The 1948 British film ”The Red Shoes,” starring the now-legendary Moira Shearer as the young ballerina who becomes the star and personal possession of an egomaniacal impresario, is regarded as a movie classic. It so moved songwriter Jule Styne that he immediately wanted to make a stage musical of it. But the film`s producers refused to grant the rights to anyone, fearing that the movie`s unique quality and reputation could be diminished if it were transmogrified into what might be just another crass Broadway crowd-pleaser.
Styne, who turns 85 this New Year`s Eve and was awarded one of this year`s five esteemed Kennedy Center Honors for his lifetime achievement in the performing arts, never abandoned his dream of seeing this beautiful story come to musical life on an American stage.
So, finally, he went ahead and wrote a full score for what would be the ballet segments of a ”Red Shoes” musical, and went to London early this year to have it played for Michael Powell, one of the 1948 film`s producers. Powell, who died a few months later, was so impressed that he quickly granted Styne the rights. ”Red Shoes”-the musical-is expected to open on Broadway this fall.
Ken Ludwig, author of the comedy hit ”Lend Me a Tenor,” is doing the book and has completed the first draft of the playscript.
”It`s a first draft I did over four times,” he said.
Styne, who has had more than 2,000 songs published in his long career, has completed half the singing musical numbers for the show, as well. Barbara Schottenfeld is doing the lyrics and it`s being produced by Martin Starger, who also did ”Tenor.”
Ludwig, who was a full-time Washington attorney until recently, professed amazement to find himself working on such a property with such a stellar colleague, but expects the final product to be everything the British film producers could have wished.
Although rehearsals are to start early next year, ”Red Shoes” has not yet been cast.
”We`ve got a real star search going on,” Ludwig said. ”For the ballerina, we need not only a good actress, but a great dancer who can sing wonderfully as well.”
– Ludwig`s ”Tenor” has opened its tour of the country, having just concluded a sensational run at Washington`s Kennedy Center.
It stars TV veteran Barry Nelson as the often flabbergasted opera company impresario, Ron Holgate as the hyper-amorous visiting Italian tenor and Michael Waldron as the nerd with opera stardom lurking inside.
The tour will take the road company into the Midwest-the show is set in Cleveland, after all-but not to Chicago. Instead, a separate, long-term Chicago production is in the making, scheduled to open March 6 at either the Royal-George Theatre or the Briar Street Theatre as part of the Big Ticket series, which will also see a long-term Chicago run of the Broadway dramatic hit ”Prelude to a Kiss” begin in February.
Casting for the Chicago ”Tenor” is not complete, but it almost doesn`t matter. The show is such a beautifully structured and wackily written farce that any professional performer with a sense of humor and a sense of timing can make it work. This theatergoer saw both the original New York production, starring Philip Bosco and Victor Garber, and the road show, and found the latter in no way less hilarious than the former.
– Also on the road, after following ”Tenor” into the Kennedy Center, is the touring company of the marvelous New York musical ”Grand Hotel,” which should reach Chicago in late spring. Judging by the enthusiastic response of Washington audiences, this is another production that has lost nothing in road show translation.
Based on the famous 1932 Greta Garbo movie of the same name, the show is set in 1920s Berlin-a city then much beset by economic woe and political upheaval and afflicted with the kind of decadence that borders on
degeneration.
But director/choreographer Tommy Tune manages to concoct from all that deviance, corruption and angst a truly ebullient confection, to which one of the merriest contributions is made by the nebbish of a character who`s trying to live it up before expiring from a terminal disease.
Brecht might have been better at Berlin decadence, but Tune`s glossy, effervescent production won five Tony Awards and excellent reviews in New York and Washington.
In the touring company, the bewitchingly grand Liliane Montevecchi, every inch a glamorous diva, reprises her Broadway role as the aging prima ballerina. But she has some very sexy competition from the desperate typist-turned-prostitute character played by a young actress as beguiling as her name: DeLee Lively-Mekka.
Mark Baker as the happily hapless doomed soul steals the show with his Charleston number, among others. Brent Barrett, only the understudy in New York, is a brilliant success in the starring role of the ill-fated baron, and will doubtless look back on his road show casting as his Big Break.
It`s a most difficult part, playing a pretty-boy gigolo and desperado with a kind and noble heart, but Barrett is flawless. Women in the audience wonder aloud if he`s as handsome in real life as on the stage. They`re not disappointed.
The hitherto troubled Kennedy Center, often called ”the nation`s theater,” is enjoying a most energetic period of renewal under its new chairman, James Wolfensohn, who also is chairman of New York`s Carnegie Hall while attending to his vast financial interests.
The center drifted badly under the direction of founding chairman Roger Stevens` chosen successor, Ralph Davidson, who suffered from standing in the shadows of Stevens` reputation as America`s most prolific and far-sighted theatrical producer.
But Wolfensohn has proved a rising sun, bringing in lots of new money despite very tight times, sending the esteemed National Symphony on another stellar world tour and booking a succession of shows that have pleased critics and packed houses. The center`s production of Gian Carlo Menotti`s ”Amahl and the Night Visitors” this year proved one of the greatest delights of the capital`s holiday season.
If Wolfensohn can be faulted, it`s over the fact that, unlike the days of Stevens, the Kennedy Center has become very timid about staging avant-garde and controversial works.
Chicago`s ”She Always Said, Pablo,” a Goodman Theatre production, was yanked out of its short run when its modernist treatment of Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein failed to fill the seats. Highly provocative political plays are finding a home in Philadelphia`s small but courageous Wilma Theater, run by Czechoslovak dissidents Blanka and Jiri Zizka. These include Donald Freed`s ”Alfred and Victoria,” a morality tale about the uniquely Reaganesque California attitudes attending the ill-fated romance between Reagan groupie Alfred Bloomingdale and his sado-masochist call girl-mistress Vicky Morgan, and the new Gitta Honegger work ”The President,” about White House power threatened by assassination.
Such plays should be seen by Washingtonians, too-especially given the subject matter.
