By Christopher Caggiano, ZEALnyc Contributing Writer, September 19, 2016
The upcoming New York theater season is shaping up to be a very busy one, at least in terms of new musicals aiming for a Broadway bow. As of this writing, there are already nine new musicals scheduled to open on Broadway during the 2016-2017 season: Anastasia, A Bronx Tale, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Come From Away, Dear Evan Hansen, Groundhog Day, Holiday Inn: The New Irving Berlin Musical, In Transit, and Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812. These in addition to (shudder) Paramour, which opened earlier in the summer, but after the Tony deadline.
There are also a few musicals that have announced a Broadway run, but have so far not booked a specific theater, including The Bandstand, Amélie and Half Time (formerly Gotta Dance). Also rumored to be circling for a Broadway landing are The SpongeBob Musical and Magic Mike, although the latter appears to taking a detour to Las Vegas first.
Over the past few years, I've had a chance to see five of these musicals during their development processes, and while some seemed more promising than others, here's a preview of what to expect.
(Music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, book by Steven Levenson, directed by Michael Greif. Performances begin at the Music Box Theatre on November 14th)
I'm not going to mince words here: Dear Evan Hansen is the most satisfyingly complex and heartfelt new musical since Fun Home. I had the immense pleasure of catching the show during its recent Off-Broadway run at the Second Stage in New York City. Composer/lyricists Pasek and Paul have crafted a gorgeous score that more than fulfills the promise of their equally intelligent and moving musical, Dogfight. Dear Evan Hansen tells the story of a very well-meaning but anxious young man who gets caught up in the ramifications of a lie that he tells, with noble intentions, about the suicide of a high school classmate. What's genuinely compelling about the show is the depth of the characterizations in Evan, his mother, and the family members of the deceased young man. Ben Platt is simply heartrending as Evan, and the supporting cast is one of the finest New York has seen in years, including Jennifer Laura Thompson, Rachel Bay Jones, and Laura Dreyfuss. (Full disclosure: Laura is a former student of mine. But, trust me, she genuinely rocks.) Dear Evan Hansen was originally scheduled to play the Belasco Theatre, but it was recently announced that the show will instead play the Music Box, a much smaller theater, and far more suitable to the show's intimate scale.
(Music, lyrics and book by Dave Malloy, directed by Rachel Chavkin. Performances begin at the Imperial Theatre on October 18th)
Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 (a.k.a The Great Comet) is one of my most cherished discoveries of the past few seasons. The show is by triple-threat author Dave Malloy, and it's a stunner. Based on one mere thread of the literary tapestry that is Tolstoy's War and Peace, The Great Comet has a score that artfully weaves in Russian musical idioms into what is an otherwise contemporary score. The show features just a tad too much narration (telling versus showing) for my personal taste, but overall the musical is rich and rewarding. I'm a tad concerned that Malloy's more recent musical efforts have been alternately baffling (Ghost Quartet) and inert (Preludes), but The Great Comet is thankfully a strong piece in its own right. The big question for the Broadway version is whether Josh Groban, who will be making his Broadway debut as Pierre, has the acting chops for the role. He's an odd fit: Pierre is grizzled and dyspeptic, two adjectives it would be hard to apply to Mr. Groban. Even so, I'm quite intrigued to see how the show, which was done in an immersive ballroom setting Off-Broadway, will translate to a proscenium stage. Based on the recent American Repertory Theater staging of the show, the show should make the transfer quite handily. Plus, there's a stunning new song for Pierre that isn't on the Off-Broadway cast recording, a brooding atmospheric solo called "Dust and Ashes," which may well have been added to beef up the role for Groban, but it's a strong song nonetheless, one that adds to the already rich fabric of The Great Comet.
(Music, lyrics and book by Irene Sankoff and David Hein, directed by Christopher Ashley. Performances begin at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on February 18th)
I attend a number of new-works festivals every year, and frankly most of the shows I see don't really have a chance of going anywhere beyond the festival. But every once in a while there's a gem. A few years back at the Festival of New Musicals at the Goodspeed Opera House, I had a chance to attend a reading of Come From Away, and although the show was still in embryonic form, it was already a profoundly moving piece, with richly drawn characters, and wonderfully idiomatic music. The show takes place on September 11th, 2001, which has caused quite a number of wags to dismiss the show as "that 9/11 musical," which really does a tremendous disservice to the show. It's reductionist, like calling Carousel the "wife-beater" musical, or Fun Home that "lesbian" show. Come From Away does take place on and after that horrible day in 2001, but it comes at the tragedy obliquely, telling the heartening story of a town in Newfoundland that suddenly finds itself playing host to thousands of people stranded at the local airport when the American airspace closes down. As the people gradually learn about what's happening in New York City, Washington, and elsewhere, we share their frustration, horror, and grief. And we see locals and visitors alike come together in a wonderfully uplifting story that deserves to be told again and again. I'm thrilled at the prospect of seeing the show in a full-scale production, and to see others have a chance to be moved and inspired.
(Music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, book by Terrence McNally, directed by Darko Tresnjak. Performances likely to begin in March 2017 at the Broadhurst Theatre)
A lot of people in the theater community, myself included, have a soft spot for the 1997 animated film Anastasia, mostly because of the wonderfully rich and melodic songs by Broadway vets Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens. The movie wasn't a blockbuster on the scale of The Lion King or Frozen, but the DVD has certainly found its way into the collections of many an ardent theater fan. So it was really just a matter of time before a stage version materialized. I took in the show during its tryout at the Hartford Stage, and although many of the new songs were really strong, the show hadn't quite achieved the magical, transportive feel that it's going to need to succeed on Broadway. The staging felt static, even leaden at times. Two characters from the movie have, perhaps wisely, been cut -- the evil Rasputin and his irritating sidekick, Bartok. But in their place we have the glowering Communist apparatchik, Gleb, who takes up entirely too much stage time, and throws off the tone and balance of the show. Like the shark in Jaws, Gleb would perhaps work best providing an off-stage threat versus a concrete menace. I'm hoping the creators will find the right balance, and conjure up a bit more energy in how the show is staged. It would also be great to see Ahrens and Flaherty bounce back after the artistic and financial debacle that was Rocky - The Musical.
(Music by Alan Menken, book and lyrics by Glenn Slater and Chazz Palminteri, directed by Jerry Zaks and Robert De Niro. Performances begin at the Longacre Theatre on November 3rd)
This one is a bit of a puzzle to me, because when I saw A Bronx Tale at the Paper Mill Playhouse earlier this year, the show felt anything but ready for a Broadway bow. There were some deft characterizations, and a lot of slick staging, but the score left very little impression on me, and the book seemed too crammed with incident and too lacking in cohesion. What's more, the show featured what seemed like warmed-over set pieces from previous shows (including West Side Story, Jersey Boys, Memphis, In the Heights, and Guys and Dolls), and consequently couldn't quite settle on a style of its own. A Bronx Tale is, of course, based on the eponymous one-man-show by Chazz Palminteri, and the subsequent movie version featuring Robert De Niro. And, in fact, De Niro is on hand as the show's co-director, alongside Broadway pro Jerry Zaks. It seems that all that star power has convinced the producers that they have a stronger show in hand than they actually do. (Also, and this is admittedly a very minor point, the show is booked into the Longacre, the interior of which looks like a 12-year-old girl's birthday cake. The hardscrabble streets in which A Bronx Tale is set would seem to be at odds with such a venue. But, hey, what do I know, right?)
Christopher Caggiano writes for ZEALnyc about theater performance and related topics.
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