ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS FOR MARCH 4, 2025
The evolving global fringe circuit, The Great Gatsby in Seoul, a West End debate over trigger warnings, and more
Welcome to the latest edition of ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS, my regular roundup of theater headlines from around the world. New to Jaques? Check out this handy explainer.
Could a fast-growing global fringe circuit dim Edinburgh’s spotlight? That’s the question producer Richard Jordan asks in The Stage. Summarizing the “intrinsic problems” of the venerable Edinburgh Fringe and using the current Adelaide Fringe as a timely hook, he writes: “A fast-growing fringe circuit is emerging where, for example, a show plays Perth’s Fringe World and the Adelaide Fringe, then goes on to tour New Zealand’s fringes, Brighton Fringe and across the Canadian summer fringes, neatly ending at the Hollywood Fringe in California, all of which can be delivered for only marginally more money than one outing in Edinburgh. It leaves Edinburgh at risk of being usurped.”
The Korean-produced Broadway musical The Great Gatsby will play Seoul later this year, making it the third production of the show following the New York original and the London staging that opens next month. As reported by Sol-hee Lee in The Musical, the show will open the new GS Arts Center in Gangnam, Seoul, with a run that starts in July. All three stagings are produced by Chunsoo Shin of OD Company; Shin is one of Korea’s biggest theater producers and the first Korean to be the sole lead producer on a Broadway production.
A West End stage adaptation of French novelist Annie Ernaux’s The Years is making audience members faint and prompting debate about the usefulness of trigger warnings. Adapted and directed by Norwegian theatermaker Eline Arbo, The Years depicts a French woman’s life across the decades in an arc that also reflects broader cultural shifts; due to its six-minute abortion scene, “at least one person has fainted at every performance [in the West End] despite a warning to ticketholders,” writes Alex Marshall in The New York Times. Kate Maltby in The Guardian argues that the trigger warnings may do more harm than good: “The Years was created for a Dutch cast and widely toured in the Netherlands. The first run used no trigger warnings. In each successive transfer, warnings have increased, as have the fainting fits, which seem to border on mass hysteria.” Fellow Substacker
also contributes to the conversation, writing that trigger warnings themselves may not be the issue. The real problem, he writes, is that “[t]rigger warnings have become embroiled in the right-wing media’s relentless culture war on ‘woke’ in the last few years, a culture war that has recently found expression politically in the tearing up of DEI initiatives across the Atlantic.”
Joy Huerta, the co-composer/lyricist of Real Women Have Curves, is the first Mexican composer to write a Broadway musical, and the milestone has drawn the attention of the Spanish-language press. Huerta, one half of the popular pop duo Jesse & Joy, explains to Spanish news agency EFE that “the idea of the musical is to show Mexican culture and the stories of Mexicans on stage, but [she] admits that no one on the team ever thought it would premiere in the midst of ‘this political and social climate.’” In HOLA!, she explains how writing for theater is different than writing pop hits: “[I]n theater, nothing is ever truly ‘finished’ until opening night. I was constantly questioning whether the songs were actually done… I had to let go of a lot of my usual creative habits.” Real Women Have Curves starts performances on Broadway on April 1.
Oscar-winning composer A.R. Rahman is developing a Broadway-style, 3,000-seat theater in Chennai, India, with the local VGP Group, Rahman tells my Variety colleague Naman Ramachandran in a recent interview. He’s also working with the Tamil Nadu government on other projects that are part of his “pioneering, ambitious initiatives to develop India’s musical theater infrastructure.” Rahman is quoted in the article saying, “It’s high time we concentrate on art centers which could become the monuments of the future and display beauty.”
Speaking of India: An international tour of The Phantom of the Opera will play India for the first time with a month-long run at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) in Mumbai. The Free Press Journal has an interview with the show’s Phantom, South African actor Jonathan Roxmouth, who’s been playing the part on and off since 2011 and is one of those actors who, like a lot of South African talent, have made a career of touring the world in English-language musicals. Roxmouth is also interviewed in The Indian Express alongside his co-star Grace Roberts and the show’s associate director, Rainer Fried, who’s in charge of ensuring that the Broadway replica production sticks to original director Hal Prince’s vision. Included in the interview are a few notes on the staging’s six-week rehearsal process and on the heavy dresses (up to 20 kilos, or ~44 pounds) that some actors wear while they sing.
