Limelight: The Story of Charlie Chaplin - Coming to Broadway?

[Overkill]

Posted: 10/19/10 at 5:49pm

I don't know too terriby much of how the show did at the La Jolla Playhouse, but I came across the preview of the show below and was just so taken with it! Being a huge Charlie Chaplin fan, I LOVE what I have seen and heard. Any chances it might be aiming for a Broadway or Off-Broadway run?

LIMELIGHT: THE STORY OF CHARLIE CHAPLIN Updated On: 10/19/10 at 05:49 PM

[uncageg]

Posted: 10/19/10 at 5:51pm

You might want to take the "g" off of his name in your thread title.

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 10/19/10 at 5:51pm

And add a "t" to the end of the first word.

[Overkill]

Posted: 10/19/10 at 6:00pm

Woops! Sorry. Okay. Fixed.

[PB ENT.]

Posted: 10/19/10 at 10:26pm

Well, not as far as I have heard, though a Broadway consideration would be nice. They did get very good reviews in LaJolla, so who knows what interest and deep pockets may have seen in the production.

Rob McClure (Chaplin), and his cat are making the road trip home as we speak. What a talented young man!

[dramarama3]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 6:27am

probs.

[hanginoutca]

Posted: 10/21/10 at 1:45am

Limelight was a hit at la jolla saw the last show again and loved. Ihear the producers of FELA are doing it!

[WestwardHoHo]

Posted: 10/21/10 at 2:25am

Um, Limelight got **** reviews in California,
so I suspect it's goin nowhere fast....

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 10/21/10 at 5:42pm

I didn't get to see the show in La Jolla, but if the demo is any indication, I'd say the show has potential. The music is charming, at least.

[AnotherHat]

Posted: 10/21/10 at 6:39pm

I don't know much about the La Jolla Playhouse other than they have had some very nice success. The subject of Charlie Chaplin sounds fascinating and in the right creative hands could be splendid. I will keep my eye out for any news of its development.

[bk]

Posted: 10/21/10 at 6:49pm

Oh, what show isn't coming to Broadway. What show doesn't have potential? As to a musical of Chaplin's life, this is hardly new territory - Anthony Newley did one decades ago, and I think there've been one or two since.

[hanginoutca]

Posted: 10/22/10 at 2:51am

I saw limelight the last day and loved it packed house and I read that the producers of FELA are doing it next fall. i wish all shows that are oringinal like this and not just based on another movie well. we need original shows

[hanginoutca]

Posted: 10/22/10 at 2:53am

i hear elf is great anyone heard anything?

[Overkill]

Posted: 10/22/10 at 4:39pm

It just feels like an old timey musical. The kind we need on Broadway. Not only that, but the story of Charlie Chaplin set to a musical, is very interesting. I knew about the Anthony Newley show and heard a song or two a few years back and wasn't nearly as impressed as I am with this show. I hope it finds a life past the La Jolla. I know Ashley Brown was in it aswell, and I find her to be much like that era, so I hope if it transfers, she goes with it.

[WSStory]

Posted: 10/23/10 at 11:49am

I saw the last performance at La Jolla and thought it was great! With a few changes in the second act, I think it could be a hit on Broadway. It is an old fashion musical that they used to write in the 50's and 60's. Nothing ground breaking but very entertaining. I also saw the pre Broadway Leap of Faith and thought that Limelight is in way better for Broadway than that show.

[hanginoutca]

