Benanti Added to DiPietro
They All Laughed
Jan. 18-20 Readings
Playbill Online
05-JAN-2000
Joe DiPietro, author of
Over the River and Through the Woods and co-author of the revue, I Love You, You're
Perfect, Now Change, has been working for the past year and a half on a revision of the
George and Ira Gershwin musical, Oh, Kay!. Commissioned by the Gershwin Estate, the redo,
titled They All Laughed, recently had a private reading that "went as well as I could
have imagined," DiPietro told Playbill On-Line.
Next up will be an industry
reading in Manhattan, Jan. 18 & 20. Joining previously-announced Mary Beth Piel, Donna
English, Dick Latessa and Tovah Feldshuh will be Laura Benanti (the recent The Sound of
Music revival), Kevin Chamberlin, Roxane Barlow, Michael X. Martin and Michael Mastro
(Side Man). Patrick Brady and Ethyl Will will assist on piano for the ensemble piece.
"The Gershwin Estate
gave me the script to read," DiPietro said of the process, "and the book was
creaky but the concept was fun. It's about a playboy on Long Island who falls for a
bootlegger just as he's set to marry this snooty woman. I made a lot of changes, but the
germ of it was very much in the original [by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse]; I probably
stuck to it even more than I thought I would."
Oh, Kay! first reached
Broadway in 1926, with a return engagement two years later. Broadway last saw Oh, Kay! in
1990 and 1991, produced by David Merrick. James Racheff did that adaptation, based on a
concept by Dan Siretta. The show, starring Brian Mitchell (sans the middle name
"Stokes" at that time) and Angela Teek, closed after 77 performances. Merrick
tried to bring tuner back a year later as a star vehicle for Rae Dawn Chong, but the redo
closed in previews.
A busy fellow indeed,
DiPietro is also just finishing the first draft of a rewrite of Allegro for the Rodgers
and Hammerstein organization. "Definitely a challenging show to redo," said
DiPietro.
Come February, DiPietro
will also start work on a new musical using songs made popular by Elvis Presley. As
reported by Variety, the piece won't be an Elvis biography or impersonation, so much as a
concept musical using the songs to tell mini stories.
Maxyne Berman Lang, who
administers the catalogue of recorded Presley songs for a subdivision of the Rodgers &
Hammerstein Organization, thought up the idea. Lang told Playbill On-Line she was thrilled
about the project, because "it's a new way to have audiences embrace the songs."
Lang told Variety, "Having lived with those songs for so many years, it seemed to me
they had a story, a non-Elvis Presley story to tell." According to Variety, Elvis
Presley Music has approved of the project.
Librettist DiPietro told
Variety he saw the as-yet-untitled Elvis show following the format of the London smash,
Mama Mia!, which uses ABBA songs "but doesn't mention ABBA at all. I want the songs
[in the Elvis musical] to come from many different voices and situations that you don't
expect."
Because the musical,
tentatively targeted for Broadway in 2001, is in a "formative stage," Lang
declined to mention which songs would be included. Tunes made popular by "The
King" include "Love Me Tender, Heartbreak Hotel, Jailhouse Rock" and
"Suspicious Minds."
DiPietro told Playbill
On-Line (Dec. 22) the musical was still in the "man alone in a room with a piece of
paper stage." He did say the show would be in "the musical-comedy
tradition" and that he'll start to work on it, in earnest, beginning February 2000.
Theatregoers outside New
York need not go DiPietro-less; Paul Provenza is starring in the West Coast premiere of
The Kiss at City Hall, a romantic comedy running at the Pasadena Playhouse Jan. 7-Feb. 20.
-- By David Lefkowitz
