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.
