This show, too, is a musical version of a Brooks film, based on his memorable 1974 spoof of monster movies. (Who can forget Frankenstein's creature doing "Puttin' on the Ritz"?)Brooks again is writing the songs and co-authoring the book with Thomas Meehan, with Susan Stroman once more handling direction and choreography.
All the "Producers" designers are also back. Doctor Frankenstein will be played by Roger Bart, who was the flamboyant Carmen Ghia in the earlier show, in a cast that also includes Sutton Foster, Megan Mullally, and Shuler Hensley as the monster. "The Little Mermaid" was the first animated musical made for Disney by the songwriting team of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken.
Two years later, they repeated their success - and celebration of spunky young womanhood - with "Beauty and the Beast." "Beauty" preceded "Mermaid" to Broadway and set the bar high, running 13 years before closing in July. "Mermaid" has a near-unknown, Sierra Boggess, playing the title role and a director - Francesca Zambello, best known for opera - making her Broadway debut.
The Disney name and the title are obviously the show's major pre-opening selling points. Also new to Broadway, as a playwright, is Twain, best known on the Great White Way for his impersonation by Hal Holbrook. In 1898, the author of "Huckleberry Finn" wrote a play, a comedy called "Is He Dead?
" It was never produced and even remained unpublished until 2002. Loosely based on a real-life incident, it's a satire of the art world - friends of the French painter Millet spread a false report of his death, thereby spiking the value of his work. The comedy has been adapted by David Ives and stars Norbert Leo Butz, a Tony winner for "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," as Millet.
Before Sorkin made his name in television, he started out promisingly on Broadway with the 1989 military drama "A Few Good Men" (made into a film with Jack Nicholson). Following the cancellation of his latest series, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," he is returning to Broadway with his second play, "The Farnsworth Invention." Based on a true story, it examines the fight to patent the television set between corporate America, in the person of David Sarnoff, head of the Radio Corporation of America, and the individual genius, Philo T.
Farnsworth, who realized the basic principle of television reception as a 14-year-old Idaho farm boy. Hank Azaria will play Sarnoff, with Jimmi Simpson as Farnsworth. "Rock 'n' Roll" is the latest play by Tom Stoppard, and its title refers to the liberating freedom of the rebellious music, played by a young Czech band after the Russian takeover of Prague in 1968.
(The drama has musical moments, with the songs of the Rolling Stones and other classic groups.) The situation in Czechoslovakia is contrasted with the world of an English Marxist professor at Cambridge, with the play's time period spanning the late '60s to 1990. The cast will be led by the stars of the acclaimed London production: Brian Cox, Sinead Cusack and Rufus Sewell.
In her Broadway bow, Danes - whose latest movie is "Stardust" - will play Eliza Doolittle. Not in "My Fair Lady" but in George Bernard Shaw's original play, "Pygmalion." She will be directed by David Grindley, the Englishman who made a smashing Broadway debut last season with his staging of "Journey's End.
" The cast will include two actors from that revival, Jefferson Mays, who will be Henry Higgins, and Boyd Gaines as Col. Garner, who did some stage work - she once understudied on Broadway - before becoming a star on TV ("Alias") and in films ("13 Going on 30"), is going to be Roxane, opposite Kevin Kline's Cyrano, in a revival of "Cyrano de Bergerac," Edmond Rostand's grand, ever-popular tale of love and sacrifice. The season's other nine openings include three new plays: "The Seafarer,'' by Irish writer Conor McPherson ("The Weir''), a specialist in the mysterious and possibly supernatural; "Mauritius,'' a dark comedy about the disposition of a stamp collection, by Theresa Rebeck, a prolific off-Broadway playwright making her Broadway debut; and "August: Osage County,'' a gothic family drama by Tracy Letts, another off-Broadway writer making a Broadway bow.
"Lone Star Love," a musical that opened off-Broadway in 2004, transplants Shakespeare's comedy "The Merry Wives of Windsor" to the American Wild West. Shakespeare can also be seen more traditionally in a production of the seldom-revived "Cymbeline." A more recent classic play, Harold Pinter's "The Homecoming," will also be brought back.
Another revival, originally done off-Broadway, is Chazz Palminteri's semi-autobiographical one-man show about growing up on mean streets, "A Bronx Tale." Finally, "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," a musical for children based on the Dr. Seuss book, will return after a very successful holiday run last season.
It will try to make up at the box office for its limited nine-week run by playing as many as 15 performances a week. This show, too, is a musical version of a Brooks film, based on his memorable 1974 spoof of monster movies.
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