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Thoroughly Modern Millie Musical Books Marquis Theatre, March 19 By Randy Gener
NEW YORK -- It's official. As had been hinted for more than a month, the Broadway musical adaptation of Thoroughly Modern Millie will begin previews Sunday, March 19 and officially open April 18 at the Marquis Theatre -- just in time to meet the 2002 Tony Award deadline.
Production official Glenna Freedman told BroadwayOnline.com that Millie, which had announced a fall 2001 Broadway opening but was unable to find a suitable theatre, is now back on track. The musical will move into the Marquis Theatre, where Annie Get Your Gun closes Sept. 1.
Several months ago, production spokesperson Pete Sanders told BroadwayOnline.com that the reason Millie is not opening in fall 2001, as originally hoped, is "strictly a real estate issue. There are no Nederlander houses that are available in the fall," Sanders said. "Because of a lack of a suitable theater for the show, the producers have decided to postpone it to spring." Millie was to have begun previews Oct. 16 and officially open Nov. 15.
Sutton Foster is still confirmed to play the title role of Millie in the Broadway version, thus quelling rumors that Kristin Chenoweth might take on the part if her TV sitcom fails.
Producers of the jazz-age Broadway-bound show, led by Whoopi Goldberg, held a group sales promotion May 21, 2001 at Le Bar Bat -- a well-attended event that also proved to be a very welcome and quite nervy introduction for Foster. Dressed in scarlet-red, with jet-black hair bobbing, Foster performed five numbers from the show, choreographed by Rob Ashford with a mixed-race chorus, including "Thoroughly Modern Millie," "Jimmy," and "Forget About the Boy."
The show's director, Michael Mayer, predicted that Millie is going to be the next big thing on Broadway. "But since I am the director of the show, I may not be very objective."
What's more, Gavin Creel ("Encores!" Hair) is playing Millie's love interest, Jimmy, and Angela Christian (Fame: The Musical) is taking on Miss Dorothy.
Reports and internet postings claiming that Andrea Martin (My Favorite Year) and Cheryl Lee Ralph (Dreamgirls) are playing Mrs. Meers and Muzzy, respectively, are not true, according to Sanders' office.
Neither is Goldberg herself planning to star in the show. During the May 21 event, she merely acted as the celebrity producer who introduced Foster via a huge-screen video presentation that touted her talents as triple-threat actress/singer/dancer, including excerpts from the La Jolla production and teasing glimpses of Foster as she trotted through Times Square.
Bells Are Ringing's Marc Kudisch is presently negotiating a Broadway reprise of his La Jolla Playhouse role as Trevor Graydon, Millie's boss. In an interview Jan. 31, 2001, Kudisch told BroadwayOnline.com that his stint in Broadway's Bells Are Ringing opposite Faith Prince might prevent him from taking on Millie, since he expected Bells to be a Broadway hit. However, Bells closed June 10. Kudisch has been waiting to hear what's next for the Broadway-bound Millie.
The last time BroadwayOnline.com reported on the Broadway-bound Thoroughly Modern Millie, the musical was so successful at La Jolla Playhouse that it had been extended several times, causing some last-minute replacements. Harriet Harris, who plays an aggressive agent on the hit television show "Frasier," replaced Pat Carroll as Mrs. Meers for the final week of La Jolla Playhouse's world-premiere production of Thoroughly Modern Millie.
Harris took over for Carroll, whose last performance was Dec. 3, 2000. Carroll left to fulfill another commitment that she had set months before the recently announced extension of Millie through Dec. 10, 2000.
"We can’t believe our good fortune to have Harriet coming into the role of Mrs. Meers for one week," said Dick Scanlan, Millie's co-author and lyricist. "She is that rare combination of old-time comic inspiration with an utterly contemporary edge."
Added Millie director Michael Mayer, "Harriet’s a first-rate comic actress with a brilliant and uniquely surprising instinct ideally suited for this character and this show.”
Harris, who performed in Millie only during the extension, recently co-starred with Nathan Lane in the Broadway revival of The Man Who Came to Dinner.
