mean Girls (2024) reviews are strong, earning a 70% score on Rotten Tomatoes, they can't quite compete with the Certified Fresh 84% of the original. Word of mouth could also be impacted by the fact that the movie wasn't advertised as a musical, which could potentially lead to audience consternation. However, the same advertising scheme didn't hurt the box office results of the 2023 holiday musical release Wonka, which became one of the top hits of the year.

Wonka opened somewhat higher than Mean Girls, with a 3-day opening gross of $39 million. However, if the new movie keeps up its pace relative to that 2023 release, which has so far earned a domestic total of $167.8 million, it could very well cross the $100 million mark in North America. Even if it earns a small international gross, the musical could very well pull ahead of the original movie with that kind of total.

As part of a longer interview Kate Miller-Heidke talks musical theatre, Muriel's Wedding and Bananaland:

“I think I was a very eccentric child, a bit socially backward, a sort of mixture of painfully awkward and introverted and also a terrible show-off who loved to sing. I didn’t know where I fit in for a long time, and then I discovered amateur musical theatre. I found my people. When I met the theatre kids I realised, ‘Oh, I’m not such a freak after all’.” She took violin and piano lessons and joined the children’s chorus of professional productions of Brisbane shows like Oliver.

But the highlight [of her career] so far has been the success of Muriel’s Wedding the musical. “It’s such a buzz to get to sit in the audience after a few champagnes and getting to watch what we’ve done without any pressure of performing myself. The opening night of Muriel’s Wedding at that point was the biggest thrill I’d ever experienced. Partly because it wasn’t me on stage.” Yes, she still gets nervous every performance, despite decades of experience. She’d be worried if she wasn’t she says.

This year promises to be a busy one for her and Nuttall. They plan to go to the UK where Muriel’s Wedding, which won five Helpmann Awards, including Best Original Score, is slated to open on the West End after a regional tour in Britain.

BANANALAND, the project that’s brought them to the Sydney Festival, was a project they began during COVID lockdown, with Nuttall writing the script and Miller-Heidke writing the music particularly with the voice of Max McKenna in mind. McKenna, then known as Maggie, starred in Muriel’s Wedding and has what Miller-Heidke describes as one of her “favourite voices on the planet.” It is directed by Simon Phillips, who also directed Muriel’s Wedding on stage.

BANANALAND follows the story of angry punk rockers Kitty Litter and their unexpected rise to fame when one of the band’s protest anthems becomes a hit with the unlikeliest of listenerships – kids. A narrative similar to that of the Wiggles, some of whom started in the band the Cockroaches.

“The main protagonist, Ruby Semblances, is in a band who are on a mission to save the world. She’s got a bit too much Rock Eisteddfod in her background. And she takes it very seriously. She almost has a messiah complex. She’s a magnetic presence and the rest of the band take their lead from her, and they have very strong messages which are quite didactic.

“We began it so long ago it started off with Joh Bjelke-Petersen in mind. Now it’s about Clive Palmer’s incursion into federal politics,” says Miller-Heidke, who, like Nuttall, is a Queenslander who grew up with Bjelke-Petersen and Palmer often discussed.

“The kids mistake the political anthem for a song about a magical land where everybody gets a free banana and it starts climbing the charts to become a hit with the very young set,” she says.

Things go bad, there’s hints of violence, a giant inflatable penis, and Miller-Heidke warns the show really is not intended for children. “Keir created the story, the characters and the whole script, and it’s very, very rare to get an original show put up like this. It costs millions of dollars. It’s very risky. Musicals usually take about 10 years to develop, and we’re just so lucky that Brisbane, now Sydney Festival got on board to support it.

“Because it’s a comedy it lives or dies by the laughs and by the time we got to opening night in Brisbane I was like, is this even funny? I don’t know any more. And then when the audience started to laugh, and then when that laughter kept building and building and there was this sort of runaway train of laughter I was like, ‘Oh, thanks’. That sort of exhilaration is really cool.”