Roxmouth’s globetrotting career is typical for South African theater talent. Find out why in this story from last month:
Meanwhile, get to know the legendary South African artist-activist John Kani, whose play Kunene and the King is now making its American debut at D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre Company. In an interview with Kani in The Washington Post, writer Celia Wren pulls together a good overview of Kani’s storied life and influential work, and also looks at the origins of his current play, in which the 82-year-old also stars. “South Africa has struggled in recent decades with challenges including corruption and continued inequity,” Wren says. “But as the 25th anniversary of the 1994 election neared, a Black friend of [Kani’s] was upbeat about how far the country had come. By contrast, a White friend ‘gave me a list of failures,’ Kani remembers. ‘Black people have messed up this country!’ … He wanted those two viewpoints to collide in a play.”
Duncan Sheik and Leah Nanako Winkler are at work on a new musical based on the manga Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen. Moyoco Anno’s manga, a period piece about a young Paris sex worker in the early 20th century, ran from 2013-2018. As Andrew Gans writes in Playbill, the brewing musical version was recently seen in a couple of developmental readings in New York produced by Kenny Kurokawa and Takeshi Tanaka, with Antonio Marion on board as exec producer. Rob Ashford directs and choreographs.
Musicals based on manga and anime are a whole thing in Japan. Find out more about the booming genre in this story from the fall:
A Japanese-language musical adaptation of Kiki’s Delivery Service is taking its first international steps, playing Macau prior to a Tokyo engagement this summer. It’s one of a handful of stage versions of high-profile anime titles from Studio Ghibli, along with My Neighbor Totoro (playing a return run in the West End starting March 8) and Spirited Away, although this adaptation of Kiki’s is technically based on the children’s book that inspired the well-known film. The show plays Macau in May before moving to Tokyo in June.
The current Spanish-language staging of Spamalot is “a new blockbuster that has become a theatrical event in Mexico City,” at least according to writer Magí Camps in the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia. In a feature on the show, Camps talks to the show’s Catalan director, Marc Montserrat-Drukker, who is also “currently part of Antonio Banderas’ management team at the Soho CaixaBank theatre as director of production and international relations.” This Spamalot has “157 moving lights, 350 m² of LED screen, 680 costume changes, 237 wigs, 24 set changes and three 50,000-lumen laser projectors.” Produced by local impresario Alejandro Gou, it’s a much bigger proposition than the original Mexico City staging of Spamalot! back in 2012. As Montserrat-Drukker says in the article: “We have turned it from a medium-sized production into a big show, Las Vegas style.”
Actor-director Clément Hervieu-Léger is the new leader of Paris’ 350-year-old Comédie-Française, stepping into a prestigious role appointed by the French president. Critic Laura Cappelle gives her take on the news in The New York Times, describing Hervieu-Léger as “an insider who looks set to keep the venerable Paris company on a steady course” and who takes the reins at an organization whose “ensemble-led system has made it difficult for outsiders to come in and manage the Comédie-Française effectively.” Hervieu-Légier, who’s worked with the company since 2005, will reveal his plans for the organization this summer. Until June 1, he’s starring in the troupe’s current production of The Cherry Orchard, which he also directed.
A Mandarin-language musical version of the Chinese suspense novel The Longest Day in Chang’an recently premiered in Beijing and plays Shanghai later this month. “The story centers on a Lantern Festival day during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) era, and follows Li Bi, chief of the intelligence bureau, and Zhang Xiaojing, a former soldier and now convict, who work together to prevent a plot against the capital,” writes Yuezhu Cheng in China Daily. Among the cast is French singer-songwriter Laurent Ban in his first performance in a Chinese musical.
AND ICYMI
Last week I got the skinny on a Taiwanese musical aiming to replicate its homegrown success in the U.S. and abroad:
THIS TAIWANESE MUSICAL HIT IS GEARING UP TO CROSS THE PACIFIC
How producers and creators of 'Don't Cry, Dancing Girls' hope to adapt their popular show into a Stateside success.