Broadway’s been sleepy for the last month, but it snaps wide awake with a mid-March rush and an April shower of shows offering something for everyone (even NBA fans) and head-turning stars.
Consider: Ricky Martin salsas and sexes up a new Argentina, Angela Lansbury and Candice Bergen play politics, Blair Underwood takes on a role made famous by Marlon Brando, and Matthew Broderick dances with bootleggers. And Jesus belts “What’s the Buzz.”
There’s more. Philip Seymour Hoffman tackles Arthur Miller, John Lithgow plays a journalist with a secret and Linda Lavin acts up as a mother-from-hell.
Heaven.
The spring lineup also features four new musicals based on films and two plays from London — one, a farce, the other a drama about Judy Garland.
Also on deck: Last year’s Pulitzer Prize winner, a “Peter Pan” prequel and a “Boeing-Boeing” sequel. And how about a basketball buddy bio going for a slam dunk. When it rains it pours.
In total, 18 shows — comedies, dramas and musicals, new and old — will premiere by April 26, cutoff date for Tony Awards consideration this year. We covers them all in snapshots and offer more detailed looks of four anticipated productions. - Joe Dziemianowicz
“Ghost the Musical” — Endless love
It has won two Oscars, earned half a billion dollars on a $21 million investment and forever turned pottery-making into foreplay.
Now the 1990 big-screen romance “Ghost” is on Broadway with songs and flashy visual effects. And skin!
Previews begin Thursday for “Ghost the Musical” at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, and the production promises scenes as steamy as in the screen version.
Ask Richard Fleeshman and Caissie Levy, who star as eternally in-love couple Sam Wheat and Molly Jensen, roles originated by Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore.
“Both of us as kids loved the film,” says Levy, adding that she and her co-star change channels if it shows up on TV.
“You don’t want to imitate what’s already been done,” explains the Canadian-born actress and singer. “You almost don’t want to remind yourself of all those specific moments that happened.”
Fleeshman, a singer-songwriter and actor from England, agrees.
“Even though there’s a lot of new writing in this,” he says, “there are obviously still very iconic moments which have remained the same. So we’ve decided to avoid it.”
The most memorable of those moments is a messy make-out session between Molly and Sam as she’s molding a pot out of wet clay while the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody” plays in the background.
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