Where Do We Go From Here?

I had a very good intro written, I used the word “moron” in it and I do love that word, but my friend Billy read it and he told me it would cause too much trouble. Now, usually I like to cause trouble, but I’m too busy these days to spend time dealing with the aftermath, so… There goes my fun. I will now just get into the major news of this post:

I recently heard from multiple sources that the Harold Prince-helmed musical Love Musik, the one about Kurt Weill’s marriage to actress/singer Lotte Lenya, is headed for the Biltmore Theater under the auspices of Manhattan Theater Club. The tuner, which uses Weill’s music and has a book by Alfred Uhry, will allegedly star Michael Cerveris and Donna Murphy in the main roles. (Now, when this show was first conceived I heard Sutton Foster for it, and, in my mind, Sutton Foster and Donna Murphy are not all that similar, but… that’s showbiz, I suppose.) Prince’s goal is probably to move it to a commercial house after this run is over. We’ll see about that.

There you go—I rarely do straight news, but, when I heard this, I figured you’d all want to know. I cannot verify the authenticity of the news—we’ll have to wait on the edge of our seats (uh huh) to see if MTC spokesperson Jim Byk announces it someday. (Off topic, Jim Byk has a huge mental archive regarding old shows, so if you know him or ever meet him, I encourage quizzing him. I mean quizzing most other press agents on such things might be funnier, because it is very possible they would just stare at you, but if you want to know answers, I’d go with Byk.) Anyway, I also cannot verify the authenticity of the following tidbit: apparently, in addition to everyone who has been posted on the message boards, Philip Bosco is in the Encores! mounting of Follies. And I was so hoping Chitty would be his last musical ever…

Meanwhile, in the last two minutes, three people have IMed me about what is supposedly Hunter Foster’s Talkin’ Broadway response to the Urinetown drama reported in The Times today. While I respect and agree with a lot of what Hunter is saying, I do wish he had mentioned that his wife, Jen Cody (another Urinetown original cast member), directed one of the productions in question. The omission of this fact naturally makes me think: “What else is missing?” That might be somewhat unfair of me, but I think it is sort of human nature. (NOTE: The TB post was removed shortly after I wrote this. In the post, the user, "blindspot," said, essentially, that he believed this action by the Urinetown team was ridiculous. He said certain shows always have certain things associated with them--for example, he noted, every dinner theater production of Fiddler uses a similar bottle dance--and so you should expect to see these elements in subsequent productions without considering legal action. He also said that he had seen the Ohio production and that he viewed it to be a "cousin" of the Broadway production, not a copy. Blindspot then went on to note that the John Rando/John Caraffa mounting of The Pajama Game featured a version of "Steam Heat" that had a nod to Fosse with the use of Bowler hats and some of the moves, but he doubted they were giving money to the Fosse estate. It just basically went on like that. It was very well thought out. If you want to read it in its entirety, it's floating around or you can email me at carajoy@gmail.com.)