Issue #63: March 15, 2001

• You can catch two Broadway legends currently performing together in the hit musical Fosse. Ann Reinking and Ben Vereen will be strutting their stuff until April 1 at the Broadhurst Theatre.

• The Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Conn. is presenting a season full of familiar musicals. They kick things off with Lerner & Loewe’s Brigadoon followed by Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. A new musical, They All Laughed, will make its premiere at the end of June. The book is by Joe DiPietro (I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change) with material based on stories by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, the story takes place on Long Island during Prohibition. The season runs from March 30 to December 16.

• The Sondheim/George Furth musical took three Olivier Awards including best musical at the Feb. 23 awards ceremony. Interesting since it was a huge flop on Broadway when it opened 20 years ago.

• Playwright Ben Elton is busy writing the script for a new musical based on the songs of rock’s most theatrical group, Queen. The production is expected to hit the stage either late this year or early 2002. It looks like the success of Mamma Mia! has paved the way for the marriage of rock and theatre.

• Toronto producer David Mirvish will be making quite a splash this season in London. Mirvish is co-producing four productions including the London stage debut of Ally McBeal’s Calista Flockhart in a revival of the 1939 comedy The Philadelphia Story. The limited run will open early this summer at the Shaftesbury Theatre. The other three productions are Derek Jacobi in God Only Knows, a new play by Hugh Whitemore (Breaking The Code), a remount of Agatha Christie’s Witness For The Prosecution and the premiere of the musical Peggy Sue Got Married which is scheduled to transfer to Toronto in May/June 2002.

• A new musical based on the true story of the original "Siamese" (conjoined) twins, Chang and Eng, comes from the part of the globe it originated. Producer-director Ekechai Uekrongtham introduced the homegrown musical at the 1997 Festival of Asian Performing Arts in Singapore. Since then the Asian story has had sold-out runs at the Festival in 1999 and early 2001. A pan-Asian tour is currently making stops in Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines. There are talks underway with Broadway producer Kevin McCollum to bring this unique musical to a few American cities in 2002.

• Mike Nichols directs Emma Thompson in the HBO television version of Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Wit set to air on March 24 at 9 p.m. The cast also includes Christopher Lloyd, Eileen Atkins, Audra McDonald, Jonathan M. Woodward and Harold Pinter. The last time Nichols and Thompson worked together was on the feature film Primary Colors.