This is a big season for London shows on Broadway, with seven productions and a small roll call of English stage stars arriving in New York this spring in time for the Tony Awards deadline of 1999.
But what about 2000?
At the moment, tentatively, the schedule for next year includes two musicals to be offered by producer Cameron Mackintosh (the new “Martin Guerre” and a revival of “Oliver!”), plus two more West End shows from other producing sources: the stage musical of “Saturday Night Fever” and a revival of Peter Shaffer’s drama “Amadeus.”
“Saturday Night Fever” would seem to be a strange choice for a London transfer to Broadway. An adaptation of the smash hit Hollywood movie of 1977, with John Travolta as a Brooklyn boy who finds meaning in life in dancing at the disco, the production, about to enter its second year at the London Palladium, is loud, garish and dead on its feet in its book passages.
When it starts dancing with those slithery old disco moves to that incredible BeeGees score, however, director-choreographer Arlene Phillips’ staging picks up a joyous retro fever. As has been proved on a small scale in Chicago in the Griffin Theatre’s current production of “Shake Your Groove Thing,” disco dancing of the ’70s holds an inexplicable, irresistible appeal for audiences of the ’90s.
Phillips, whose other London credits include the long-running revival of “Grease,” keeps the show moving to the BeeGees’ songs from the moment the story’s hero, Tony Manero, makes his first appearance to the beat of “Stayin’ Alive.”
Adam Garcia, who portrays Tony in this slavish stage adaptation of the film, is an Australian actor-dancer of super-smooth technique and dynamic presence. Leading the chorus line in Tony’s trademark white suit, he’s a sensation — and the chief reason for paying attention to this gaudy production.
The revival of Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” at the Old Vic Theatre is directed by Peter Hall, who staged the original, famous presentation at the Royal National Theatre 20 years ago.
Starring this time around as Antonio Salieri, the court composer insanely envious of the God-given talent of Wolfgang Amdeus Mozart, is David Suchet, a distinguished English stage actor now familiar to United States audiences through his public television appearances in a series based on Agatha Christie’s mystery novels about the Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot.
Appearing opposite him is Michael Sheen, whose hard, dedicated work as the satyrlike Mozart is typical of this busy, yet strangely somnolent revival. Everything seems nicely lined up here, including the handsome setting and 18th Century period costumes, but the spark is missing.
Reversing the usual process of London-to-New York for composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musicals is the production at the Aldwych Theatre of his latest offering, “Whistle Down the Wind.”
Thoroughly lambasted (but a box-office winner) in its Washington, D.C., premiere three years ago, when it was directed by Harold Prince, the musical closed down in the United States, but was revived in a new London version last year and continues to do well in its new home.
The musical now has a revised book, but it still sticks to the story of three innocent children who discover a wounded escaped convict in their barn and mistake him for Jesus Christ. Originally set in the north country of England in a 1961 film with the very young Hayley Mills, the story has been transplanted to 1950s backwater Louisiana, complete with a subplot about a leather-jacketed James Deanish rebel itching to flee the Bible Belt restrictions of his small town.
There’s a new choreographer (Anthony Van Laast) on board, and a new director (Gale Edwards, who also staged a recent, ear-busting revival of Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” in London). But despite some changes in the score, the big, children’s chorus songs of “When Children Rule the World,” and “No Matter What” by Webber and lyricist Jim Steinman are still maddeningly repeated; and the theatrical gaucheries of the original, including a gathering of snake-handling fanatics, remain.
The chief addition to the London production is an elaborate hydraulic lift platform, which, when lowered from the top of the proscenium, allows two scenes to play at once. Below on the stage floor, for example, the idealistic children are seen in the barn, while above them on the platform the posse of ominous adults begins the manhunt for the convict.
This scenic device is the only substantial twist in the lost cause that is “Whistle Down the Wind.” Nevertheless, as in Washington, the show is doing business and will probably run for a long time in London and on tour in the English provinces.
It should live and be well — at a long, safe distance.