Roundabout Theatre Company's 2024-2025 Broadway season will include a jazz-infused, New Orleans-style production of The Pirates of Penzance, which began as a small in-house reading before the pandemic, then was further developed in a benefit concert last season. The production, which will close out the 24-25 season will premier in April 2025 at the Todd Haimes Theatre on Broadway and star musical theatre heartthrob Ramin Karimloo as the Pirate King and David Hyde Pierce as the Major General and WS Gilbert. The Gilbert & Sullivan classic features a new adaptation by Rupert Holmes. Let's see if Karimloo will keep his shirt on during the show.

New West End musical The Time Traveller's Wife has posted early closing notices at the Apollo Theatre in London.

The show was originally booking to 30 March 2024, but will now close on 24 February 2024.

Anyone who has purchased tickets after 24 February will be contacted by their ticketing provider.

Based on the best-selling book by Audrey Niffenegger and the movie screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin, The Time Traveller’s Wife boasts original musical from multi Grammy Award-winning composers Joss Stone, and Dave Stewart from Eurythmics. The shows’s book is by Lauren Gunderson, with additional songs by Nick Finlow (music) and Kait Kerrigan (lyrics).

Reviews for The Time Traveller’s Wife were mainly positive, if not glowing. Last Sunday, 7 January, the show celebrated 100 performances in the West End.

Burlesque has announced further dates for its world premiere production.

Based on the 2010 musical drama film, directed by Steve Antin, it revolves around a small-town girl named Ali Rose (played by Christina Aguilera in the original flick) who moves to Los Angeles and stumbles upon a struggling burlesque lounge owned by Tess (played by Cher on screen).

Penned now for the stage by Antin, the theatrical version will have tunes by Aguilera, Sia and Diane Warren, as well as additional numbers by Jess Folley and Todrick Hall and additional material by Kate Wetherhead.

Performances from 13 to 29 June at Manchester Opera House have now sold out, but the production has added a second run at the same venue from Thursday 3 October to Saturday 2 November 2024.

Before that, the piece will play at Glasgow Theatre Royal from 11 to 28 September 2024. These two runs will come prior to a West End transfer, with details to be revealed.

On the creative team are Nick Winston (director and choreographer), Soutra Gilmour (set designer), Tom Curran (musical arrangements and orchestrations), Ryan Dawson Laight (costume designer), Phil Bateman (musical supervisor), Chris Poon (musical director), Robin Antin (creative co-producer/associate choreographer), Harry Blumenau (casting director), Sarah-Jane Price (casting associate) and Lloyd Thomas (production manager).

Casting for the runs are to be revealed.

The multiple Academy Award winning motion picture Les Misérables will be re-released with a remastered version of the film exclusively in Dolby Cinema, featuring Dolby Atmos sound and Dolby Vision visuals.

The film will be released:

• 14 February in Australia and New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Ireland
• 22 February in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates
• 23 February in the United States for a one-week engagement at AMC Theatres
• this spring in South Korea, Germany, The Netherlands, Denmark
• August in Japan

Michael, the Michael Jackson biopic starring Jaafar Jackson as the King of Pop, is getting a global release. Lionsgate is releasing the movie stateside on April 18, 2025, with Universal is handling overseas distribution.

Today, Lionsgate announced that it was beginning production on director Antoine Fuqua’s Michael on January 22.

The John Logan-scripted movie, produced by Bohemian Rhapsody‘s Graham King, follows the complicated man who becomes the King of Pop, from triumphs to tragedies, from his human side and personal struggles to his creative genius.

Last January, Jaafar Jackson, the 27-year old nephew of Michael Jackson, landed the title role. The singer and songwriter is the son of former Jackson 5 member and solo act Jermaine Jackson. Jaafar has been singing and dancing since age 12 and showcased himself singing tunes from Sam Cooke to Marvin Gaye, along with originals.

Fuqua said in an interview with EW: “It’s uncanny how much he’s like Michael … sounds like him, dances like him, sings. It’s really uncanny. Graham King, who is a fantastic producer, found him, and introduced him to me, and I was blown away.”

While the estate’s of musical legends can often hold sway of how their cinematic narrative is told, Fuqua says his Michael Jackson biopic will retell the King of Pop’s tale “as we know it” and tackle some of the controversies the singer was involved in during his lifetime.

