I did an interview with Randy Weeks, President of the DCPA (Denver Center for the Performing Arts) shortly after the "..Molly Brown" reading here. In part 2 of the inrerview, he discussed it. Here is what he said. Some info on the development is included.
On the new Adaptation of the musical "The Unsinkable Molly Brown": (My question to Mr. Weeks about the new adaptation was if it was possible that Denver would get the out of town try-out/world premiere)
That's basically the position that we took. We don't have any current rights to the material. The rights are controlled, first and foremost, by the Willson Estate. And Mrs. Meredith Willson, Mr. Willson's widow, is alive and well. She was here for the reading at the New Play Summit. Wonderful lady! After the reading I got her to tell me some stories about living in Hollywood back in the 50's and 60's on and that was the fun stuff! But, Dick Scanlon is the fellow who has re-written the project. What Dick did, he did the adaptation of the movie to a musical, and had been kicking around "Molly Brown" for a while. He ended up coming out here to Colorado, did the trip to Leadville, studied, read and came down to Denver and spent time at The Molly Brown House and decided to go ahead and do it. He is a very wise man and he didn't really throw himself into it until a rather prolonged negotiation with Mrs. Willson. It is my understanding that the signed agreement with Mrs. Willson is that he can do anything with the play, the musical, as long as the title stays the same and the Music is all Meredith Willson Music. So he basically had free reign to re-write the book and use or not use all of the original songs in the show. I think he kept about six or seven and then went back, well, he actually went back and visited Mrs. Willson at her home, and if you can imagine such a thing, if you are a theater person, of being in MerEdith Wilson's basement and going through file after file after file of Meredith Willson songs, published or un-published and going through and go "Oh this could make this work and put this together with this" and basically re-structured the entire show. His arching project here was to re-focus the original musical from Molly Brown the legend to Molly Brown, the person. And that's what he has done. I don't think Dick is done yet. I think there is more work to be done. But you don't know that until you have a few readings and the Denver Center facilitated that, for Dick, both here and in New York and now I think he has a better sense of what happens in front of an audience, what works and what doesn't work, and we have an agreement with Dick that if the production does take the next step of garnering a commercial producer, that the Denver Center for the Performing Arts has an option to become a co-producer on the project. And also, with a few hold-outs and a few extenuating circumstances, that Denver would be the "quote, unquote", New York out of town preview".
Just give the world Love. - S. Wonder
