Of course the West End is still flush with the imports of Broadway musicals – Avenue Q, Spamalot and Wicked all arrived last summer and autumn, joined by new London-originated revivals of such Broadway classics as Cabaret, The Sound of Music and Porgy and Bess – and yet more are on the way, with The Drowsy Chaperone due at the Novello next month and Jersey Boys at the Prince Edward, just as soon as Mary Poppins flies into the sunset one last time. Meanwhile, the London fringe has also mounted a rear-guard attack for shows originally seen off-Broadway like Little Shop of Horrors (now moved from the Menier to the West End) and the King’s Head production of The Thing About Men opening later this month.
But anyone visiting New York right now will experience a West End déjà vu, too, for productions and/or plays we’re exporting there. Just this week Kevin Spacey, Eve Best and the rest of the Old Vic cast have reassembled to open on Broadway in A Moon for the Misbegotten (where Spacey has found the virtually unanimous praise he received in London lost somewhere in transit, but Best has, once again, been declared to live up to her name by the New York critics as she is regularly acclaimed over here), and David Harrower’s Blackbird has opened at off-Broadway’s Manhattan Theatre Club, which the New York Times’ Ben Brantley has called “a drama that promises to be the most powerful of the season, but in a different production to the one that Peter Stein directed here first at the Edinburgh International Festival and subsequently in the West End.
Michael Grandage’s Donmar production of Peter Morgan’s Frost/Nixon, with Michael Sheen and Frank Langella reprising their London performances in the title roles respectively, is now in previews at Broadway’s Jacobs Theatre, prior to opening officially on April 22; and Melly Still’s National Theatre production of Coram Boy is about to begin previews at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre on April 16, prior to an opening on May 2.
Meanwhile, also running on Broadway is David Grindlay’s revival of Journey’s End (that was a long-running West End hit), and in different productions to the ones they received in London, Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia trilogy (directed by Jack O’Brien there as opposed to Trevor Nunn here) is a sell-out Lincoln Center hit at the Broadway-scaled Beaumont Theatre; while Christopher Shinn, a young American playwright, has Dying City (first seen at the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs) in the downstairs off-Broadway Mitzi Newhouse (directed there, as it was at the Royal Court, by James Macdonald). Patrick Marber’s Howard Katz is at Roundabout’s off-Broadway Laura Pels Theatre, with Alfred Molina in the title role originally taken at the National Theatre by Ron Cook; and Matthew Bourne’s Edward Scissorhands has just ended a run at BAM.
I am heading to New York myself, two weeks today, and can’t wait to catch up with some of these again… not to mention The Pirate Queen that I’ve already blogged about here! But also top of my list is the return to the stage of Angela Lansbury in a new Terrence McNally play called Deuce in which she co-stars with one of my favourite New York actresses Marian Seldes; the incandescent Audra McDonald in a revival of the musical 110 in the Shade ; and Legally Blonde – the latest film-to-stage musical transition…. Oh yes, and there’s one more theatrical export from London I plan to catch up with: Alastair Macaulay, formerly of the London theatrical beat on the Financial Times, has now flown the net to New York to take up a new post as chief dance critic on the New York Times…
