West End Shows You Want To Transfer To Broadway

[theaterfan862]

Posted: 4/28/13 at 4:51pm

With the Olivier Awards being today I got to thinking about the shows that were nominated and how I won't have the chance to see any unless they transfer to Broadway. What shows do you want to see make its way across the pond? For me it would have to be Top Hat and The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time.

[rosscoe(au)]

Posted: 4/28/13 at 5:02pm

The London production of Sweeney was without a doubt one of the most thrilling nights of theatre I have ever had, perfect in every single way. Top Hat was a lot of fun, with some great dancing.

[TotallyEffed]

Posted: 4/28/13 at 5:03pm

Curious Incident and The Audience are amazing.

[ClumsyDude15]

Posted: 4/28/13 at 5:11pm

I know some will say it's too soon, but I'd love for A Chorus Line to return.

[peachesr82]

Posted: 4/28/13 at 5:13pm

After tonight at the Oliviers, I'd be surprised if they didn't try to move Curious Incident across the pond for a limited run.

[theaterfan862]

Posted: 4/28/13 at 5:28pm

Didn't Curious Incident tie Matilda for the record of seven Olivier Awards? I am really hoping for it to transfer. There was talks of bringing The Audience over here and I would love to see the brilliant Helen Mirren live!

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 4/28/13 at 5:31pm

CURIOUS INCIDENT and FRANKENSTEIN (yes, I know that was earlier but still...)

[TheFirst5Years]

Posted: 4/28/13 at 7:57pm

Seconding on the Sweeney Todd revival. It was phenomenal. Easily better than 90% of things currently (or recently) on Broadway.

[dreaming]

Posted: 4/28/13 at 8:04pm

The Audience (it's rumored to be coming)
The Curious Incident of the Dog...
Sweeney Todd (with Michael Ball and Imalda Staunton)
A Chorus Line

I'd love for Top Hat to come, actually-a fun looking show.

[ACL2006]

Posted: 4/28/13 at 8:06pm

A Chorus Line(with a completely new cast - no veterans)
Sweeney Todd
The Bodyguard

[Alick]

Posted: 4/28/13 at 8:12pm

It hasn't officially opened in the West End yet, but from what I hear, I expect that Merrily We Roll Along may transfer over to Broadway next season for a limited run.

[jo]

Posted: 4/28/13 at 9:15pm

Sondheim himself declared that he wanted the outstanding revival of SWEENEY TODD to transfer to Broadway, but it did not happen ( more like Broadway producers/investors not keen enough to take the risk)! What a pity not to have been able to see the outstanding performances of Michael Ball ( his second Olivier) and Imelda Staunton ( she is one of London's most accomplished actresses) on Broadway itself!

Congrats to Michael, Imelda, and the production itself for the new Olivier awards!

[Jonwo]

Posted: 4/28/13 at 9:21pm

I wouldn't be surprised if Curious Incident does transfer, is the book well known in America? The Audience I imagine will next Spring.

The Bodyguard I could see transferring, probably end up at the Marquis.

[frogs_fan85]

Posted: 4/28/13 at 9:23pm

From what I remember from my days as a bookseller, that novel was quite popular here. I believe it was also one of Oprah's book club selections, so that certainly helped.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 4/28/13 at 9:26pm

Betty Blue Eyes

[theaterfan862]

Posted: 4/28/13 at 10:09pm

I would love for the Sweeney Todd revival to transfer but with Imelda Staunton doing the revival of Gypsy it doesn't seem likely. I heard of the Merrily revival possibly transferring and that would be great. We need a Sondheim show on Broadway asap!

[Blockhead24]

Posted: 4/28/13 at 10:13pm

Top Hat!

[ClapYo'Hands]

Posted: 4/28/13 at 10:18pm

"Betty Blue Eyes"

YES!

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 4/28/13 at 10:28pm

In regards to Sweeney Imelda Staunton also said that coming to Broadway was not something she wanted to do as she didn't want to commit to being away from her home in England for such an extended period. That's not to say she couldn't have been eventually persuaded, but it certainly would have been a hurdle that would have needed to be cleared in pursuing a transfer.

[AnythingGoes23]

Posted: 4/29/13 at 3:09am

Curious, The Audience and Bodyguard will certainly cross the pond I would say,

Top Hat has very eager team that no doubt want Broadway but will need more money, Nederlander group are very keen for it come to Broadway with more bigger sets, costumes etc...

Sweeney sadly I don't think will happen, not this production anyway. It's all gone very quiet and the London run didn't actually turn a profit and I think may have lost quite a sum, so....

[Phantom of London]

Posted: 4/29/13 at 8:09am

Top Hat would look great in the Brooks Atkinson, Curious a great show, would do well at the Longacre, but Ben Brantley was very keen on it.

Posted below is Ben Brantley review at the Apollo Theatre, London (I guess most of you are fed up of reviews now).

'LONDON — You need blinkers to navigate a big city, something to screen out the teeming surplus of ambient sights and sounds. Christopher Boone — the 15-year-old hero of the thrillingly staged adaptation of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” at the Apollo Theater — has no such apparatus at all. And on his first day in London, it’s a lack that threatens to pulverize him.

Us too. As directed by Marianne Elliott, working with an inspired set of designers, Christopher’s maiden voyage into an alien metropolis becomes a virtuoso study in sensory overload. Those lights, noises, street signs, road maps, random words that spell themselves into being, and, oh yes, that moving staircase that materializes out of nowhere: it all keeps coming at you, to the point that you expect your mind to give up and shut down.

