Seussical Won't Play Last Extension Week in MA; Tryout Ends Sept. 24 | Playbill

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News Seussical Won't Play Last Extension Week in MA; Tryout Ends Sept. 24 The final week of the extended run of Seussical in Boston has been canceled, to allow the company time to work on refinements in the Broadway-bound musical, a spokesman said.

The final week of the extended run of Seussical in Boston has been canceled, to allow the company time to work on refinements in the Broadway-bound musical, a spokesman said.

Ticket agents have been informing potential customers that the Sept. 26-30 performances at the Colonial Theatre have been canceled, and the final public shows there will be 1 and 6 PM Sept. 24.

Spokesman John Barlow told Playbill On-Line Sept. 23 the company would continue working on narrative fixes and changes in New York City this coming week, and that previews were still scheduled to begin Oct. 15 at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. Barlow said getting out of the Colonial and into the Manhattan rehearsal studio allows the company another week to focus on content issues — new material and further implementing the changes that began in Boston — so they would be ready for the arduous "teching" at the Rodgers.

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Performances Sept. 19-20, in the first week of the two-week extension, were canceled to allow for changes in the still-forming show, drawn from stories and characters created by Dr. Seuss. Frank Galati is directing, Kathleen Marshall is choreographing and SFX Theatrical Group, Barry & Fran Weissler and Universal Studios are producing. Lyricist Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty, the Tony Award-winning songwriting team of Ragtime are sharing book credit on the musical, the concept of which was cooked up in collaboration with Eric Idle, of "Monty Python" fame. The show got mixed-to-unfriendly reviews in Boston (particularly from critic Ed Siegel of The Boston Globe) after its opening Sept. 6. Previews began Aug. 27 and performances were originally to go to Sept. 17, but the two-week extension was announced.

Coinciding with the first preview in Beantown, costume designer Catherine Zuber (Lincoln Center's Twelfth Night) taken off the project. William Ivey Long (The Music Man) will be Zuber's successor. His task is daunting: Creating costumes for a cartoon world — amounting to what in Boston is 200 costume changes — in time for the Oct. 15 first preview. Zuber's work has been seen in Boston.

The Oct. 15 first preview was still on as of Sept. 23, but insiders suggested the first preview may be delayed to accommodate the costume design adjustment.

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The creative team has been in residence in Boston, working with the company on changes, adjustments and refinements in the show that audiences have been cheering. The first preview's reception was extended, with performers wandering back on stage after their call to take an improvised bow.

In his pun-heavy review in The Globe, gloomy critic Siegel conceded: "This is probably a minority report, because yesterday's opening-night crowd seemed to be eating it up like green eggs and ham, the parental units even more than the kids."

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Director Frank Galati defined the show for theatrical press during an Aug. 9 "open rehearsal" by cautioning that the show is not a revue and it is not an anthology of the works of the late Theodor S. Geisel, who took the pen name Dr. Seuss.

Galati, 56, called it "a contemporary re-imagining" of the tales and characters, including Horton the Elephant, the people of Whoville, the Grinch, the Wickersham Brothers, the Lorax and others.

The creators, co-librettists Ahrens and Flaherty, who respectively also contribute lyrics and music, had access to most of the stories and characters created by the limerick-happy Seuss, whose playful verse bends English into sweet pretzels of rhyme and wonderment. They co conceived the piece with Eric Idle, of "Monty Python" fame, who is no longer actively attached to the project, which was begun several years ago by Garth Drabinsky at Livent. The official Broadway opening is Nov. 9.

Rehearsals began in Manhattan July 10 for Seussical. Theatrical clown David Shiner (Fool Moon) will wear the candy-cane striped chapeau of The Cat in the Hat, Janine LaManna will play Gertrude McFuzz and Kevin Chamberlin will be Horton the elephant when Seussical.

Chamberlin, a Tony Award nominee for Dirty Blonde, left that hit show in early July to recreate Horton, his role Seussical workshops.

Also part of the 29-member cast are Michele Pawk (Mayzie La Bird) and Andrew Keenan-Bolger (JoJo). Kathleen Marshall (former artistic director of Encores!) is the Seussical choreographer.

Tickets for both East Coast engagements are now on sale. For ticket information, call (212) 307-4100 (for Broadway) or (617) 931-2787 (for Boston).

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Featured are Erick Devine (Ragtime), Eddie Korbich (Assassins), Alice Playten (Oliver!), Sharon Wilkins (The Life) and Stuart Zagnit (the Public's Wild Party). Also appearing are Shaun Amyot, Joyce Chittick (Cabaret), Jennifer Cody (MTC Wild Party), Natascia Diaz (Bright Lights, Big City), David Engel (Forever Plaid), Sarah Gettelfinger, Justin Greer (Annie Get Your Gun), Ann Harada (The Moment When), Jenny Hill, Catrice Joseph, Michelle Kittrell, Mary Ann Lamb (Fosse, Chicago), Darren Lee (Kiss Me, Kate), David Lowenstein, Monique Midgette, Casey Nicholaw (Saturday Night Fever), Tom Plotkin (Footloose), Devin Richards (Jesus Christ Superstar), William Ryall (Grand Hotel), Jerome Vivona (Kiss Me, Kate) and Eric Jordan Young (Ragtime).