Reporting on Millie at La Jolla Playhouse:
La Jolla Playhouse extended the pre-Broadway tryout run of Thoroughly Modern Millie through Sunday, Dec. 10, 2000. According to La Jolla officials, Millie was the theater's biggest box-office draw since the 1997 La Jolla run of Rent. Having previously extended Millie's La Jolla run through Nov. 26, the troupe said that Dec. 10 is the final extension for the show.
After an unusually rocky preview period, the pre-Broadway tryout production of Thoroughly Modern Millie went ahead with its delayed opening night Oct. 22 at La Jolla Playhouse and opened to enthusiastic reviews.
Co-produced by film star Whoopi Goldberg, the Broadway-bound stage adaptation of the 1967 Universal Julie Andrews/Carol Channing movie-musical about 1920s flappers uses two songs from the film, plus some period standards. The rest of the score features original music by Tony nominee Jeanine Tesori (Twelfth Night, Violet) and lyrics and book by Dick Scanlan, based on the screenplay.
During the La Jolla run, technical difficulties and the replacement of the leading lady caused four delays in the first regular preview, which finally went before the public Oct. 10. Originally scheduled for Oct. 3, the first previews was pushed back to Oct. 4, then Oct. 5. Early on Oct. 5, the production announced that the first preview will take place Friday, Oct. 6.
According to La Jolla's managing director Terrence Dwyer, "Millie is a large, technically complex show. The... delay gives us more technical rehearsal time before the first public performance.”
But then a computer glitch jammed David Gallo's set design for the show Friday, Oct. 6, causing the delay of the first preview performance and a change in the opening night date -- however, audiences that night at La Jolla Playhouse got an unusual treat in return.
The show's turntable set experienced technical difficulties, and the result was that the cast performed the show with the orchestra -- but sans the set. Dubbed a "a concert version," that night's sold-out performance received a two-minute standing ovation, production officials told Theatre.com.
Regular full-tech preview performances finally began Tuesday, Oct. 10. Over the summer, Millie had been postponed two weeks from the originally announced Sept. 19 date. This latter change, however, was not related to technical problems.
In a surprise move, Millie also changed leading ladies days before previews began. Striving to bring in a new leading lady on less than two weeks' notice, Sutton Foster has replaced Erin Dilly in the title role.
"We all love Erin and think she is a special talent," director Michael Mayer said. "We are very sad that we could not continue together. However, we are blessed that such a gifted performer as Sutton Foster could leap in to be our new Millie."
Foster played Eponine in Broadway’s Les Misérables, Sandy in Broadway’s Grease and the star-to-be in the 20th anniversary Broadway production of Annie.
Foster was chosen over Dilly after several meetings of the Millie creative team, a production spokesperson told Theatre.com Sept. 25. Production officials offered no other explanation for Dilly's departure.
This is not the first time Thoroughly Modern Millie has experienced problems casting the leading role. Tony-winner Kristin Chenoweth was originally supposed to star in the musical, but backed out when she landed a TV gig.
The show's producer, Fox Theatricals, says it expects to open Throughly Modern Millie on Broadway in 2001.
The La Jolla production also featured Tonya Pinkins (Jelly's Last Jam, Broadway The Wild Party) plays Muzzy. Pat Carroll (Elektra, the voice of Ursula in The Little Mermaid) bagged the coveted role of the evil Mrs. Meers.
Sarah Uriarte Berry (Eponine in Les Miz) played Miss Dorothy, Millie's best friend. Jim Stanek played Jimmy. Marc Kudisch (Broadway The Wild Party) played Millie's employer Trevor Graydon. The two Chinese immigrant characters, Ching Ho and Bun Foo, were played by Stephen Sable and Francis Jue (M. Butterfly tour). And Ragtime's Anne L. Nathan played Miss Flannery, the office manager.
Directed by Mayer (A View From the Bridge and Side Man), the new musical was one of six productions for the inaugural season of La Jolla's new artistic director, Anne Hamburger.
Chenoweth and Broadway veteran Bea Arthur were prominently featured in a fall 1999 workshop reading in New York. Bea Arthur played the villain Mrs. Meers, the off-the-wall house-mother with a love for the Pacific Rim, which Beatrice Lillie memorably played in the 1967 film version. Also, David Campbell (Saturday Night) was rumored for the part of Jimmy, now played by Stanek.
The show's bookwriter and lyricist Dick Scanlan told BroadwayOnline.com that La Jolla Playhouse seemed the perfect fit for the new Thoroughly Modern Millie musical.
