Issue #57: December 1, 2000

• The talented team behind producer Cameron Mackintosh’s latest hit Witches of Eastwick have been working on another musical that has the interest of the Disney people. A reading in New York is looking very good for the spring.

• On November 2 Miss Saigon celebrated its 4000^th Broadway performance. I guess they posted the closing notice for New Year’s eve prematurely since the show is now extended another month.

• A couple of other musicals have posted their closing notices. Saturday Night Fever may have survived scathing reviews but it will not go beyond 500 performances. It will close on December 30 which will make room for the new Ken Ludwig/Don Schlitz musical The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which opens on April 26 at the Minskoff Theater. The other casualty is the long-running Jekyll & Hyde, which has been using the guest star formula of late, but I suppose even Baywatch’s David Hasselhoff doesn’t have the power to keep the musical running. The last performance will be on January 7 at the Plymouth Theater.

• Moises Kaufman’s The Laramie Project continues to have life with the recent presentation in Laramie, Wyoming. The play is looking ahead to engagements in Florida, Philadelphia, Seattle and an international stopover in Sydney, Australia. The play premiered at The Denver Center Theatre Company on February 26, 2000 then had a limited run in New York in April 2000.

• The American invasion continues in the UK with the recent opening of co-producer Adam Kenwright’s Madame Melville starring everyone’s favourite Home Alone kid Macaulay Culkin. This is Culkin’s West End debut and if you’re in the UK you can catch it at the intimate 680-seat Vaudeville Theatre.

• It looks like TV’s Ally McBeal Calista Flockhart will be spending her summer vacation off the television set "in a major American classic," says producer Duncan C. Weldon. He is obviously shy about naming the classic, theatre, dates etc. for now but I’ll keep you posted as the information becomes available.

• Speaking of the Witches of Eastwick it looks as though they will be moving to a new home. Producer Cameron Mackintosh will be closing the current production on February 24 at the Theatre Royal Drury then will reopen his latest musical at his own Prince of Wales Theatre on March 23.

• With the Withces of Eastwick on the move that can only mean a closing notice for Fosse currently at the Prince of Wales. They will take their final bow on January 13 after only one year — a less than auspicious outing for the Tony-winning dance revue.

• The great-great-grandson of Charles Dickens, Gerald Charles Dickens has taken his famous relative’s Christmas classic, A Christmas Carol, on the road. Since 1993, which was the 150th anniversary of the work’s publication, Dickens has toured his one-man show through the UK and North America. He plays the 26 parts without a script and in the voice of the characters.