Hungry Boston theatregoers will feast on three pre-Broadway musicals in the 2000-2001 season at the Wilbur and Colonial theatres, it was announced March 29.
Seussical the Musical, The Visit and Little Women are all aiming for Broadway in 2000-2001, but will get their first taste of applause in Beantown.
Broadway in Boston/SFX Theatricals announced that Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's Dr. Seuss-based family musical, Seussical the Musical, would start a four-week run at the Colonial Theatre Aug. 27 (through Sept. 17). It's due to open at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway in the fall, under the direction of Frank Galati. Andrea Martin will play the narrator role of The Cat in the Hat (as she has in workshops). Previously, the show had been called Seussical or The Seussical, but a Broadway in Boston spokesperson told Playbill On-Line the official title is Seussical the Musical. Barry and Fran Weissler are producing partners with SFX.
Little Women, winner of the Richard Rodgers Development Award in 1998, will have a Sept. 22-Oct. 8 run at the 1,200-seat Wilbur Theatre before it lands on Broadway. That show's producer, Randall L. Wreghitt, told Playbill On-Line March 30 that a Broadway Theatre has not yet been engaged, but the plan is to move it to Broadway for November in time for a pre-holiday official opening.
Little Women workshop presentations for the producers (including Dani Davis and Jason Howland), their friends and colleagues, will play April 6-8 in New York City. Nick Corley is directing the workshop and planned commercial run; musical staging is by Jennifer Paulson Lee. Drawing on the novel by Louisa May Alcott, the tuner is by Allan Knee (book), Kim Oler (music) and Alison Hubbard (lyrics).
The darker, more adult musical, The Visit, starring Angela Lansbury as a malevolent, jilted lover getting revenge on the man who wronged her years before, will play a four-week run at the Colonial Theatre in Boston beginning Dec. 19. The book is by Terrence McNally, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. Frank Galati directs, Ann Reinking choreographs. Performances continue to Jan. 14, 2001. A February-March run at the National Theatre in Washington DC before Broadway had been published on the National's web site, but that could not be confirmed at press time.
No Broadway theatre has been announced for The Visit, but the Winter Garden (home of the departing Cats and site of Lansbury's Mame and Gypsy) has been rumored.
