ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS FOR JAN. 30, 2024
Korea Musical Award winners, Sydney Theatre Company controversy, don't-miss shows in Madrid, and more
Welcome to Jaques, your weekly guide to the global theater industry. New to Jaques? Find out more here.
Coming up: The latest biweekly installment of my ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS roundup of international theater headlines. Last week we went to France to learn how Paris (finally) fell in love with musical theater—and looked into the big-name new productions (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum! Les Misérables!) to keep on your radar. ICYMI:
ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS
Busy Korean producer Chunsoo Shin is making his biggest Broadway move yet: He’s the lead producer of The Great Gatsby, the new musical adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel that starts performances at the Broadway Theatre March 29. With past U.S. producing credits including short-lived productions Once Upon a One More Time, Doctor Zhivago, and Holler If Ya Hear Me, the chief exec at Seoul’s OD Company hasn’t had the best luck at the Broadway box office. But The Great Gatsby arrives with two young, fan-favorite actors, Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada, in lead roles, and reviews that were generally upbeat (if mixed) following its world premiere at the Paper Mill Playhouse in the fall. With a score by Nathan Tysen (Paradise Square) and Jason Howland (the Little Women composer who also does a lot of international work with Frank Wildhorn) and a book by Kait Kerrigan, The Great Gatsby opens April 25—toward the end of a 2023-24 Broadway season unusually jam-packed with new musicals all jostling for attention from audiences and award nominators. (And speaking of stiff competition: The Great Gatsby is not to be confused with Gatsby, a separate adaptation of the public-domain title from Florence Welch, Thomas Bartlett and Pulitzer-winner Martyna Majok. That one launches at A.R.T. in Cambridge, Mass., in May.)
Over in Shin’s homebase in Seoul, several of the 2023 Korea Musical Awards went to local productions of familiar Broadway titles but the Grand Prize for best musical of the year went to the homegrown SheStars!, a show about K-pop girl groups from the 1930s to the 1970s. Show Note’s production of Memphis—in which racial difference was conveyed through differences in hair color—scored an award for best musical production in theaters with more than 400 seats; the trophy for a musical with less than 400 seats went to L’Art Reste, the locally created show that the New York theater industry got a chance to check out in a September showcase reading. Acting category winners included Cho Seung-woo for his performance in the title role of The Phantom of the Opera and Jeong Sun-ah for her turn in If/Then.
For more on South Korea’s busy musical market, check out this edition of Jaques from October:
The controversy over a pro-Palestine action by Sydney Theatre Company actors continues to shake the renowned Australian theater, as the company’s chairman, former Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, stepped down noting that the crisis had cost STC an estimated AUS $1.5 million. In November, three actors in the cast of STC’s The Seagull wore keffiyehs during their curtain call as a show of Palestinian support during the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, prompting the withdrawal of financial support from some pro-Israeli patrons and donor organizations.
Also Down Under: Groundhog Day makes its Australian premiere in Melbourne in a Broadway replica staged by original director Matthew Warchus and starring original headliner Andy Karl. GWB Entertainment’s production plays 13 weeks (Jan. 24-April 7).
Disney Theatrical Group’s Frozen wraps up its West End run Sept. 8, three years to the day after its 2021 opening at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. The closing will leave The Lion King as the sole DTG musical on the West End. Might that leave room for a new Disney offering to step in?
With the musical theater market in Manila on the rise, local news coverage offers more proof of the nation’s strong affinity for Broadway, its musicals and its talent. A feature in the Philippines Star highlights a clutch of Filipino talent now on Broadway: Jasmine Forsberg (playing Jane Seymour) and standby Sierra Fermin in SIX, Red Concepcion as Amos in Chicago, and Marc dela Cruz, a standby for the title role in Hamilton.
Great Scott—the DeLorean’s heading to Japan: The musical adaption of Back to the Future launches a Tokyo run in April 2025, and with the show now playing on the West End and on Broadway, the Tokyo outpost looks like a early stop in what’s poised to be a robust global expansion for Back to the Future. The show’s lead producer, Colin Ingram—who’s partnering with Shiki Theatre Company for the Japanese staging—had notable international success with his previous large-scale outing, Ghost, a show that was short-lived on Broadway but has thrived around the world.
Over in another booming music market, there’s a lot going on in Madrid. Matilda hit 500 performances, Chicago passed 100, and a recent feature highlights 10 more notable theater productions coming up on the city’s 2024 calendar. On the list are Pretty Woman, Aladdin, and homegrown musicals El Tiempo Entre Costuras (The Time Between Seams); Los Pilares de la Tierra (The Pillars of the Earth), based on the Ken Follett novel and world premiering in November; and Malinche The Musical, a popular production, created by pop musician Nacho Cano, about the Nahua woman who was interpreter and advisor to Hernán Cortés.
Fellow Substacker
points out that Peter Pan is trending with recent and upcoming productions from HoriPro in Tokyo, DeepBridge in Antwerp, and on the road in the U.S.—as well as international stagings of Mischief’s Broadway alum Peter Pan Goes Wrong. As noted in the Madrid feature in the previous bulletpoint, there’s a Peter Pan in Madrid at the moment, too.
IN NEXT WEEK’S SPOTLIGHT STORY
This is not a drill, people: We’re talking about Starlight Express. How did Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rollerskating train musical become Germany’s Phantom of the Opera? Find out next week.