“Just to tell the facts as we know it, about the artist, about the man, about the human being. You know, the good, bad and the ugly,” Fuqua said in that interview.

King said in a statement today: “I’m so honored to tell Michael’s story. It’s been a long journey and I’m excited for the film to show audiences around the world a perspective of Michael that they’ve never seen.”

The movie is not related to the stage musical MJ, currently playing on Broadway with productions scheduled for a US tour, London, Hamburg and Sydney.

An overview of what's coming to Broadway in 2024. Musicals include

• Days of Wine and Roses
• The Notebook
• Water for Elephants
• The Who's Tommy
• The Outsiders
• Lempicka
• Hell's Kitchen
• The Heart of Rock and Roll
• Suffs
• The Wiz
• Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club
• Smash
• Tammy Faye
• Sunset Boulevard

Interesting article about the thinking that went into adapting the musical to the screen.

20 years after the original Mean Girls premiered, Tina Fey has returned to the halls of North Shore High to bring the musical adaptation to the big screen.

In order to bring the 2018 Broadway hit to Hollywood, the writer, producer, and star enlisted director duo Arturo Perez Jr. and Samantha Jayne to helm the movie musical.

While describing their first meeting about the film, Fey says that "they very smartly knew and said, 'We think that because most people who see this movie will have seen the original, many of them will have seen the musical, how can we surprise them?"

The film features 12 musical numbers – cut down from the stage versions 21 songs – each of which completely immerse the audience into a musical frenzy. Along with choreographer Kyle Hanagami and Steadycam Operator Ari Robbins, the team aimed for audiences to feel like they are walking in each characters' shoes.

"I think for us, the rules that we set for the musical sequences was just whose perspective are we in and what's the feeling we're trying to achieve and then just using every cinematic tool possible to kind of raise those things up," Perez shared.

"It's one thing to be like, this is what the dancers and the performers are doing," Fey said of the complexities of filming musical numbers. "But where is the camera catching that?"

The film is mainly told through the lense of Janis and Damian, the high school outcasts who take in Cady as their way of getting revenge on Regina George. Fey describes Perez and Jayne's original pitch as framing the film with Janis and Damian as the directors.

"How would a bunch of 16-year-olds figure out how to make a movie? Okay, they'd bring their friends in who play in the band, but they actually also play at all the cool house parties. Alright, let's get them to do the score on screen. Let's get these girls who are in choir, but also have their little bedroom-pop thing going on, let's get them to do the singing, this Greek chorus that we can create," Jayne continues.

The film also seamlessly incorporates social media into the story, something that wasn't as prevalent during the original film. From TikTok montages to musical numbers shot on cell phones, the directors creatively use modern day technology to expand the story.

"That's why one of the things I love most about this movie is going from the telephone aspect ratio which is 9 x 16, and then you go to cinema-scope and you don't even notice it, hopefully. It's going from like small to massive. That was the most exciting part for us," Perez shares.

The songs, composed by Fey's husband, Jeff Richmond, with lyrics by Nell Benjamin, have also been updated for film.

"I think musically, the instrumentation could be so different than on Broadway because, after working with a live orchestra on Broadway, this is a very different palette," Fey says of her husband's work.

To perfect the pop sound that fits into the story as good as Regina George's Christian Louboutin heels, the writers also recruited star Reneé Rapp to contribute to some of the music.

After Rapp played the role of high school it-girl Regina George on Broadway, Fey knew she had what it takes to bring the role to the big screen.

"She had the voice. I knew on a really technical level that she was young enough to still play it in a closeup," Fey said. "When the musical ended in the pandemic, she went and did that HBO show, Sex Lives of College Girls, I just was so impressed to see her learning curve of like, 'Oh, stage acting, Jimmy Award-winner, now I'm a television comedy actor.' She understood it immediately. She just is so funny. She really understands the shift to the on-camera acting."

Joining Rapp in the film is a stacked lineup of fresh talent, including Angourie Rice, Auli’i Cravalho, Avantika, Bebe Wood, Christopher Briney, and Tony nominated A Strange Loop star Jaquel Spivey.

In order to create a realistic high school environment, the teams says they had extensive conversations regarding the film's aesthetic.

