By Jackie Demaline
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Billy Joel's Movin' Out, Mamma Mia dancing along to Abba - is pop the future of Broadway as commercial theater recognizes the musical tastes of the aging baby boomers?

The spirit may be willing but the art is weak.

Look no further than the current Broadway season, where Boy George's Taboo tanked and sexy Hugh Jackman as The Boy from Oz drove the box office, not the story of Peter Allen.

George Michael and Elton John have shows en route to Broadway, but there's no sure thing in show biz, which may be why Bradley Broecker, senior vice president of Clear Channel Theatricals, says "I don't see a shift. I think what we're seeing is circumstantial."

When Rent debuted a decade ago, industry pros thought they felt the ground shifting. But Rent, inspired by a mega-hit from a century before, was an anomaly.

The larger trend will likely continue to be movies-into-musicals, from Mary Poppins to Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang to Moonstruck, and literary projects, from The Little Princess to The Vampire Lestat.

Broecker does hear a more pop lilt to many new musicals, from the previewing Bollywood musical Bombay Dreams to what he thinks will be this year's Tony Award-winning best musical, Wicked.

But the pop scores, he says, are layered into traditionally styled shows, which have followed traditional paths to production.

While Broecker doesn't believe the industry "has gotten itself together from a creative standpoint to move in (a pop music) direction," he sees a broadening of what presenters across the United States are defining as "Broadway." Pop entertainment shows that are far less expensive to produce and present are the order of the day. Those include the percussion-driven Stomp and the drum and bugle corps-inspired Blast, headliners with adult appeal such as Dame Edna, and next season's Matters of the Heart.

What we'll see, he says, is a continued campaign to convince audiences of a wider definition of "Broadway."