It doesn’t of course. Nor does Christopher’s, though the drenched, rigid form of Luke Treadaway, the sensitive actor playing him, shows how much the experience has drained him. You’ll find your own muscles tightening in sympathy, and you may feel a need to check your pulse.

How could it be otherwise? Christopher, who suffers from a disorder that would appear to be Asperger’s syndrome, finds it hard enough to process the events of an afternoon at home in the town of Swindon. He’d be better off in outer space, which would at least be quiet, than in London.

The extraordinary accomplishment of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” which opened in the West End on Tuesday night after a hot-ticket run at the National Theater last year, is that it forces you to look at the world through Christopher’s order-seeking eyes. In doing so you’re likely to reconsider the dauntless battle your own mind is always waging against the onslaught of stimuli that is life.

Scary, isn’t it? Exhilarating too. Adapted by Simon Stephens from Mark Haddon’s best-selling novel of 2003, “Dog” turns daily existence into a perilous trek into the unknown, which of course it is. The difference is that Christopher sees this with an acuity that hurts, and we’re allowed to feel his pain. Strange to think that this vicarious exercise in disorientation may be the most entertaining family drama since the stage version of “War Horse” galloped into international renown several years ago.

“Dog” shares part of the pedigree of “War Horse,” the story of a boy and his horse during World War I, which was also first staged at the National Theater under the direction of Ms. Elliott (and Tom Morris), with Mr. Treadaway as the leading lad. The principal flaws of “Dog” are also like those of “War Horse.” Both shows are too long in the telling, and their sentimentality can on occasion slide into cuteness or, worse, condescension.

But “Dog” is also like “War Horse” in its ability to create a theatrical world that somehow feels more lifelike than life itself. In “War Horse” it was the title character and his equine peers, giant puppets summoned into being before our eyes, that were the source of that magical transformation.

Here it’s the inspired visuals that give pulsing form to the way one person thinks. The designer Bunny Christie has created a black graph-paper box of a set that suggests provisional order imposed on infinite darkness. Objects and clothes glow in the sort of neon-bright hues that fashion editors keep vainly trying to push upon their readers but which have a very serious reason to be in this production.

The colors are part of a crucial code by which Christopher identifies familiar images and helps keep at bay the roiling strangeness of what lies beyond. A whiz at the abstractions of mathematics, Christopher has what he calls (in Mr. Haddon’s book) “Behavioral Problems.”

These are triggered whenever anyone or anything disrupts his tidy interior universe by touching him, perhaps, or speaking in metaphors. That’s when his world heaves and mutates, a process summoned by a technical team that includes Paule Constable (lighting), Finn Ross (video) and Ian Dickinson (sound).

These artists — along with the movement directors Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett — help create the sensory equivalent of the first-person narration of Mr. Haddon’s novel, in which Christopher sets out to solve several mysteries. These include what really happened to a dog found murdered in his neighborhood and the disappearance of his mother (a very good Holly Aird), whom his father (Sean Gleeson, first rate) tells him died two years before the play begins.

To the credit of Mr. Stephens, a probing and original dramatist (“Harper Regan,” “Port”), the plot is never less than clear, no matter what detours it takes. The ensemble, as a whole, is scary and exaggerated in just the right ways in embodying the challenges posed by the existence of others. The problem for me comes in having Siobhan (Niamh Cusack), Christopher’s special education teacher, recite the story he has written, presented as a school project.

Ms. Cusack does this with a gushy, artificial sense of wonder that you associate with grown-ups talking to small children. Though the device of Siobhan as an interpreter is retired for much of the second act, she shows up again to step outside the show and suggest that this play is a work that Christopher has made by his very own self.

Yuck. Perhaps the point here is that even the best-intentioned souls can be patronizing about the struggles of the mentally challenged. Or perhaps the show’s creators believed this tone of voice is necessary to appeal to the children in the audience. In any case it is likely to irritate anybody older than 8.

Mr. Treadaway, on the other hand, inhabits his character without distancing preciousness. He gives a lyrical, intensely physical performance that finds the poetry in the ways Christopher both stretches out and shuts down.

Since “Dog” was first published Mr. Haddon has said that he objects to the term “Asperger’s syndrome” in defining Christopher. He should be pleased that in this production his hero seems less like a case history than an extreme version of every one of us, doing our daily best to make sense of our own senses.

“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” is playing at the Apollo Theater, London; apollotheatrelondon.co.uk.'

[Princeton Returns]

Posted: 4/29/13 at 8:11am

I enjoyed Top Hat, I think the set and costumes are great but yes, it just could do with being a little more lavish for Broadway.

[ClapYo'Hands]

Posted: 4/29/13 at 9:22am

It's almost like they tried too hard with the sets for Top Hat, in my opinion. They end up looking cumbersome and ugly because they try to make them too literal. I think revivals of these classics work best when the production is minimal and kind of a "black box" style (something the Chichester revivals seem to do particularly well).

[Wildcard]

Posted: 4/29/13 at 1:17pm

I'd love to see "Betty Blue Eyes" on this side of the pond as well.
Likewise, a Broadway (or Off-Broadway) revival of "The Woman in Black" is due.

[Princeton Returns]

Posted: 4/29/13 at 2:06pm

I thought Betty Blue Eyes had some great songs, but the book was pretty weak and the humour questionable.