"We had lots of conversations about what the school looked like, what the world looks like, and it was really important for us to keep it really grounded and identifiable with teenagers," Jayne says. "We wanted all of these kids to be really reflective of the student bodies that kids see in their everyday high school. Keeping that world really grounded allowed us to break out into these more inner subjective reality sequences."

In the Spring of 2023, the production took over an old all-boys Catholic school in Middletown, New Jersey. Filming was completed in about a month.

"It was insane, but it was really fun," Fey shared. "All our offices were in the school, our dressing rooms were classrooms, we ate lunch in a tent next to the cafeteria because we were always filming in the cafeteria. But it was very upbeat. It turned spring while we were shooting. It felt like being part of a school year that was like coming to a happy ending by the time we got to the spring fling."

"I think for the actors, it was important for us to make it feel like, even though it's the dead of winter in New Jersey, to make it feel like a summer camp in a way," Jayne shares. "So even upon first meeting and bringing them in all together, we were just doing silly acting exercises and having them break the ice because you just you just want to create that safe environment."

As the film is introduced to a new generation, several high schoolers are having their own chance to take on the iconic roles as the musical version is licensed to schools around the country. Fey says that high school productions of the musical are something she has envisioned for years.

"Before Broadway even opened, as we were working on it, I just remember thinking, 'This is going to be so fun years from now when it's available to high schools because it has five female leads and you get to play your own age. If you have a gay theater boy in your school, he gets to be himself.' So the old theater teacher in me was like, 'This is going to be good.' I love hearing about and seeing clips of productions all over the country. It's really fun."

As Mean Girls opens in theaters on January 12, the team hopes that young performers find themselves in this new musical version of the beloved story.

"Hopefully, people currently doing the show will come have a cast party at the movie theater and come see us," Fey concluded.

Stephen Sondheim — composer-lyricist for A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, and more than a dozen other musicals — is having "a moment" as one of his Into the Woods lyrics might have put it.

Or perhaps a better fit for the Broadway legend, who was widely regarded as brilliant but an acquired taste when he died in 2021, would be a tweak to a lyric from the song "Children and Art" in Sunday in the Park with George:

"There he is, there he is, there he is,
Sondheim is everywhere,
Broadway must love him so much."

Indeed, the hottest ticket on the Great White Way at the moment, judging from what people are willing to pay for it, is Sondheim's notoriously troubled musical-that-goes-backwards, Merrily We Roll Along.

Its original Broadway run was a snappily disastrous 16 performances after it opened, and it has never entirely worked until now. But it's currently playing to SRO crowds and standing ovations at Broadway's Hudson Theater.

Meanwhile, the hottest ticket Off-Broadway, and already the longest running show ever to play at Manhattan's new venue The Shed, is Here We Are, the musical Sondheim was still working on when he died.

Also playing to capacity crowds in New York, his penny-dreadful horror tale Sweeney Todd, starring Josh Groban at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater. London's petite Menier Chocolate Factory has Pacific Overtures. And on tour in the U.S. is a gender-reversed revival of Company, the last show the composer-lyricist saw before he died.

All of the revivals were less successful in their original runs in the 1970s and '80s. As I've been catching them, I can't help thinking how pleased Sondheim would be — pleased and a bit surprised, no doubt — and wishing I could hear him talk about them, especially that new show, Here We Are.

And then, I discovered I could.

"I think the idea," says his unmistakable growl on a scratchy cellphone recording, "is to do it in the spring of '18."

D.T. Max interviewed Sondheim several times in 2017 and 2018 for a New Yorker profile that he turned into a book — Finale: Late Conversations with Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim was working at the time on what would become Here We Are, or rather, on its first half, which is based on the surrealist Luis Buñuel comedy The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, about three couples searching everywhere for a place to eat.

"There is a complete score [for that first act]," he tells Max in the recording, "but I want to add and tweak. Second act there's a complete draft of the book [by David Ives based on Buñuel's Exterminating Angel] and I've just begun the score."

