On the road: An end to "Perfect," and a beginning for "Les Miserables"
Benchmarks are on tap for the London/Broadway musical smash “Les Miserables” and the off-Broadway musical phenom “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change.”
Over 20 years since its debut, rights for “Les Miz” were recently released to a handful of American professional regional theaters, including The Actors’ Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables, which will produce the show next spring.
But the lease comes with a caveat – not to reproduce all the signature turntable scenic effects, but to use new staging ideas. What that means began to materialize this week in Philadelphia, whose Walnut Theatre is among the first regionals to mount its own production last week. And as for "Perfect," the show has been hit by the economic downturn and will close July 27 -- after 12 years and $200 million.
Of the Walnut's "Les Miz," Philadelphia Inquirer critic David Patrick Stearns wrote: “The Walnut crew confronted a challenge that was greater, actually, than it looked: To triumph, in this case, is to give a business-as-usual impression. And that they do.
“The new production looks and feels very much like the old, with eroding building exteriors that lend themselves to the show's numerous downtrodden locales, with more specific scenery arriving from the stage wings via double-decker wagons. The turntable versions of Les Miz had the action gravitating toward the center of the stage. At the Walnut, though there is less visual variety than in the original, director Mark Clements utilizes Todd Edward Ivins' design to send the action spilling out into the aisles in more functional moments, but also has it inhabiting the sides of the stage for worthy purposes.”
The show runs through Aug. 3 if you’re in that area. Or you can wait to see what TAP artistic director David Arisco finds up his own sleeve.
“I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” is the second-longest running off-Broadway show in history, behind the seemingly unbeatable champ “The Fantasticks.”
A nice chunk of the $200 million came from tours and independent productions including South Florida, where the show set some local records in engagements at various theaters in Miami-Dade, Broward and the Palm Beaches, picking up some regional Carbonell Award honors along the way. Although New York will soon be off the books, it's still viable on the road and the kitty should keep growing for author Joe DiPietro.
JACK ZINK, the Sun-Sentinel theater, music & cultural affairs writer, has spent 38 years on the Gold Coast...