A Shot at Broadway

FRANK WILDHORN has had enormous success as a composer, with several chart hits, recordings of his songs by dozens of vocalists, and many popular theatrical productions around the globe. But so far, Broadway has been a dead-end street for him.

Four musicals with Wildhorn scores have opened on the Great White Way, then closed awash in red ink. Though he was the first composer in a generation to ­have three shows running at the same time (in 1999), and his Jekyll & Hyde had a record-setting long run at Plymouth Theatre, his Broadway productions have always lost money. The most recent, Dracula, the Musical, de­­buted at La Jolla Playhouse in 2001, sailed onto Broadway in 2004 and sank like the Titanic amid icy critical reviews.

Undeterred, the Playhouse people apparently believe Wildhorn is due. In November, they’ll introduce his latest work, Bonnie & Clyde (another ampersand). This time, he’s teamed with lyricist Don Black, who put words to the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber for the musical Sunset Boulevard. That hit was based on the classic film of the same name, but B&C won’t be a rework of the popular 1967 movie. Ivan Wenchell, writer of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, will do an original libretto.

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were two of the Depression-era criminals who became folk heroes because their robberies, mostly of banks, were considered appropriate rebellion against a failed capitalist system. B&C were particularly romanticized because one of them was a poetry-writing woman, and they sometimes behaved like Robin Hoods. Overlooked in the admiration, of course, were their cold-hearted killings of lawmen and innocent workers or bystanders. Because of several lucky escapes, they attained mythic status and a belief that they couldn’t be killed. That died in 1934, when an ambushing posse pumped dozens of bullets into them.

Theirs is a fascinating saga, given extra resonance in an economy still struggling with the aftermath of bank mismanagement and failures. And advance word on the score says it combines rockabilly, blues and gospel. Maybe that will be enough to answer the common complaint from Broadway critics that Wildhorn’s music is too repetitive—and to give him his first Big Apple green.

Just before B&C, the Playhouse has slated another world debut, Creditors (September 29–October 25). Doug Wright, who wrote the Playhouse-originated Tony winner I Am My Own Wife, has adapted August Strindberg’s classic play using financial dealings as meta­phors for the bitter relationships among two men and a woman.

SEEMA SUEKO BELIEVES theater should make a difference in society. She’s made her troupe, Mo‘olelo Performing Arts Company, into a green organization gaining national recognition for its stated efforts to “conserve natural resources and reduce use of material and practices that have a detrimental effect on environment.”

Not surprisingly, she produces plays that linger in the memory because they also engage the brain. Next up (October 8–November 1) is Heather Raffo’s 9 Parts of Desire. It’s the story of nine Iraqi women, residing in three areas of the world, as they deal with the problems and attitudes stemming from the wars in their home country over the past 19 years.

AN IRAQI WOMAN from centuries ago is the subject of Fires in Heaven, a new play by Marianne McDonald presented by The Theatre Inc. (October 3-25), a little company specializing in classics. McDonald is one of our chief theater benefactors, regularly contributing money as well as knowledgeable translations and original scripts. This one concerns Rabia Al-Adawiyya (circa 717-801), who was born in Basra, orphaned while young and sold into slavery. Legend says her master saw a light above her head and freed her. Her subsequent devout life and world-renowned poetry made her one of Islam’s saints.

A DEVOUTLY WISHED-FOR MARRIAGE has been consummated. Cyg­net Theatre was leaving its Rolando venue to produce solely at the Old Town Theatre (where Pulit­zer-winning playwright Tracy Letts’ Man from Nebraska is running September 24–November 1). The Moxie troupe, which for years has been doing acclaimed works on whatever stage was available, needed a permanent base. Voila! Moxie opens its season in the new home with a reprise (October 15–November 22) of one of the company’s most-praised shows, Dog Act, Liz Duffy Adams’ darkly comic vision of post-apocalyptic America.

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