"The number one factor in our decision to go with La Jolla is Anne Hamburger -- our knowledge of her artistic vision and her relationship with Michael Mayer," Scanlan told Theatre.com. "The second is that La Jolla really has a long history of launching new musicals, and that's just gold. Even in terms of putting up a budget, La Jolla understands all the things that are required of a new musical and what it takes today to get a show to opening night. They know all the hidden twists and turns. It's a small town, and we can work with no distractions."
(Since that Feb. 15 interview, Hamburger announced that she will step down as La Jolla's artistic leader after the current season. Jumping ship in favor of a job at Disney, she will be replaced by Des McAnuff, who will be the interim artistic director.)
La Jolla Playhouse recently presented a musical version of Jane Eyre, which will open on Broadway Dec. 3.
Now five years in the making, the Broadway-bound Millie has been much changed from the original 1967 George Roy Hill-directed, Ross Hunter-produced, Richard Morris-scripted Hollywood movie that also starred Mary Tyler Moore and Beatrice Lillie.
Set during the crazy 1920s, the movie is a jazz-age spoof. Millie goes to New York determined to find a wealthy husband and live happily ever after. She transforms herself into a modern woman, decked up in bobbed hair and short skirt and flat chest. But things don't quite turn out as she hoped. Millie falls in love with Jimmy, an attractive, funny but very poor young man. Nevertheless, Millie goes after her boss, Trevor Graydon, a handsome, square and rich executive. Other interesting characters who figure in the movie are the sinister Mrs. Meers, who heads a slave organization, and the eccentric millionaire Muzzy Van Hossmere (Carol Channing). Elmer Bernstein's score received the Academy Award for Best Musical Score. Millie also marked the film debut of Mary Tyler Moore, who played Miss Dorothy.
The Broadway-bound musical, on the other hand, is its own show. Morris and Scanlan based their book on Morris' original screenplay.
"It's inspired by the movie," Scanlan said. "It's been so changed and rewritten. The worldview is similar, but actual plot details are different. Different people end up with different people. The Asian characters are different. They have bigger roles, and they play a much more important journey."
The music itself is also different. Two of the musical numbers ("Thoroughly Modern Millie" and "Jimmy") are lifted from the movie, and there are several standards from the 1920s. But about 70 percent of the stage musical's score is made up of original songs by composer Tesori (Violet) and lyricist Scanlan.
"Jeanine Tesori wrote new material for the musical," Scanlan said. "I'm delighted by it. She's using our instruments from 1920s speakeasy New York. She's really basing our music to what happened in the jazz world during the 1920s, as opposed to a musical version of the 1920s, which we've been accustomed to. The music has not yet been orchestrated, but conceptually the sound is based on what actually occurred then. It's not a quaint, sweet jazz sound, but a hot, ragged, blazing sound, like horns of a taxi. It's unbelievably bold. It really reflects like in the early 1920s, which was very modern.
"One of Jeanine's gifts as a contemporary composer is that she's also a melodist," Scanlan added. She likes sound that the ear can travel with and jump aboard with. During the 1920s, there was nothing sweet about life then. It was every bit as fast-paced and electric as it is now, if not more so. The show's music reflects that. It's created from that kind of energy because we don’t want to write pop ballads. Jeanine's music sets up a real high bar."
For the record, the Oct. 1999 Thoroughly Modern Millie reading also starred Yvette Cason (in the Carol Channing role), David Campbell as Jimmy, Marc Kudisch, Amanda Serkasevich, Ruth Williamson, Francis Jue and Ken Leung.
Also of huge interest is that superstar Whoopi Goldberg is one the producers backing Thoroughly Modern Millie.
"To the best of my understanding, Whoopi approached us," Scanlan said. "My understanding is the Whoopi has always loved the original movie. In a conversation with Michael Mayer's agent at William Morris, she said that she felt a good stage musical could be made out of the movie. When she was told that a musical was being prepared, Whoopi asked to see material without knowing who the people involved in it were. That was three years ago. Later on we spoke with Whoopi. We talked of our vision, which is to retain the essence of movie. We wanted to play with it. She seemed excited by our ideas, and she came on board. KEY FACTS
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