Issue #71: August 1, 2001
Summer Edition - next issue September 1

• Ticket availability for The Producers is virtually non existent until the spring of 2002 when the show’s producers are reporting the first open orchestra seats. The show is on sale through to Christmas 2002.

• The Nederlander organization will be producing a small musical Reefer Madness based on the 1936 film that turned into a cult classic with the college set in the 60s. Christian Campbell will star when it opens on September 15 at the Variety Arts Theatre.

• TV’s Magnum P.I., Tom Selleck, is currently packing them in at the Longacre Theatre in a revival of Herb Gardner’s romantic comedy A Thousand Clowns.

• The Kennedy Center will be the place to be next spring and summer if you are a Stephen Sondheim fan. Directors Christopher Ashley, Mark Brokaw, Sean Mathias and Eric Schaeffer will undertake the mammoth task of staging six musicals for the Sondheim Celebration at this New York venue. The productions scheduled are Sweeney Todd (May 10 – June 30), Merrily We Roll Along (July 12 – Aug. 24), A Little Night Music (Aug. 2 – 25), Company (May 17 – June 29), Passion (July 19 – Aug. 23) and Sunday in the Park With George (May 31 – June 28).

• The Sondheim love-in listed above has director Sean Mathias talking to Auzzie hunk Hugh Jackman. No stranger to musical theatre, the star of the film X-Men is eyeing the role of Bobby in Company. Jackman has also been approached by the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization to play Billy Bigelow in the gala Carnegie Hall concert of Carousel. He’ll have to balance his movie roles and theatre stints to please all the people all the time.

• Marla Schaffel didn’t have to stand in the unemployment line long after the closing of Jane Eyre. Goodspeed Musicals has her taking over the female lead in its “new” Gershwin musical, They All Laughed (a reworking of Gershwin’s 1926 musical Oh Kay!). The run at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Conn. is booked through to September 22.

• Carol Burnett and her eldest daughter Carrie Hamilton will star in the opening production at Chicago’s Goodman Theater 2002-03 season. Hal Prince will direct the new play, One More Time based on Burnett’s 1986 memoir.

• It looks like the new and improved Witches of Eastwick with its new cast are just what the production needed. The reviews are far more favourable than when it first opened. Now playing at the Prince of Wales Theatre, tickets are on sale through to December 22.

• In a previous column I mentioned a new musical based on the movie White Christmas scheduled to open in the fall - well all plans have gone away for the moment. The producers have cancelled but there are hopes it will be mounted sometime down the road, possibly on Broadway.

• Update on Dragonslayer, the musical I have been working on with the creative team of Molly Yeomans and Jack Lenz. End of August we are scheduled to make a short presentation of the music in San Diego at the Old Globe Theatre. If their creative team is interested, it could mean the Old Globe embracing the project and nurturing it in their very successful environment. I will bring you latest progress on our return from the West Coast.