The show, based on the phenomenally successful Disney animated film, completed a pre-Broadway run last Sunday at Denver’s Centre for Performing Arts.
When I saw it in Colorado, Thomas Schumacher, president of Disney Theatricals, told me he’d love to see it staged in London – and the Theatre Royal Drury Lane is surely on his list.
Director Michael Grandage is also a fan of the venue. But he and his team are taking nothing for granted until they see how Frozen fares in New York.
Andrew Lloyd Webber is hoping that producers of the musical Frozen will let it go to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane after the venue’s £35 million revamp
The show, based on the phenomenally successful Disney animated film, completed a pre-Broadway run last Sunday at Denver’s Centre for Performing Arts
To re-open Britain’s most historic theatre with what could be Disney’s biggest ever title would be a mega-deal for Lloyd Webber and his associates at his Really Useful Theatre Company.
The Frozen team – including Schumacher, Grandage, writer Jennifer Lee and songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez – have identified the cuts, tweaks and changes they need to make before the show, a fairytale about two royal sisters Elsa and Anna, begins previewing at the St James Theatre in New York in February.
The Broadway cast will include Caissie Levy as Elsa, Patti Murin as Anna, Greg Hildreth as Olaf and Jelani Alladin as Kristoff the ice salesman. (Alladin had a sore throat the night I was in Denver, so I caught his very fine understudy, Noah J. Ricketts.)
The Theatre Royal, which has housed musicals such as Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady, A Chorus Line, Miss Saigon and 42nd Street (a revival of which is currently running) will close in 2019 for an 18-month restoration.
When I saw it in Colorado, Thomas Schumacher, president of Disney Theatricals, told me he’d love to see it staged in London – and the Theatre Royal Drury Lane is surely on his list
To re-open Britain’s most historic theatre with what could be Disney’s biggest ever title would be a mega-deal for Lloyd Webber and his associates at his Really Useful Theatre Company
On the list of improvements will be creating more leg room for the audience, and making the line of the Circle rounder, so the theatre feels more intimate, like the London Palladium. If all the stars align, there’s every chance Frozen could become as big a musical powerhouse as smash-hit Hamilton.
It’s still early days and negotiations for Frozen to go into Drury Lane have yet to start.
Also, before Disney Let It Go to Lloyd Webber, there’s a second suitor to be considered.
Disney and Schumacher have a long history with Cameron Mackintosh: Mary Poppins and Aladdin have played at the Prince Edward, which is owned by the Delfont Mackintosh group. In fact, Aladdin’s there right now.
Perhaps Mackintosh and his executives might argue that it could have run its course by 2020… in which case Frozen could skate into the Prince Edward instead of making its home in Drury Lane.
It’s still early days and negotiations for Frozen to go into Drury Lane have yet to start
There are few other places for Frozen to go. Possibly the Dominion in Tottenham Court Road – but as I’ve already written, that will likely land the terrific Bat Out Of Hell.
Disney’s Lion King is happily enthroned in the Lyceum for a long reign; while the London Palladium – still recovering from The Wind In The Willows – has a panto deal for the next couple of years.
Fortune smiles on Grinning man
When the new musical The Grinning Man played at the Bristol Old Vic, audience members began turning up dressed like the title character, who uses a silk scarf to hide the Joker-like smile that disfigures his face.
‘People sent in art work; and they learned the songs,’ marvelled Tom Morris, the Old Vic’s artistic chief, who directed the show last year and will perform the same duties when it transfers to the Trafalgar Studios, where previews will start on December 5.
When the new musical The Grinning Man played at the Bristol Old Vic, audience members began turning up dressed like the title character, who uses a silk scarf to hide the Joker-like smile that disfigures his face
The Grinning Man is based on Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs. Morris explained that Hugo wrote it while in exile. ‘It’s a classic outsider story… an almost Phantom-style love story between a disfigured man and a beautiful blind woman he has grown up with.’
He added that the tale is set in an imaginary, extremely brutal version of England. Louis Maskell, who played Grinpayne (he of the marked face) and Julian Bleach, as a psycho clown, will reprise their roles when producer Howard Panter transfers it to the Trafalgar.
The director said Maskell’s vocal range made him the perfect actor to interpret the numbers written by Tim Phillips and Marc Teitler.
‘Louis is a proper baritone high tenor,’ said Morris, who co-directed the National Theatre hit War Horse with Marianne Elliott.
Finn Caldwell and Toby Olie, who played various parts of horses in War Horse, have created puppets – including a wolf – for Morris’s new show, through their company, Gyre and Gimble.
