Issue #3: August 11, 1998

• Producers Emanuel Azenberg and Allan S. Gordon cemented the deal in London recently with Kevin Spacey to reprise his acclaimed performance in The Iceman Cometh. Performances are to begin in March at the Brooks Atkinson Theater for a 14 to 16-week run. This will be the third project Mr. Azenberg has worked on with Mr. Spacey. The others: Long Day’s Journey into Night in 1986 and Lost in Yonkers, for which Spacey won a featured actor Tony in 1991.

• Producers Fran and Barry Weissler have finalized the staging of a 12-week run of the off-Broadway play This Is Our Youth. The location will probably be the nonprofit Second Stage Co. with a tentative opening set for October.

• The troubled Broadway-bound production of Easter Parade seems to be back on track. The Tommy Tune tuner is tentatively set to open at Boston’s Colonial Theater in August 1999 and then head to Broadway.

• One of Broadway’s most enduring figures, Jerry Herman, has premiered his An Evening With Jerry Herman at the Booth Theater. This musical revue has the legend himself at the piano with Broadway vets Florence Lacey and Lee Roy Reams rounding out the cast. A two-hour romp through Herman’s memorable musicals, Hello, Dolly!, La Cage aux Folles and Mame, leaves audience members in awe of this 66-year-old legend.

• Big news at LIVENT, producers of Tony-award winning musical Showboat, Ragtime and their latest, Fosse: A Celebration In Song And Dance. Major players Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gotlieb apparently were escorted out of LIVENT headquarters in Toronto on Aug. 10^th. Speculation is that significant irregularities in the financial state of the business have been discovered. After being bought out by showbiz heavyweight Michael Ovitz in April, the two leaders of LIVENT were unceremoniously demoted within the organization. It would seem that the new owners' review of the books resulted in the suspension and departure of Drabinsky and Gotlieb.

• Well you knew it had to happen! A musical based on the songs of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter of the Grateful Dead fame opened in San Francisco recently. Cumberland Blues opened with deadheads in great abundance at the 555-seater Stage Door Theater on opening night. It sounds like this will appeal to fans and needs a great deal of work before they could even consider a Broadway opening. But who knows!

• The Royal National Theatre’s production of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People proved to be another exciting theatre event at The Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles recently. Starring the incomparable Sir Ian McKellan, this masterpiece features sets by John Napier with superb direction by Trevor Nunn.

• Just on the heels of the movie premiere, the musical Doctor Dolittle opened at Labatt’s Apollo on July 14. Starring Phillip Schofield, the production features 92 puppets from the Jim Henson Creature Shop, which, I’m sure, must keep everyone hopping backstage.

• Austria’s renowned Salzburg Festival is running now through August 30. The hot ticket is the debut of New York filmmaker Hal Hartley’s musical play Soon. Another American director, Robert Lepage, makes the trek to Mozart’s hometown with his production of Geometry Of Miracles. Miracles will run Aug. 20 to 29 following visits to the Toronto Harbourfront Festival and Expo ’98 in Lisbon.

• Musical theatre lost one of the stage's most brilliant director and choreographer when Jerome Robbins died on July 29 after suffering a stroke on July 25. Best known for his five Tony awards: for choreography, High Button Shoes, West Side Story and Fiddler On The Roof, and for directing Fiddler On The Roof and his 1988 compendium show Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. Other favorite musicals Mr. Robbins choreographed: On The Town, Peter Pan, Gypsy, The King and I, Billion Dollar Baby and Call Me Madam.