It was snowing fresh showtunes in East Haddam Jan. 13-15. I attended 12 hours of Saturday events at the 12th annual, weekend-long Goodspeed Festival of New Musicals. With so many ages, interests and attitudes represented, it was easy to feel upbeat about the future of the American musical.
I heard an hour of heartwarming anecdotes about “Come From Away,” the 9/11-themed musical that had a reading at the 2013 Goodspeed festival and will be on Broadway next month. Michael Rubinoff, who first conceived the show and now serves as its co-producer and creative consultant, recalls that in early readings of the show, audiences “leapt to their feet.” Then he paused. “I know, everybody leaps to their feet these days, but…”
I learned some behind-the-scenes details of Cirque du Soleil’s Broadway experiment “Paramour.” That show is leaving the Lyric Theatre in April to make way for “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.” The next project from the new “Theatrical” branch of the Cirque du Soleil organization will be an event for the NFL in November.
I finally bought my own copy of New York theater owner/producer Jack Viertel’s fun-to-debate book “The Secret Life of the American Musical — How Broadway Shows Are Built.” In his talk, Viertel opined that in today’s Broadway, “the range is wide — nobody feels obliged to make their show like any other show.”
I saw a panel discussion with the writers of the three new musicals being developed this year at Goodspeed’s Norma Terris venue in Chester. One of them, Daniel Zaitchik, also had a reading at the Festival of New Musicals. The attention is not unwarranted: On Monday, it was announced that Zaitchik had won the $100,000 prize awarded annually to “the most promising musical theater librettist” by New York’s Kleban Foundation.
I saw an energetic large-cast reading of the new musical “ZM,” from the guys who created “Urinetown.” The romantic zombie rampage was performed bloodthirstily by students from Hartt School and Boston Conservatory.
Finally, I caught a seven-song cabaret set by composer/performer Mark Sonnenblick and vocalist Larry Owens in the ritzy dining room of the Gelston House, next door to the Goodspeed. Sonnenblick’s one of the nearly three dozen people in East Haddam this week for a whole other Goodspeed musical-development program: the Johnny Mercer Writers Colony. In his between-song patter, Sonnenblick labeled Goodspeed “an incredible community,” and you could see it right there in the room.
Conditions ‘Normal’
TheaterWorks’s next show, “Next to Normal,” will star two top-flight talents to whom normalcy does not apply.
The role of Diane will be played by the divine Christiane Noll, who starred in the Broadway revival of “Ragtime” and has been well known to Connecticut audiences for decades. Noll was in the pre-Broadway try-out of “Jekyll and Hyde” at New Haven’s Shubert in 1995, the first national tour of “Urinetown” at the Oakdale in 2004, and several shows for Goodspeed Musicals: “Lizzie Borden” in 2001, “The Baker’s Wife” in 2002, and “Mack and Mabel” in 2004. She’s done concerts with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, including a “Broadway Rocks!” revue at Simsbury’s Talcott Mountain Music Festival in 2014 and a “Century of Broadway” show at The Bushnell in 2010.
The role of Dan will be played by David Harris, the Australian actor who was Jean Valjean in “Les Miserables” at Connecticut Repertory Theatre in 2014 and a cocksure Billy Crocker in “Anything Goes” last year at the Goodspeed. Surely you recall him crooning “All Through the Night.”
“Next to Normal” is about a woman whose struggles with bipolar disorder affect not just herself but her family. The show was an off-Broadway hit in 2007 and a Broadway hit in 2008-09. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2010. The first national tour of “Next to Normal” played The Bushnell in 2011. Last year, The Bushnell hosted the tour of another musical by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, “If/Then.” Details at theaterworkshartford.org.
Westport Is Well-Read
Four new plays will have readings in January and February thanks to the Westport Country Playhouse New Play Initiative. Two of them will be bolstered by a couple of days of workshopping. None of the events are open to the public: The readings are invitation-only and the workshops are private.
The Vendler Television Playhouse” by Susan Rice (set during the 1950s “golden age of television”) and “The Forgotten Woman” (about an opera diva) by Fairfield’s own Jonathan Tolins (“Buyer and Cellar”) will receive readings. “Thousand Pines” by Matthew Greene and “The Biggest Valley” by A. Zell Williams will have workshops that culminate in readings. Westport Playhouse has released the names of a few other participants besides the writers: “The Vendler Television Playhouse” will star Joanna Gleason (a Tony winner for “Into the Woods” in 1988) and be directed by Robert Cary (who co-adapted TV’s “Grease Live!”). “Thousand Pines” will be directed by Austin Pendleton. The work all happens in the Lucille Lortel White Barn Center, on the grounds of Westport Country Playhouse. Details at 203-227-5137, ext. 134, or westportplayhouse.org.
Goodspeed Directors Set
Quite a lot of new info about the upcoming Goodspeed season was revealed by the theater’s Artistic Director Michael Gennaro at the “New Musical Preview” portion of the Festival of New Musicals. The season-opener “Thoroughly Modern Millie” will be both directed and choreographed by Denis Jones, who choreographed “Holiday Inn” and “Band Geeks” for the Goodspeed. Jenn Thompson, whose Goodspeed directorial debut was “Bye Bye Birdie” last year, will helm “Oklahoma.” The busy Chicago-based choreographer Katie Spelman is also on board for that Rodgers and Hammerstein revival, in which “dance will be prominent,” Gennaro said.
It was previously reported in this column that TheaterWorks’ Rob Ruggiero will be directing “Rags,” which will boast a new book by David Thompson (“The Scottsboro Boys”).
As for the new musicals being workshopped at the Goodspeed’s Norma Terris space in Chester: Zac Zadek’s “Deathless” will be directed by the renowned Tina Landau, whose Connecticut credits have included “A Civil War Christmas” and “Rag and Bone” at the Long Wharf, “Antony and Cleopatra” at Hartford Stage and “Good Goods” at Yale Rep. Daniel Zaitchik’s “Grenadine” will be directed by Kristin Hanggi (Broadway’s “Rock of Ages”) and feature work by master puppeteer Philip Huber (a regular guest at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Puppetry Conference).
“A Connecticut Christmas Carol” by L.J. Fecho and Michael O’Flaherty will be directed by Hunter Foster (the Broadway actor who co-wrote the book for the “The Circus in Winter” at the Norma Terris in 2014). The holiday show uses historical Connecticut figures to tell the Dickens classic: William Gillette is Scrooge, J.P. Morgan is Marley, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, P.T. Barnum and Mark Twain are the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future. The show is set in 1925 on the Goodspeed Opera House stage, though the show will be staged at the Norma Terris. Christmas magic! Details at goodspeed.org.
