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Songwriting team Holland-Dozier-Holland
ONE MAJOR BENEFIT OF OUR TOWN having two Tony-winning regional theaters, and sophisticated audiences, is the number of Broadway-hopeful shows that get a tryout here. Every year the Old Globe and La Jolla Playhouse (and sometimes other companies) schedule plays and musicals that producers hope will go on to New York and national praise—and profit.
This summer’s potentially big tuner is The First Wives Club, coming to the Globe’s main stage July 15–August 23. It’s based on the same-named Olivia Goldsmith novel and hit 1996 film, about three women seeking revenge on their ex-husbands, and the Globe has assembled a socko creative team to put the comedy on stage. The score was composed by the songwriting trio who revved motors for Motown, Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland; the book is by Rupert Holmes; and the director is Francesca Zambello.
Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Holland, Dozier and Holland penned dozens of million-sellers for most of the artists on the Motown label, and some of those tunes, in revamped form, may show up in First Wives. Holmes, who had his own pop hits with “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” and “Him,” has become a Tony-winning playwright (book and score for The Mystery of Edwin Drood). And Zambello, who staged Disney’s The Little Mermaid and is artistic adviser to San Francisco Opera, busily and eminently bounces internationally between the worlds of theater and opera.
THE MAJOR NONMUSICAL DEBUT is Restoration, at La Jolla Playhouse June 23–July 19. It’s a Playhouse-commissioned work by Claudia Shear, noted for her 1994 solo performance work Blown Sideways Through Life and her 2000 Tony-nominated Dirty Blonde, an homage to Mae West that had a nifty run at the Globe in 2003.
Playhouse artistic director Christopher Ashley was impressed by Shear, whose acting experience includes being “fake Monica” on TV’s Friends, when he directed Blown Sideways. An off-Broadway hit, the play was distilled from Shear’s extensive work experiences, which include chef, nude model and brothel receptionist.
Restoration, directed by Ashley, concerns an art restorer who wins the task of sprucing up Michelangelo’s David for its 500th-birthday celebration in Florence. Her seriocomic dealings with the statue’s guardians, museum curators and tourists give her insight into the beauty and flaws in art—and herself.
MEANWHILE, THE GLOBE is hosting another world debut, until June 21. Cornelia, written by Mark Victor Olsen (co-creator of HBO’s popular Big Love), is the story of Cornelia Wallace, who hoped to accompany husband George from the Alabama governor’s mansion into the White House. Noted for his “segregation now, segregation forever” speech, he ran for president four times, even after a would-be assassin’s bullet paralyzed him from the waist down.
Cornelia, a former beauty queen, married George in 1971 and divorced him in 1978, as he was becoming a born-again Christian and renouncing his segregationist views. Olsen’s script covers that turbulent period, when Cornelia worked hard to support her husband and his political ambitions, then rebelled to promote her own.
Melinda Page Hamilton is playing Cornelia, and Robert Foxworth portrays George. Directing is Ethan McSweeney, who’s helmed two excellent Globe productions: 2008’s In This Corner and 2007’s A Body of Water.
IN 2003, IN THE CORNER of a small Rolando strip mall, Sean Murray and Bill Schmidt opened Cygnet Theatre with an off-Broadway hit, Hedwig and the Angry Inch. That musical, concerning a rock singer who’s bitter about a botched sex-change surgery and a bandmate who stole songs, excited critics and audiences here, propelling Cygnet to much success and a deserved reputation for quality productions. Then, in 2008, Cygnet took over management of the Old Town Theatre, planning a two-venue future.
The constricting economy, however, spurred Murray and Schmidt to focus on Old Town and not renew their lease on the Rolando theater, due to expire in July 2010. They hope to sublet the space, which they expanded and renovated, to another arts organization. As a farewell to the location and completion of an artistic arc, Cygnet reprises Hedwig, June 3–August 9.
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