 

Designers are Eugene Lee (set), Catherine Zuber (costumes), who will be replaced for New York by William Ivey Long, Natasha Katz (lighting), Jonathan Deans (sound). David Holcenberg is music director, David Chase is dance arranger, Doug Besterman is orchestrator. Flaherty is vocal arranger.

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It was Dr. Seuss who wrote, "Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the THINKS you can think up, if only you try."

At an Aug. 9 gathering, Ahrens told Playbill On-Line: "He's a great poet, he's a lyricist. To honor his work and to sort of make it my own I took his words as a leaping off point for where we wanted to take the show. It's very different than the books in many ways, but I think that the language is synchronous. His widow [Audrey Geisel] came to see the workshop up in Toronto and she told me she couldn't tell where his words ended and mine began, which was wonderful."

Did Ahrens, like Dr. Seuss, create words?

"Absolutely!" she said. "Whenever you come to the point when you need a good rhyme, and there's no good rhymes in the dictionary, you make one up. It's fabulous."

And unlike her previous effort with Flaherty and Galati, Ragtime, she was able to plunder all the lip-curling "oose" rhymes in the universe, because "oose" rhymes with "Seuss." "Mother Goose" was one such rhyme heard in the Aug. 9 studio excerpts.

"I am almost at the end of my 'oose' rhymes, and I don't know what's next..." said Ahrens.

Early in the process of the show, when the project was still under the umbrella of the now-defunct Livent, comic actor-writer Eric Idle, Ahrens and Flaherty pounded out ideas about what the project should or could be. Idle has co-conceiver credit but not book credit.

Ahrens said, "We juggled and talked and decided who the main characters were; it was a boiling down. We knew that 'Horton Hears a Who' and the Horton stories were gonna be the main gist of it because there was so much stuff thrown in there: There was a big world, a little world, a child, a romance, all sorts of things."

As much as the language is playful, it's the humanity that attracted the writers and Galati to the world of Dr. Seuss. A central idea in the show is taken from "Horton Hears a Who," and Horton (played by Kevin Chamberlin) makes the idea clear in his head and ours: "A person's a person, no matter how small." The famous tale has Horton hearing a "who," a voice from a world (Whoville) that exists on a speck of dust floating by.

"Stephen loved the fact that he could create a new musical world that had never been heard before," said Ahrens, "and I loved the fact that the books were -- when I re-read them as an adult -- so profound: There's politics, environment, nuclear war, plastic surgery, a great treasure trove of stuff."

And what does Flaherty's musical world sound like?

"The thing that excited me is that you can create your own world because with Seuss there are no rules," Flaherty told Playbill On-Line. "It has to have its own logic, but basically you can create the logic and the musical logic. For this score, there are many different sounds to it: The jungle world is sort of like an R&B place, sort of a funk place; the world of the Who's is more of a Spike Jones kind of world. I was listening to some old Spike Jones recordings and there's something about the zaniness of it that we wanted to bring to an updated version. There's gospel. There's a set piece in Act 2, which is Horton's insanity trial. That's done as a big gospel number, because they're testifying."

What's the challenge of making the characters sing?

"I think the challenge was that we didn't want them to be two dimensional characters, we didn't want them to be cartoons," said Flaherty. "We wanted them to be characters that the audiences cared about. We dealt with their emotions as if we would deal with emotions of anybody in real life. And I think that's been the challenge of the actors as well: To play something that is in one respect very real, and yet there's a heightened quality, a presentational style."

Galati told Playbill On-Line: "It has a true emotional, moral core: A person's a person, no matter how small. Here's the microcosm and the macrocosm. This little molecular world! What are we? We're just upon a spec of dust, blowing through the universe. We're imperiled everyday, it's a miracle that we make it. It's totally Shakespearean."

Galati agreed with the point that Dr. Seuss and Shakespeare did share existential themes and ask questions about self.

"Totally," Galati said. "Look at what [Seuss] calls these little creatures: They're Who's! Who are you? We're Who's! Who? The question of identity itself, the nature of the self is imbedded in these tales."

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Among Seuss' famous stories are "Green Eggs and Ham," "Horton Hears a Who," "The Cat in the Hat," "The Lorax," "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," "The Sneetches," "McElligot's Pool," "Oh, the Places You'll Go!," "Yertle the Turtle," and more.

Shiner, a German resident for years, was born in the U.S. but began his performing career about 20 years ago on the streets of Paris, Rome and London. He performed in the German National and Swiss National circuses. In between gigs would tour in a two-man show with partner Rene Bazinet. He has performed in North America with Cirque de Soleil, in Nouvelle Experience.

In the 1998-99 Broadway season, Irwin, Shiner created Fool Moon, and evening of clowning which also featured the Red Clay Ramblers. The show was honored with a Special Tony Award for Live Theatrical Achievement.

In various stages of the show's development, the show was called The Seussical and Seussical the Musical. It has now been shortened to, simply, Seussical, although the show's logo will read Seussical the Musical.

The show is set in and around Horton's home, the Jungle of Nool. The Cat in the Hat is a kind of tour guide. Horton the Elephant, Gertrude McFuzz, the folks of Whoville, The Lorax, The Grinch, and others sing about home, love, family, loss and imagination — all "the 'thinks' you can think."

 
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