Posted: 10/31/10 at 8:00pm

Limelight: The Story Of Charlie Chaplin
By Darlene DaviesRanch and Coast magazine
9/24/10
Limelight: The Story of Charlie Chaplin at La Jolla Playhouse is a powerful production about an iconic figure. Consider the challenge: a musical about a silent film actor whose personal torment fueled his creative life. His accomplishments added to a towering 20th century cultural legacy, during a period of history marked by great highs and lows. Chaplin’s memorable character of the Little Tramp spoke silently to masses of audiences throughout the world and, judging from La Jolla Playhouse crowd reaction, the Tramp still appeals to contemporary audiences. Chaplin’s Tramp was everyman tossed about, struggling to maintain some kind of dignity in all kinds of undignified circumstances. The posturing was ludicrous and so human. His humor and sweet pathos touched millions of silent movie viewers. He became a greatly loved figure in America before becoming a much-reviled man who lived in exile for the last period of his life. The genius did it all to himself.
A searing fear of abandonment permeated the gifted performer’s deepest psyche, causing him to sabotage the momentum of his career. Reared in poverty and sent to a workhouse as a young boy, following his mother’s confinement to an insane asylum in England, fear of separation from his mother stayed with him all his life and led him to pursue relationships that repeatedly turned sour. Though he achieved iconic artistic status in America, becoming a very rich man along the way, his affairs with extremely young women and his idealistic political pursuits eventually made him persona non grata in the United States.
Through three marriages and countless sexual liaisons, Chaplin doggedly pursued his ideologies while he carried a festering longing to restore his mother to sanity. That obsession was presumably (maybe not) stilled with his fourth and final marriage to18-year-old Oona O’Neill (Chaplin was 54 at the time), the daughter of the towering 20th century dramatist Eugene O’Neill. That marriage ruptured the relationship between father and daughter. The O’Neills never reconciled.
Limelight melds music with major universal themes. The performances are first rate, starting with a perfectly cast Rob McClure as Charlie Chaplin. The signature moment when McClure as Chaplin morphs into the Tramp onstage is astonishing and, by itself, worth a visit to the Playhouse. That transformation reveals McClure to be an “actor’s actor” worthy of study by all aspiring performers. Matthew Scott as Charlie’s protective brother Sydney gives a warm and assuring performance, and Jenn Colella blasts the hall with a brassy take on acidic columnist Hedda Hopper. Ashley Brown physically suits the part of Oona, but is most appealing in the double role of Charlie’s mother, Hannah, in earlier scenes. Most of the vocalists effectively deliver music and lyrics of Christopher Curtis. Credit Warren Carlyle with lively choreography. Sets and costumes are fine, evoking a sense of the period. As usual, the crafts people are exceptional.
This show is definitely Broadway worthy. With a little tweaking, it will fly even higher. In fact, it will soar. DARLENE G. DAVIES

[hanginoutca]

Posted: 10/31/10 at 8:01pm

LIMELIGHT: THE STORY OF CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Grade-A score and star
By Don Braunagel
San Diego magazine
Posted on Mon, Sep 20th, 2010
Last updated Tue, Sep 21st, 2010

Encapsulating Charlie Chaplin’s long and legend-making life into a two-act musical requires, of course, a tightly edited script and directing at breakneck speed. Those elements mark La Jolla Playhouse’s Limelight: the Story of Charlie Chaplin. But what elevates this musical bio, unlike most, is its ability to capture much of the poignancy of Chaplin’s story.

For that, credit chiefly two factors — Christopher Curtis’s superbly varied score and Robert McClure’s extraordinary portrayal of Chaplin. From his first appearance as the young Vaudeville comedian Chaplin, McClure inhabits his character, including rubber-legged imitations of the moves that made Chaplin’s Tramp the world’s most beloved star of silent films, plus making Chaplin one of the richest, most famous men of the early 20th century. McClure also boasts a strong, emotive singing voice, especially impressive in Curtis’s ballads. His is a star-making performance.

Curtis also penned the book, teaming with Thomas Meehan. It’s largely linear, with the first act covering Chaplin’s rise from dire poverty in London to fabulous Hollywood success, and the second half dealing with his descent into unpopularity, stemming from problems personal and political. The story is necessarily sketchy, so directors Warren Carlyle and Michael Unger (who left before the production opened) have kept the pace snappy. But Curtis and Meehan have retained enough highlights to efficiently traverse the peaks and valleys of Chaplin’s life. Naturally, much material, like his marriage(?) to Paulette Goddard, is omitted.

Mainly, there’s that powerful score. The songs aren’t just interludes, they advance the story and match the mood. “The Music Hall” and “Vaudeville Dream” have the flavor of those entertainments, and “The Life That You Wished For” carries Chaplin’s wistfulness at the cost of success.





