Gold!, the new musical by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman, will now begin performances at Chicago's Goodman Theater on June 20, 2003. Previously, the date of June 13 had been announced.
Opening will be on June 30. The run will last until July 26, a week past the originally stated July 19.
Harold Prince directs the new work, which has not been cast.
The play is about the eccentric, real-life brothers, Addison and Wilson Mizner. The Mizners were regarded as risk taking gamblers who ended up as real estate developers in Florida. Settings in the musical have included Alaska, California, New York City and Boca Raton, FL, which the brothers helped found.
"Where the hell are the girls?" That is what director Harold Prince said when he read the script, according to New York Newsday. In an Off-Broadway workshop of Gold! (then called Wise Guys) a few seasons back, the story was heavy in male characters. The only major female role was Mrs. Mizner, Addison and Wilson's mother. The script now has "one of the best leading lady characters I've seen in a long time, a huge and lusty presence in that great American mold," Prince told Newsday. The report did not say whether the role was a love interest for either of the brothers.
Prince and Sondheim have not worked together on a new show since 1981's Merrily We Roll Along, which was recently given a concert reading in New York City. At the end of the event, which features much of the original cast, Sondheim and Prince appeared on stage and hugged.
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Late last year, a high-profile legal battle between composers Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman, and producer Scott Rudin, over the rights to the long in coming musical Gold!, succeeded temporarily in ejecting the show from the Goodman Theater's hopper. Prior to that, the show languished after an unsuccessful workshop at New York Theatre Workshop.
