AFTER being saturated with revivals for nearly a decade, you’d think Broadway would have finally exhausted its supply of golden oldies.
Well, it hasn’t, and the revival craze continues, unabated.
Plans are firming up this summer to bring three beloved musicals back to the Great White Way, if not this season, then next. The shows are “42nd Street,” “West Side Story” and “Man of La Mancha.”
“42nd Street” is, of course, the glittery backstage musical the late David Merrick produced in 1980. The show, one of the most expensive of its day, ran eight years and starred Jerry Orbach as hard-driving Broadway director Julian Marsh.
Merrick made headlines around the world when, on opening night, he announced from the stage that Gower Champion, the director and choreographer, had died earlier that day (in fact, Champion had died a few days before, but the publicity-minded Merrick kept the news under wraps till opening night).
Talk of a new production of “42nd Street” heated up this week with the news that Dodger Theatrical, the producer of “The Music Man,” “Titanic” and “The King and I,” had picked up an option on the show. The Dodgers will co-produce the show with Dutch entertainment mogul Joop van Ende. The revival will be directed by Mark Bramble, who co-wrote the show and has staged numerous productions of it throughout the world.
Yesterday theater sources said the revival would likely begin life in Amsterdam in October and then, if all goes well, tap dance to New York in the spring.
A spokesman for the Dodgers said such talk “was pure speculation at this point.”
Interest in “West Side Story” has been sparked by a well-received revival that opened last month at La Scala in Milan. Joey McKneely, a young Broadway choreographer (“The Life,” “Smokey Joe’s Cafe”) directed the production, re-creating Jerome Robbins’ choreography.
The Nederlander Organization and SFX Theatrical Group are both said to be pursuing the rights for New York, and may wind up as co-producers.
One person who saw the show in La Scala praised its “fluidity,” but said the production values would have to be “seriously” upgraded for Broadway. Still, this observer said, the show, about warring teenage gangs in New York during the 1950s, has lost “none of its edge.”
And of course there is that glorious Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim score, featuring one standard after another – “Maria,” “Tonight,” “Somewhere,” “I Feel Pretty” and “America.”
By all means, bring it back!
As for “Man of La Mancha,” plans for a revival are still sketchy. Mitch Leigh, who wrote the music (and who has made several fortunes off “The Impossible Dream”), has talked to various producers about reviving the show next season. Brian Stokes Mitchell and Audra McDonald have been mentioned as possible leads, though at this point such a pairing is just wish-list casting, akin, if you will, to tilting at windmills.
Leigh, on vacation, did not return calls seeking comment.
*
God, what I wouldn’t pay to be a fly on the wall at rehearsals for this one: Elaine Stritch, the outspoken but priceless Broadway veteran, may team up with George C. Wolfe, the talented but high-strung Broadway director, to bring her one-woman show to the Public Theater next year.
“It’s going to be firecracker time!” Stritch says of the pairing. “But I’m on his wavelength. I haven’t liked a couple of things he’s done lately,” she added, referring to his flops “On the Town” and “The Wild Party,” “but I’ve liked a lot of his other stuff, and there’s no denying he’s a genius. The trouble is, in this town, if you do one thing that doesn’t win all the awards, you’re a has-been.”
Stritch trotted out a preliminary version of her show last weekend at a small theater in Nyack. She talks about her life in the theater and performs several songs from shows she starred in.
“It’s almost like a stand-up autobiography,” she says. “All the traffic will allow. The only thing that won’t be in my show is bad taste.”