Robert McClure, Ashley Brown



Photo by Craig Schwartz


In the first act, “Look at All the People” has Chaplin’s mother, a musical performer who first brought him on stage in her act, teaching him to observe the walks of passersby and to try to determine the story in their faces — skills that he obviously capitalized on. Then, in a clever second-act counterpoint, a Chaplin growing increasingly alone in the world sings “Where Are All the People.”

Chaplin’s notorious penchant for womanizing is depicted with a bouncy “Just Another Day in Hollywood” as he sings and dances among a bevy of “auditioning” women. His much-criticized predilection for marrying younger (read teen-aged) women is downplayed, like most of his reported faults — arrogance, an exasperating drive for perfection and a conceit that he carried more influence with the public than he did. So this is a sympathetic portrayal, with Chaplin — as in life — winding up happy with his last wife, Oona O’Neill.

Wisely, Ashley Brown has been cast as both Chaplin’s mother, Hannah, and wife Oona. Outstanding as both, she represents the arc of his life, from the unhappiness of being separated from his mentally ill mother to the joy of a lasting and loving marriage.

The large cast came through as needed, with the best support coming from Ron Orbach as a blustering Mack Sennett and nefarious attorney general, along with Matthew Scott as Charlie’s loving but oft-frustrated half-brother/business manager, Sydney. Jenn Colella, as gossipmonger Hedda Hopper, is properly hard, snide and vengeful.

Carlyle’s kinetic choreography frequently builds from the footwork in Chaplin routines. One highlight is the “Tramp Shuffle,” a delightful “Chaplin stroll contest," in which a dozen or so cast members, in Tramp garb, do a chorus line imitating the master.

To zip through the saga of Chaplin’s downfall and exile, the writers go to the old reliable newspaper montage. Intended or not, the headlines do reverberate in today’s world, with the accusatory epithet “communist” replaced with “terrorist.”

Alexander Dodge’s versatile set design, on a polished hardwood floor, allows for fluidity in rolling scenery and fast switches in locale, from music hall proscenium arch to the openness of Mack Sennett Studios. For intimate scenes, panels slide up, down, back and forth, shrinking the large stage area. Paul Gallo’s lighting scheme, complemented by Zachary Boroway’s silent-film projections, generally shuns brightness, favoring illuminated pools amid a dark background.

Jon Weston’s sound, like Douglas Besterman’s orchestrations are top-notch, while Linda Cho’s costumes are faithful to character and era.

[AnotherHat]

Posted: 11/3/10 at 8:15am

After reading the list of names involved with "Limelight" I am adding the show to my watch list.

Thanks for posting the local reviews.

[bk]

Posted: 11/3/10 at 3:45pm

Oh, he didn't post ALL the local reviews, only the good ones.

[dented146]

Posted: 11/3/10 at 5:01pm

Most of the reviews for Limelight were mixed to negative. I'm referring to Variety, Theatermania, and the LA Times. However the ones listed here more reflect my personal opinion that the show was quite good.

There is no question in my mind that audiences enjoyed this musical.
Updated On: 11/3/10 at 05:01 PM

[Phantom of London]

Posted: 11/3/10 at 5:12pm

Is this going to be in Black and White?

[newintown]

Posted: 11/3/10 at 5:18pm

"There is no question in my mind that audiences enjoyed this musical."

Really? Did you poll everyone who went each night, and then determine that the majority enjoyed it?

Or do you just think that, because you liked it, most other people did as well?

Do you really need to try convince everyone that your opinion is valid because it's shared? Do you feel that your opinion, in and of itself, has no worth without a crowd behind you?

[dented146]

Posted: 11/3/10 at 5:33pm

newintown The answers are no, no, and my opinion is based on the fact that at both performances which I attended the crowd behind me chose to stand and enthusiastically applaud at length before finally exiting the theatre beaming.
Updated On: 11/3/10 at 05:33 PM

[bk]

Posted: 11/3/10 at 8:33pm

Really? They stood and applauded enthusiastically? Haven't seen that before - except at every musical ever done in the last ten years. That's just what audiences do - it happened all the time at Leap of Faith and every other show that tried out here, especially in more recent years - it happened at Minsky's for heaven's sake. Well...

[dented146]

Posted: 11/3/10 at 9:32pm

Thank you. I didn't know what audiences do. I've only attended Broadway plays and musicals since 1964.