ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS FOR OCT. 15, 2024
A Korean Nobel winner's novel hits European stages, Broadway Licensing Group re-ups with Harmonia Holdings, Madrid's latest theater stats, 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.
Two European stage adaptations of The Vegetarian—the novel for which South Korean writer and recent Nobel Prize winner Han Kang is best known—are already on the way. Just days after Kang was announced the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Korean TV station KBS spotlit the brewing productions: The first of these to materialize, an Italian-language adaptation that director Daria Deflorian has been developing for several years now, will tour Italy and France starting Oct. 25. A separate German-language production bows in Vienna in May.
Broadway Licensing Global and Harmonia Holdings Ltd. have reupped a partnership that sees Harmonia representing BLG and its hefty catalog of big-name Broadway titles in China and other Asian territories. “Harmonia Holdings, under the visionary leadership of CEO and Founder Sophie Qi, will spearhead efforts to bring the marquee plays and musicals represented by BLG to new audiences across Asia,” according to a joint press release on the renewal. BLG’s roster includes the rights to shows including Water for Elephants, internationally popular rock musical Lizzie, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: School Edition, among many others.
Find out more about theatrical licensing and BLG in my in-depth story from March:
Musical theater brought 3.5 million visitors to Madrid in 2023, according to news coverage of a recent event announcing the city’s 2024-2025 theater season (and citing APTEM, the Association of Producers and Theaters of Madrid). Mayor José Luis Martínez noted during the event that Madrid will host 300 shows over the course of the season, among them 13 musicals including Los Pilares de la Tierra, The Chorus and We Will Rock You alongside local longrunners like The Lion King and Aladdin.
Madrid has become a top destination for Spanish speakers looking to catch a musical. Find out why in this story from May:
The latest indication that musical theater is huge in the Philippines: Manila-based production company GMG Productions will host the country’s first “musical theater rave” later this month. “The rave will gather musical theater fans from all walks of life ‘for a night like no other, where Broadway meets the dance floor’ as a DJ performs songs ranging from Broadway classics to Disney favorites,” writes Kristofer Purnell for Philstar.com. Set for Oct. 26, the rave is part of a GMG program called Stagedoor, which aims to expand the local musical theater market by “curating unique and immersive events for fans and enthusiasts.”
Speaking of GMG, the company just opened the international tour of Six in Manila, working with the tour’s producers Kenny Wax, Wendy & Andy Barnes, and George Stiles. For GMG, Six is the latest international tour they’ve helped bring to the Philippines after shows including Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, The Lion King and recent stagings of Hamilton and Miss Saigon.
The Spanish-language premiere of Gypsy will make Teatro del Soho CaixaBank, the Málaga theater founded by Antonio Banderas, “more Broadway than ever,” says Peter Luis Gomez in Diario Sur. “Opening hours similar to those in New York and London (2pm on weekends), brunches in nearby restaurants, buses to transport spectators from the main cities in the province... The premiere of the ‘musical of musicals’ is raising great expectations throughout Spain,” Gomez writes of the show, which stars performances in Málaga Oct. 17.
Rio Uphill—The Musical, which bills itself as “the first fully original Brazilian musical ever made,” premieres in Rio de Janeiro later this month. Created by Matt Gurren (book, music, and lyrics), Juliana Pedroso (conceiver and book), and Nanny Assis (music), the show was developed at Manhattan’s York Theatre Company and the ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop, and was a finalist for the Richard Rodgers Award in 2020, according to A.A. Cristi at BroadwayWorld. The story, which follows a wealthy young man who experiences life in a favela after a chance encounter, was also adapted into a 2021 independent film by the creative team. The show’s stage debut runs Oct. 27-Nov. 17 at Rio’s Teatro Adolpho Bloch.
The 10th anniversary Korean production of Kinky Boots opened in Seoul as “one of the most anticipated works of the second half of the year,” reports Sol-hee Lee in The Musical. CJ ENM’s licensed staging of the Tony-winning musical has proven so popular with local audiences that the current run marks the show’s sixth South Korean engagement in a decade.
Faith, Money, War and Love, the latest marathon epic from internationally renowned Canadian director Robert Lepage, premiered this month at Berlin’s Schaubühne. Critic A.J. Goldmann’s review in the New York Times describes the five-hour show as “an expansive melodrama about Germany since the end of World War II,” devised using “a deck of playing cards to help generate characters and situations.” The upshot? “The acting is robust and the production is handsome, yet the play itself feels as stable as a house of cards,” Goldmann says.
A psychiatric ward in Mali is using a local, traditional form of theater as therapy, write Moustapha Diallo and Baba Ahmed in the Associated Press. Described as “a traditional form of theater practiced by Mali’s largest ethnic group, the Bambara,” koteba is a mixture of acting, singing and dancing that is “usually performed in villages as an outlet to work through problems and an open space for satire.” At Point G, a major hospital in the Malian capital Bamako, it’s offered as a therapeutic option for people with mental health issues. According Diallo and Ahmed: “Though the use of koteba as therapy hasn’t been formally studied, Souleymane Coulibaly, a clinical psychologist at the Point G hospital, said the traditional form of theater is uniquely positioned to help people in the psychiatric ward work through their problems.”
AND ICYMI
The U.S. premiere of the 2.5D Musical Attack on Titan recently wrapped up its sold-out run at New York City Center. Next stops: Tokyo (Dec. 13-22) and Osaka (Jan. 11-13, 2025). Find out more about the show and about the big-bucks, Japanese musical genre it exemplifies in my most recent SPOTLIGHT STORY, which is free for all readers:
