Friday, July 20, 2007

A couple of musical theatre notes

After a tryout in Seattle this fall, Lone Star Love is planned to come into New York for a Broadway run beginning November 1. The show—which ran off-Broadway a couple of seasons back in a slightly different version—got a major overhaul at The Rep in 1989 after its debut at Houston's Alley Theatre, when it was still known as just The Merry Wives of Windsor, Texas. We had a rollicking time with the Red Clay Ramblers, who would jam at the (late, lamented) Backstage Club after the show well into the small hours. I'll be looking forward to the show's Broadway bow, with Randy Quaid, Robert Cuccioli and Rep alum Dee Hoty. (Here's some more background on the history of the show; it's been a winding road.)

And as a major Styx fan, I've got a hunch I'll have to make a trip to Chicago next spring, when the Bailiwick Rep produces Dennis DeYoung's musical adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame has enjoyed only one prior production—at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville in 1997. The score was praised and, at one point, the show was talked about as a likely prospect for Broadway. But potential producers ran into opposition from Disney Theatricals, which was pushing its own version of the Quasimodo-as-cathedral-recluse story. The Disney show never made it to Broadway, perhaps now clearing the coast for DeYoung, who has a big fan base. DeYoung says he is revising the show extensively for the Bailiwick production.

And since I have to be in New York for a meeting week after next, I'm squeezing another 12 hours into the trip to see both Xanadu and the closing night of Patti LuPone's City Center engagement as Rose in Gypsy. Of course, I saw Ms. LuPone in the role last summer at Ravinia and it was hands-down one of my most thrilling nights in the theatre ever. There was no way I could miss seeing here again in New York, and surrounded by such a marvelous cast. I'll be there on the aisle, just waiting for that extraordinary overture to begin again. And I've secured seats on stage for Xanadu, where I am assured by friends in the know that I will have the best view in the house, which is to say that of Cheyenne Jackson's backside. Woof!