After several slumbering seasons, Denver is about to host Broadway’s most attractive national touring productions in years – most notably the blockbusters Monty Python’s “Spamalot,” “The Light in the Piazza,” “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” and “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.”
Denver also has landed the world premiere staging of Disney’s “The Little Mermaid,” which will get a fine-tuning here next summer on its way to a fall Broadway debut. In another first, “Mermaid” will be staged not in the 2,880-seat Buell Theatre but in the elegant new 2,250-seat Ellie Caulkins Opera House.
Those shows, combined with impending returns of “The Lion King,” which began in Denver in 2002, and “Wicked,” led Denver Center for the Performing Arts president Randy Weeks to say, “Things are definitely looking up.”
Denver Center attendance fell 11 percent in the most recent fiscal year. “It’s been a challenge of late,” Weeks said, “but this coming year certainly feels like more of the good old days.”
“The Little Mermaid” score will combine songs such as “Under the Sea” from Disney’s 1989 animated film, with nine new tunes by Alan Menken and Glen Slater. The director is internationally renowned Francesca Zambello, who was an assistant to Nathaniel Merrill during the early years of Opera Colorado.
The book for the musical was written by Pulitzer-winner Doug Wright (“I Am My Own Wife”), a surprise considering how far a cry Disney fare is from Wright’s true tale of a German transvestite (now playing at Curious Theatre).
“In truth, I was delighted to write the book. I think Alan Menken’s buoyant songs constitute one of the most winning musical theater scores in recent memory,” Wright said from Australia. “I was completely enchanted by the film when I first saw it. And this is the first thing I’ve ever written that I can take my young goddaughters to with absolute confidence.”
The Disney brand alone is no guarantee of success. “Tarzan” is not faring well in New York, and its touring production of “On the Record” was a disaster. But Jack Finlaw, Denver’s director of theaters and arenas, predicted, “Just as this summer all the talk is about the opening of the new Hamilton Building, I think next summer everyone will be talking about ‘The Little Mermaid.”‘
The theme of the DCPA season is partnership. Besides the Disney collaboration, it will for the first time team with its sister group, the Denver Center Theatre Company.
“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” the theater company’s first local mounting of a Broadway musical in a decade, will be presented on its own Stage Theatre, but also will be included in both the theater company and Broadway touring series subscriptions.
Weeks also will team with companies in Seattle and Chicago on “White Christmas,” a new revue of Irving Berlin tunes – complete with snow, he promised.
The season also includes a Denver-centric guilty pleasure. “Legends!” the story of two feuding, fading film stars, brings Joan Collins and Linda Evans back to Denver. The two headlined the Denver-set soap opera “Dynasty” from 1981 to 1989.
“I don’t know what you were doing on Wednesday nights in the 1980s, but I was attending ‘Dynasty’ parties,” Weeks said.
The 2007 season: “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” Jan. 16-28; “Legends!” Feb. 6-18; “The Light in the Piazza,” March 27-April 8; “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” May 17-July 8; “The Little Mermaid,” summer; Monty Python’s “Spamalot,” Sept. 18-Oct. 7; “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” Oct. 16-28; and “White Christmas,” Nov. 20-Dec. 25.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
The 2007 Denver Center Attractions season:
“The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” Jan. 16-28
“Legends!,” Feb. 6-18
“The Light in the Piazza,” March 27-April 8
“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” May 17-July 8
“The Little Mermaid,” summer
Monty Python’s “Spamalot,” Sept. 18-Oct. 7
“Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” Oct. 16-28
“White Christmas,” Nov. 20-Dec. 25.