Wednesday, June 23, 1999
'Titanic' will launch trendy Broadway Series
BY JACKIE DEMALINE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
It will be a fresh Broadway season for Fifth Third Bank Broadway Series with trends, not re-treads, onstage at the Aronoff Center for the Arts.
The schedule: Titanic, Nov. 9-21; Jekyll & Hyde, Dec. 7-19; Peter Pan, Dec. 28-Jan. 9; The Civil War, Jan. 18-30; Cabaret, Feb. 22-March 5; Fame: The Musical, April 18-30.
The biggest titles are Tony Award-winning Titanic, about the “unsinkable” ship that became legend when it sunk on its maiden voyage, and the hot revival of Cabaret.
The season, series producer Brad Broecker says, “is the luck of the draw,” but many of the titles point out theater industry trends, including behind-the-scenes partnerships.
Peter Pan, starring former Olympic gymnast Cathy Rigby, was originally scheduled for February as part of the Broadway Series at the Taft.
Originally a multiyear commitment, the Taft series lasted one season when PACE Theatricals (which owns the Broadway Series) and Nederlander (which manages the Taft Theatre) became part of industry giant SFX Entertainment. As “cousins,” defines Mr. Broecker, the contract had a clean, quick break.
This is a bells-and-whistles production of the children's classic. When spritely Peter and his fairy dust take flight, it's to go zooming over the heads of the audience.
PACE/SFX is a producer of The Civil War, the latest musical by composer Frank Wildhorn. It's a sort of dramatized, pop-rock song cycle involving Confederate and Union soldiers and slaves. It closed less than two months after its April opening on Broadway.
Jekyll & Hyde is another Wildhorn musical and another PACE production. Cincinnati audiences saw an early version of it in November 1995 in its pre-Broadway tour.
When the current version of the Robert Louis Stevenson adventure of a good 19th-century man falling victim to bad chemicals debuted on Broadway in spring 1997 it became a cult classic almost instantly, attracting younger audiences.
Cabaret isa sensation in New York for its down-and-dirty reinterpretation and environmental staging of the adventures of bad girl Sally Bowles in Berlin as the Nazis come to power.
On a tour of proscenium theaters, Mr. Broecker acknowledges, it's next to impossible to re-create the sensational staging that puts audiences in the Kit Kat Klub.
Fame, sandwiched between last season's Footloose and the upcoming Saturday Night Fever, is part of a huge new trend: When is a revival not a revival? When it was originally a movie musical. It's a hybrid that has the advantage of being both fresh and familiar.
Fame ) is, of course, a few dramatic years in the lives of students at New York's High School of Performing Arts.
TICKET SALES
Season tickets for the 1999-2000 Fifth Third Bank Broadway Series go on sale Monday. Prices for the six-show season range from $87 to $410 depending on seat location and performance time.
Exact seat locations can be confirmed by calling the Broadway Series at (800) 294-1816 or visiting the Broadway Series office in the Mercantile Center, 120 E. Fourth St., downtown, weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Tickets for individual shows will go on sale six to eight weeks before the opening.
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