Max had recorded his in-person interviews on his cellphone, and while the sound quality isn't all one might wish, the conversations are intriguing. For instance, this, about how a producer's stray remark decades ago planted the seed for Here We Are:

"It stems from a remark Hal Prince made in a cab once," remembers Sondheim. "We were looking out at night — coming back from the theater or something — and he said, 'Y'know what the dominant form of entertainment is? Eating out.' Because all the restaurants were lit up and that's what people were doing. They weren't going to the theater, they were eating. And I thought, 'Gee what an interesting idea.' And I didn't immediately think 'oh that would make a musical' but somehow, on seeing Discreet Charm..."

What Sondheim put to music and to his characteristically witty lyrics, was the frustration of diners who are perpetually being told they will not be getting food, or even coffee.

"We have no mocha.
We're also out of latte.
We do expect a little latte later,
But we haven't got a lotta latte now"

"I'm still feeling my way," says the songwriter, "because it isn't the kind of tight story that something like Sweeney or Merrily is. There are six main characters and they interact, but there's very little plot."

There's plenty of plot in his other shows — almost too much sometimes. Back in 1981, audiences got confused by the time-going-backwards thing in Merrily We Roll Along, and also couldn't keep its characters straight. The original production tried to clear up who-was-who with T-shirts saying things like "Best Pal."

The current production has a better trick: It cast Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe as the best pal; it's easy for audiences to keep him straight. He's playing a budding writer of musicals in the 1950s and '60s — exactly what Sondheim was back then.

"It relates to my life," Sondheim tells Max. "It's not about my life but it relates." When asked how seeing a Merrily production generally hits him, he says that remembering the frantic, gotta-put-on-a-show craziness of his youth gets to him every time, especially the deep-in-rehearsal-panic lyric, "We'll worry about it on Sunday."

"I always cry," he tells Max. "'We'll worry about it on Sunday' always makes me cry."

That song is called "Opening Doors," and its next lyric is "we're opening doors, singing 'here we are'...."

And here we are, four decades later, with his final show — called Here We Are — feeling like a valedictory victory-lap, filled with references to his earlier work.

The man who wrote a song (and a book of lyrics) called "Finishing the Hat," never finished that second act — in librettist Ives and director Joe Mantello's hands, music disappearing from the characters' lives becomes a plot point — but his legacy is secure. He talks in Finale: Late Conversations with Stephen Sondheim about feeling low energy, and even old-fashioned.

"The kind of music I write has nothing to do with pop music since the mid-'50s," he notes.

When gently reminded that he's regarded as a genius who's altered an art form, he deflects the compliment by citing "Stravinsky, Gershwin, Picasso" and saying he doesn't belong in their company.

He may have been the only person who thought that. But anyway, it's not up to him — posterity gets to decide who belongs in the genius pantheon.

And with stars and directors clamoring to do his shows and audiences embracing them as never before, the early verdict is clear: Stephen Sondheim's work — all of it — is, as Merrily's characters sing of the show that came out of all those frantic rehearsals...

"a surefire, genuine,
Walk-away blockbuster,
Lines down to Broadway,
Boffola, sensational,
Box-office lollapalooza,
gargantuan hit!"

Grammy and Tony-winning producer Van Dean has announced the launch of a new record label, Center Stage Records. The new label has over two dozen albums scheduled for 2024, including Broadway, Off-Broadway, and West End recordings, plus concept recordings and albums from solo artists.

Center Stage Records will also establish a London office, which will be under the leadership of Executive Director and London Producer Jamie Chapman Dixon. Additional Center Stage staff will include Robbie Rozelle as A&R (Artists & Repertoire) Director. Rozelle will also design artwork and packaging for new releases, and conceive and produce albums with artists.

Previously, Dean ran Broadway Records, which is under the ownership of Cutting Edge Group. Center Stage will take over the management and distribution of about two-thirds of Broadway Records' back catalog, with intent to collaborate with Broadway Records on select future releases.

Dean co-founded Broadway Records, which released nearly 300 albums under his leadership. Dean helped to produce Broadway Records' Grammy-winning cast recording of the 2015 Broadway revival of The Color Purple, and also served as a producer for the Tony-winning 2012 revival of Porgy and Bess, among numerous other producing credits.

