PORGY AND BESS Revival Set for Broadway in 2007-2008

London PORGY AND BESS Coming To Broadway in 2007-08
By Zachary Pincus-Roth
and John Nathan
11 Dec 2006

Trevor Nunn's production of The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, now at the Savoy Theatre in London's West End, will arrive on Broadway during the 2007-08 season, a U.S. rep for the production has confirmed.

The producing team will be the same as it is in London: Richard Frankel, Tom Viertel, Steven Baruch, Marc Routh, Howard Panter for Ambassador Theatre Group and Tulchin/Bartner Productions.

Casting and specific dates have not been announced. The London production, which began previews Oct. 25, and opened Nov. 9, has extended its run through Oct. 27, 2007.

Porgy and Bess was last on Broadway in 1976, when it played 122 performances. It was only Jack O'Brien's second Broadway assignment as a director. O'Brien directed it again at Radio City Music Hall in 1983.

Read on...
Porgy and Bess Coming To Broadway in 2007-08

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Updated On: 12/11/06 at 05:29 PM

Good.

I love this opera.

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This is great. Although I'm a big fan of the music, I've never seen Porgy and Bess before.

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Audra as Bess?

Stokes as Porgy?

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Updated On: 12/11/06 at 06:50 PM

Maybe LaChanze could come back to Broadway in this.

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i want to be in it. i wonder when casting is going to happen? if it's as amazing as the london production, it will be fantabulous.

The London show has a cast of 40 and a 20 piece orchestra. I don't see this happening on Broadway because of the prohibitive cost of such a payroll. One of the reasons the Kennedy Center's "Mame" never transfered to Broadway.

I wonder if they'll scale it back for a smaller orchestra and/or cast. I will still run to see it though!

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well that dream will be dashed. Phantom is still making money.

Porgy played in the Majestic in 1942 (the first revival). I'm about to post a neat momento from that run.

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From the 1942 production at the Majestic (from my collection). I love the note the guy sent, then obviously added a critical comment later in a different ink. The stamp was steamed off. It's also interesting to note that this was during the war and ust have taken a long time to get to England.

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Updated On: 12/11/06 at 10:22 PM

I adore Jennifer, but there is NOTHING for her to play in Porgy & Bess. You need real legit singers for this show (Audra & Stokes would probably be fine), not gospel-style belters.

Let Jennifer come back and do Mama Morton again ...... or Motormouth Maybelle (if they'd cast her, I'd actually go back and see Harspray again -- and I know I'm not the only one).

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Just a quick correction - this is not the original operatic Porgy and Bess, but a "musical adaptation" done with the blessing of the Gershwin estate. It is now 2-1/2 hours rather than 4, and many of the songs have been brought down from the stratosphere to make them more singable eight times a week. No operatic production could be done with the same cast that many times a week over any extended period (or so the theory goes). From the samples I have heard, the words become much more intelligible. So a good "Broadway voice" (whatever that means) would work in this production, and conversely an operatic voice is going to sound outlandish. But give me a minute to restart my heart - Audra and Brian Stokes Mitchell as Bess and Porgy - OMG!

My guess would be that Gershwin hoped that the work as he wrote it would reach a larger audience. He reluctantly made cuts and some other changes for the original Broadway production, in which there were no alternates and all the performers played their roles eight times a week. We know from the accounts of people who worked with him at that time that making those cuts and changes distressed him greatly.

We also know that Gershwin's family only reluctantly allowed the 1942 production to go forward and referred to it as "a bargain-basement production." These were the people who knew him and knew what he wanted the work to be.

But at that time, when the work had not yet been accepted as a masterpiece or even necessarily as a real opera, it must have seemed a necessary compromise. To nowadays do a production that takes the approach of the 1942 production much further in the direction of doing violence to what was clearly Gershwin's intention seems to me misguided at best, and cynical and money-grubbing at worst.

Gershwin wrote plenty of Broadway musicals for Broadway voices. He knew how to do that. If he had wanted to do that with Porgy and Bess, he surely could have. He didn't have to put himself through the trouble of learning to orchestrate. He could have made things easier for himself and more accessible for audiences. He wanted to stretch himself and stretch his audience.

We cannot know what Gershwin would think of this production. Perhaps he would approve. I tend to think not. But the fact that Gerswhin hoped, as pretty much all artists do, that his work would reach a broader audience doesn't necessarily lead to the conclusion that this is the way he would have gone about trying to make that happen or that he would have approved of it.

I rather think it would make him very unhappy. To me it's a way of underestimating the intelligence of the audience.