Berlind: Bounce Will Not Come to Broadway

By Robert Simonson
November 18, 2003

Bounce, the new Stephen Sondheim-John Weidman musical which has played Chicago and Washington, D.C., will not come to Broadway, producer Roger Berlind told Variety.

The decision was not unexpected. Several factors pointed to the prospect that the musical would not venture beyond its Kennedy Center engagement—among them, the fact that the score was recorded by Nonesuch out of town Nov. 10-11; and the southern journey taken by The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts' Theatre on Film and Tape Archive Nov. 15 to capture the production on tape. Both moves bespoke a belief that Bounce would not venture beyond the Beltway.

Also not helping matters were the largely poor reviews the tuner received from D.C. and national critics.

"There will be many productions of Bounce in the years to come, but I will not be moving it," Berlind told Variety. "The actors have dispersed. There are no Broadway theatres available."

Unless another producer steps up to the plate, Bounce will be the first Sondheim musical not to reach Broadway in its initial life since 1991's Assassins, and the first Sondheim musical in long memory not to achieve a New York berth at all.

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Bounce officially opened at the Kennedy Center Oct. 30. It began previews on Oct. 21, following a world premiere at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, June 20-Aug. 10.

Bounce is inspired by the lives of the colorful, early-20th-century, American capitalists-cum-con artists, the Mizner brothers, their parents, their loves and their endless capers and schemes.