Fresh off an early workshop of “The Light in the Piazza,” the actress Kelli O’Hara had a passing thought: What if there was an ambitious musical adaptation of “Days of Wine and Roses,” the 1962 addiction drama that starred Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick? It could give her a chance to reunite with “Piazza” composer Adam Guettel and with the actor Brian D’Arcy James, with whom she had starred in the short-lived Broadway musical “The Sweet Smell of Success.”

Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” podcast.

“I just thought: What an awesome acting challenge and rich, artful experience [it could be],” O’Hara said in a conversation with James on Variety‘s theater podcast, “Stagecraft.” “Adam was intrigued by the idea and without me knowing, he went off and got the rights to it!”

It took 21 years of on-and-off work, but “Days of Wine and Roses” finally had its world premiere at Off Broadway’s Atlantic Theater last year and has just begun performances on Broadway. Both performers said they relish the opportunity to return to songs that can be challenging both for singers and for audiences.

“Adam constructs the composition to not necessarily introduce you to the melody straight away,” James explained. “There’s so much drama and character and story being parsed out through his music and in the structure of it, but once you get to a familiar landing spot — a melody — you are just overwhelmed by how satisfying it is.”

“Adam cares about how every single note matches the emotion,” O’Hara added. “He’s matching those vocal challenges to what the character is saying at the time, so when you, as a singer and an actor, learn it and digest it, you start to feel completely in sync with it.”

O’Hara also admitted that although she first imagined doing “Days of Wine and Roses” in her 20s, she’s glad for the long development process. “I realize now that I would have probably never been ready to play it then,” she laughed. “Nobody’s more naive than a 24-year-old girl saying, ‘I want to do that!'”

For Jonathan Tunick, an early love of “Tubby the Tuba” led to a career as an orchestrator. He talks about his Sondheim partnership, and creating a sound that “can hint at unspoken secrets.”

https://archive.md/4vxpq

To understand the role of the Broadway orchestrator, seek out the composer Stephen Sondheim's piano demo for the song "Losing My Mind" from the musical Follies and then compare it to the version on the original cast recording. The demo's tone is wistful and resigned, with a touch of the whiskey bar about it. In the finished version, the song sounds transformed: Ascending notes on the strings, interjections from the brass and crashing cymbals build to a powerful climax, evoking the heartache and inner turmoil contained in the lyric.

Link to Sondheim demo of ?Losing My Mind

What happened? The short answer: Jonathan Tunick.
"I seem to have a nose for the theater, and it's really like that," Tunick, the prolific Broadway orchestrator, said during an interview in his book-lined study on the Upper West Side. "If something works, you can almost smell it."

Link to OCR of 'Losing My Mind'

Sondheim himself called Tunick the "best orchestrator in the history of the theater" during a 2011 video interview with Sony Masterworks. His work can be heard in three very different Sondheim musicals on New York stages right now: Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along and Sondheim's posthumous musical, Here We Are.

In fact, Tunick, 85, has orchestrated nearly every Sondheim musical since 1970, including Company, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, Into the Woods and Passion. For other composers, he orchestrated A Chorus Line, Nine, The Color Purple and A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder. An EGOT winner (that rare recipient of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Awards), Tunick won a Tony for his Titanic orchestrations in 1997 (the first year the award was presented) and an Academy Award for the film version of A Little Night Music. Last fall he became the first orchestrator to have his portrait hung at Sardi's.

At the Sardi's event, at least a couple of guests could be heard wondering aloud: What does a Broadway orchestrator actually do?

Typically, for a Broadway show of the kind Tunick might orchestrate, the composer provides the vocal part along with some form of accompaniment. That accompaniment can be a basic chord sheet, a fully realized piano part or anything in between. It's the orchestrator's task - a long and lonely one, Tunick said - to turn that accompaniment into something an orchestra can perform.

There are, of course, more poetic descriptions. In Steven Suskin's book The Sound of Broadway Music, the original Carousel orchestrator, Don Walker, likened orchestration to "the clothing of a musical thought"; Hans Spialek, who orchestrated On Your Toes and numerous other Rodgers and Hart shows, compared it to "painting a musical picture."

Tunick's preferred analogy is "lighting for the ears." He often confers with a show's lighting designer to determine which colors and shadings will be used onstage. The orchestra, he said, has the ability "to provide its own shadings of light, darkness, warmth and texture to the music and lyrics."

