#1
Posted: 10/21/03 at 7:07pm
Variety reports that plans for the stage musical Mary Poppins are firming up, and the show is on track for its premiere 14 months from now. Veteran broadway producer Cameron Mackintosh (Miss Saigon, Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera) and Thomas Schumacher, president of Disney Theatricals, plan to have the show in rehearsals next July, have an 8 week out-of-town run starting in in September, and then open on London's West End on December 15, 2004, at the Prince Edward Theater. The Oscar winning music of the Sherman brothers will be expanded with "six new songs from the London-based team of George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, whose National Theater entry Honk! The Ugly Duckling had the audacity to scoop the 2000 Olivier for best musical from Disney behemoth The Lion King".
"The Spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own, but, of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry. For the power of Tragedy, we may be sure, is felt even apart from representation and actors. Besides, the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet."
--Aristotle
--Aristotle
