Sold-Out Musical, Time and Again, Begins Previews at MTC Jan. 9 | Playbill

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News Sold-Out Musical, Time and Again, Begins Previews at MTC Jan. 9 Those who hoped to see the Manhattan Theatre Club staging of Time and Again will be out in the cold in January: The New York premiere of the romantic time-travel musical, beginning previews Jan. 9, is sold out.
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Laura Benanti is the alluring Julia, of the 19th-century, in Time and Again. Photo by Photo by Joan Marcus.

Those who hoped to see the Manhattan Theatre Club staging of Time and Again will be out in the cold in January: The New York premiere of the romantic time-travel musical, beginning previews Jan. 9, is sold out.

With only a six-week run (Jan. 9-Feb. 18) at MTC's 150-seat Stage II, Time and Again is not expected to extend because the new musical revue, Newyorkers, starts there Feb. 27, an MTC spokesman said.

Subscribers largely sold the show out before it even dawned at the resident nonprofit, although some single tickets were sold to those who were closely reading the ABC ads in The New York Times. MTC is red-hot following savvy 1999-2000 programming and the subsequent Broadway transfers of Proof and The Tale of the Allergist's Wife.

What all parties are privately hoping for is that the intimate 15 actor staging of Time and Again, which has two pianos as its orchestra, will get a commercial transfer to a Broadway house. The Great White Way has been the aim of the musical since it had a tryout at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego in 1996. Presumably, scenic, casting and musical elements would be enhanced for any Broadway staging. Official Off Broadway opening for the tuner is Jan. 30.

* The show, with a score by composer-lyricist Walter Edgar Kennon and a book by Jack Viertel, is based on the popular romantic science-fiction novel by Jack Finney, about a modern New Yorker who is transported back in time at the request of Dr. Danziger (played by David McCallum), who heads a secret government project. Illustrator Si Morley (Lewis Cleale) travels back to the 1880s and falls in love with Julia (Laura Benanti), complicating his modern-day romance with Kate (played by Julia Murney).

Waiting in the wings to take the show to any next step are producers Thomas Viertel, Steven Baruch and Richard Frankel, who initiated the project. Unless the producers have already dibs on a Broadway theatre that may lose a tenant before May, Time and Again would not be seen until next season (which technically begins in May).

Susan H. Schulman (The Sound of Music, Violet) directs a cast that includes Lauren Ward, Joseph Kolinski, Melissa Rain Anderson, Ann Arvia, Jeff Edgerton, Eric Michael Gillett, Gregg Goodbrod, Christopher Innvar, Patricia Kilgarriff, George Masswohl and Amy Walsh.

Kevin Stites (Titanic, On the Town) musical-directs. Both ran the May 1999 workshop of the tuner. Rob Ashford choreographs (Kathleen Marshall choreographed the workshop). Rehearsals began Dec. 4 in Manhattan.

*

A spring 2000 Broadway production date had been eyed for Time and Again, but that never materialized. The May 1999 workshop was presented by Steven Baruch, Thomas Viertel, Richard Frankel, Marc Routh, Dede Harris/Jeslo Productions, Metropolitan Entertainment Group, Nederlander Organization, Liz Oliver and Anne Strickland Squadron.

Songwriter Walter Edgar "Skip" Kennon, who wrote Herringbone with lyricist Ellen Fitzhugh, is the former artistic coordinator of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. Observers of the Time and Again workshop and those who know the demo recording that has circulated through the industry regard the piece as faithful to the tone of the novel (which is so popular it's still in print after 30 years) and rich with humanity and melody. It's generally considered one of the strongest unproduced scores of recent years.

Songs in the show's workshop included "At the Theatre," "Who Would Have Thought It?," "She Dies," "The Lady in the Harbor," "Who Are You Anyway?" "Si's Soliloquy," "For Those You Love," "The Music Of Love," "Time and Time Again," "The Right Look," "I Know This House" and more. Some tweaks and revisions have been made since the 1999 workshop.

*

The late Jack Finney's 1970 novel — a genuine pop classic — includes prosaic, detailed descriptions of New York City life at the end of the 19th and 20th centuries. "From Time to Time" was a sequel that used the same characters. His best known work might be "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

MTC's Stage II has been fertile soil lately: Charles Busch's The Tale of the Allergist's Wife made its debut there in 1999-2000 and moved to Broadway, and A Class Act (which played there in fall 2000) transfers to the Ambassador Theatre on Broadway Feb. 14.

To see Playbill On-Line's Brief Encounter with David McCallum, which ran in August 2000, click here.

— By Kenneth Jones

 
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