For the Broadway premiere of Company in 1970, Tunick fashioned a crisp, gleaming sound that was the aural equivalent of the chrome-and-glass set by Boris Aronson. Tunick conjured a hellacious soundscape for the macabre Sweeney Todd: agitated strings, blazing horns and frantic xylophones that evoke the scurrying of rats. For Merrily We Roll Along, he replicated the bold, brassy up-tempo sound of 1960s Broadway overtures.

Tunick sees to it that the instruments never get in the way of the words. "He is always aware of the lyric and the dramatic moment," said Joel Fram, the music director of the Broadway revival of Merrily We Roll Along. He pointed to that show's "Our Time" as an example, with its twinkling piano, simple woodwind solos, gentle rhythmic figure on the bassoon and pizzicato cello - a suitable soundtrack for the youthful optimism of the show's protagonists at that point. "It serves the song rather than overwhelms it."

Charlie Alterman pointed to a favorite orchestration in Company, for which he served as the music director of the recent national tour. "It's a bubbling up of emotion somewhere inside the character of Bobby," he said, referring to the moment in the final number, "Being Alive," when, unexpectedly, the melody of "Someone Is Waiting" - an earlier song filled with a yearning for companionship - sneaks in like a dawning realization.

Link to OCR of "Someone is Waiting"

"Deep down there's something that remembers the feeling of "Someone Is Waiting" and wants to be heard," Alterman said. The choice is intriguing on an intellectual level, "but at a gut level, it does that incredible thing that good music does, where you can't quite explain it in your mind, but it's clear as day in your heart."

Tunick remembers sneaking those few notes into "Being Alive" - and that Sondheim was pleased with the addition. "At least it showed him that I was paying attention," Tunick said.

Link to OCR of "Being Alive"

More than merely making the music sound pretty or palatable, a great orchestrator "is also a playwright, telling the story and reflecting character in orchestral sound," said Michael Starobin, who orchestrated Sondheim's Sunday in the Park With George and Assassins.

As the "Being Alive" example above demonstrates, orchestration "can hint at unspoken secrets," Tunick said. "Things that the characters don?t say, or don't want to say, or don't even know."

One piece of music made a big impression on the young Jonathan Tunick: "Tubby the Tuba," the 1945 children's song, centers on a forlorn tuba who longs to play the melody instead of just the bass line. Much like Peter and the Wolf, the song highlighted the distinct characters of the individual instruments of the orchestra. "This idea penetrated my growing brain," he said. "It developed into a lifelong obsession."

Tunick had some perfunctory piano lessons as a youngster growing up in New York - "I sailed through the Diller-Quaile book in a week" - but it was a clarinet, a gift from his amateur clarinetist uncle, that kept his interest.

While a student at what is now Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, he started his own band and played in the school orchestra as well as in the All City High School Orchestra. He started writing music, majoring in composition at Bard College, before paying his way through Juilliard by performing with the school's orchestra.

He was considerably more interested in what was happening at Birdland than on Broadway. "Musicals at the time were a little stodgy," he said. "It was disposable popular entertainment. You'd throw it out like a used Kleenex. I was a little hipper than that."

While in college, a girlfriend introduced him to Frank Sinatra - and the possibilities of orchestral arrangement. He was struck by the way Nelson Riddle's arrangements on Sinatra's breakup album In the Wee Small Hours provided commentary, color and context. "He was tone painting," Tunick said.

College was followed by 10 years of fitful work as an arranger and orchestrator before a big break: orchestrating Promises, Promises, whose jazz-inflected score by Burt Bacharach brought a refreshingly contemporary sound to Broadway.

Emboldened by that show's success, Tunick called up Sondheim, whose originality and wit as a composer he had admired since hearing A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Tunick offered Sondheim his services for his next project.

When he first heard the piano renditions of the songs that would become Company, Tunick was taken aback. With a few exceptions -"Barcelona" sounds like Erik Satie by way of Brazil, he observed - the score had a sound entirely of its own. "If anything it was sort of like Stravinsky, but not quite," Tunick said, citing the peculiar melodies and rhythm of "The Little Things You Do Together" as an example of Sondheim?s startling originality. "What is that? In every case I had to give it careful thought."

