ANGELA Lansbury was in town this week to see an authors’ run-through of a musical version of the classic play “The Visit.”
The show has a score by John Kander and Fred Ebb, and a book by Terrence McNally. They divvied up all the parts, and, with Kander at the piano, performed the musical for Lansbury, director Frank Galati and producer Barry Brown.
“It was more or less for our benefit to see where we are going with the material,” Kander said yesterday. “Angie was there, listening very quietly. She’s terribly well-behaved. She doesn’t intrude, but if she has an idea, we’re anxious to hear it because she is very smart.”
Kander said he was pleased with the run-through, though he added, “We still have a lot of work to do.”
Lansbury was on a plane to Los Angeles yesterday, and was unavailable for comment. But her husband and agent – Peter Shaw – said she was happy with the first draft.
“She told me it went very well,” he said.
“The Visit” tells the story of a rich, old woman who returns to her hometown to exact revenge on a former lover.
The authors plan to finish their musical version over the summer and then put up a staged reading, with Lansbury, in the fall. There will be a workshop in the winter, an out-of-town tryout next summer and a Broadway opening in the fall of 2000.
Lansbury, the popular star of the hit TV series “Murder, She Wrote,” hasn’t appeared on Broadway since she starred in an ill-fated revival of “Mame” in 1983.
But she’s eager to do a new musical, and has already started learning her songs, Kander said.
“We’re having a swell time writing the show,” he added. “It’s a wonderful piece of material. I just hope we don’t louse it up.”
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More bad news for Sam Cohn, the superagent who was bounced from the upper echelon of the agency he helped found, ICM: His longtime client, Tommy Tune, has bolted to rival agency William Morris. Tune is looking to resurrect his career after a series of high-profile flops, including “Busker Alley” and “The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public.” The tall tapper is performing “EFX” in Vegas at the MGM Grand until the end of the year, earning nearly $100,000 a week. After that, he’ll be back in New York looking for a new musical, or possibly a play, to direct, said a Tune source.
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Here’s a mind-bending bit of casting: Judith Light, best known as the high-powered career woman who ordered Tony Danza around on the sitcom “Who’s the Boss?,” will replace Kathleen Chalfant in “Wit,” beginning Aug. 10. Light will play Vivian Barring, the acid-tongued college professor dying of ovarian cancer.
Light isn’t the only “Who’s the Boss” star hitting the New York stage this summer. Danza is in “The Iceman Cometh” on Broadway and Danny Pintauro, who played Light’s son on the sitcom, is about to open a one-man show, “The Velocity of Gary,” about a street hustler, at the Duplex Cabaret Theater in the Village.
