Allan Knee, Alison Hubbard and Kim Oler's new musical, Little Women, which had a staged reading at New York's York Theatre earlier this month, may arrive on Broadway next season. Producer Randall Wreghitt's office confirmed a report in Newsday that he and his partners Dani Davis and Jason Howland were interested in the project and hoped to bring it to Broadway, perhaps in the year 2000. Willy Falk, the original Chris in the Broadway production of Miss Saigon, and Jean Louisa Kelly participated in the reading of the musical. Little Women is a musicalization of Louisa May Alcott's novel of four sisters in Civil War-era New England. The work won the 1998 Richard Rodgers Development Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Knee wrote the libretto; Hubbard and Oler wrote the music.

Wreghitt was not available for comment but told Newsday he "was very pleased with the reading... It's just one of those titles that generates a great deal of excitement.

-- By Robert Simonson