Initially, Tunick wasn?t overly confident in his ability to do justice to the material. "I was terrified," he said. But, starting with Company, Tunick helped define the characteristic Sondheim sound. In contrast to the sumptuous blare of an entire orchestra at full blast, this was a sound defined by crisper lines, purer colors, more instrumental solos, more variation and contrast of tonal effects.

That sound is certainly present in Here We Are, the new musical about privileged urbanites trapped in an existential nightmare. Befitting the sinister surrealism of the source material - the Luis Bunuel films The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel - Tunick's underscoring at times resembles the effervescently weird music of a Looney Tunes cartoon. And, once again, the orchestra knows something the characters don't, greeting the happy exclamation "What a perfect day!" with notes that jar and thud.

Orchestrating that show after Sondheim?s death in 2021 was "like going through the letters of a deceased friend," said Tunick, "editing them for publication." Tunick was happy with the result. "We went out on a high note," he added.

The musical collaboration will carry on, though.

Having already reorchestrated several Sondheim shows - not just the ones he orchestrated originally - Tunick is adapting the score of A Little Night Music for full orchestra, rendering it more suitable for performance by symphony orchestras and in opera houses. He will conduct a concert and recording of the new version this year.

In an even more profound and lasting way, of course, through cast albums and successive productions, the Sondheim-Tunick collaboration will continue to inspire generations of musical theater lovers - and reward ever closer listening.

Tunick's last meeting with Sondheim turned out to be only weeks before the composer's death, at a concert of Tunick's work at Sharon Playhouse in Connecticut. Tunick took the opportunity to say a few words to his longtime collaborator: "I know you hate sentimentality. But I have to tell you how much it's meant to me, working with you all these years."

As Tunick tearily remembers it, Sondheim put his arm around him, saying, "Jonathan, we're lucky we met one another."

TV musicals like Glee and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend have dedicated fan bases and critical acclaim, thanks to their fabulous musical performances and unique exploration of characters' inner desires. Many of the best musicals have happened on TV, providing an excellent platform for storytelling through music, drama, and comedy, with streaming services allowing for more experimentation and creativity in the genre. Shows like Nashville, Smash, and Empire started strong but eventually lost their charm due to clichés, melodrama, and implausible plotlines, while underrated shows like Galavant struggled with low ratings but offered cleverness and fun.

The list includes:
10. Nashville (2012)
9. Smash (2012)
8. Empire (2015)
7. Galavant (2015)
6. Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist (2020)
5. High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (2019)
4. The Monkees (1966)
3. Flight Of The Conchords (2007)
2. Glee (2009)

1. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015)

Can't argue with number 1. Personally I'd add Schmigadoon to this list somewhere.

Concord Theatricals launched One Singular Sensation: A Chorus Line Licensing Competition, which will award ten schools in low-income communities a complimentary license package to perform A Chorus Line: Teen Edition in 2024 or 2025, to honor the 80th anniversary of Marvin Hamlisch’s birth and the 50th anniversary of the original Broadway production.

The Competition is open to all high schools in America, especially Title 1 and other under-resourced schools.

“A Chorus Line is one of the most iconic and innovative musicals in the history of Broadway,” said Bill Gaden, President of Concord Theatricals. “We are so happy to give students from under-resourced schools the opportunity to explore the show’s characters and experiences. The story of A Chorus Line provides a unique peek into the backstage drama of putting on a Broadway show – a story every theatre student will enjoy.”

To enter the competition, schools must complete a written application, including an essay that answers the prompt: What makes your students singular sensations? Guidelines for an additional, optional video entry are also provided. Ten schools will be chosen based on a variety of factors, including financial need and creativity of answer. Each recipient will be awarded a three-performance licensing package for A Chorus Line: Teen Edition, including all rental material.

Applications are open now through Monday, February 12, 2024, at 11:59pm ET. Selected schools must present their production of A Chorus Line: Teen Edition between June 2024 and December 2025. For more information and to apply, visit https://www.concordtheatricals.com/singular-sensation