HELLO, Dolly!
There’s pretty good buzz coming out of last week’s hush-hush staged reading of “Nine to Five,” a musical based on the perennially popular 1980 movie about three secretaries who stick it to their boss.
Theater executives who attended the presentation were impressed with Dolly Parton‘s upbeat and witty score, which includes the famous title song.
The new numbers are “signature Dolly songs that also work as musical theater songs,” one insider says, adding: “The show feels like a real Broadway musical, not one of those movies like ‘The Wedding Singer’ where you just shove the songs into the screenplay.”
The book is by Parton’s friend Patricia Resnick, who wrote the movie. Some people say her script isn’t as strong as Parton’s score, but you can bet director Joe Mantello (“Wicked”) will crack the whip until she gets it right.
Insiders praise the three actresses who played the secretaries: “West Wing” alum Allison Janney, scoring big laughs in the Lily Tomlin role; Megan Hilty, doing a first-rate impersonation of Dolly (who’s not in the show); and Stephanie J. Block, bouncing back spectacularly from the “Pirate Queen” debacle in the Jane Fonda part.
Marc Kudisch played the sleazy boss (Dabney Coleman in the movie) and hammed it up as only Kudisch can.
Parton was at the reading, standing at the back of the rehearsal hall, singing along with her songs and charming the pants off theater owners, who are eager to book a show that looks like a winner.
The first thing people notice about her is how tiny she is.
“She has this enormous head on this little body – well, little except in one area,” says a source. “She looks like a Dolly Parton bobblehead.”
This Dolly’s no diva, by the way. Production sources say that when Mantello lets her know a number doesn’t work, she tosses it out and goes right back to the keyboard.
Produced by Bob Greenblatt, who runs the Showtime network, “Nine to Five” is expected to open on Broadway in the 2008-2009 season.
CBS chief Les Moonves has laid down the law: Fix the Tonys, or they’ll get the hook.
Moonves, sources say, thought this year’s telecast was a disaster.
He didn’t expect high ratings – the man is not an idiot – but he did expect “an entertaining show, and we didn’t deliver,” says a Tony insider. “Les loves the Tonys and the theater, and he’s the only reason we’re still on CBS.”
This year’s bland telecast was the lowest-rated since the Tonys were first televised in the 1960s.
Yesterday, officials from the American Theater Wing and The League of American Theaters and Producers, the two groups that administer the Tonys, met to discuss the future of the telecast.
Some people are pushing for a radical shake-up of the format, which, they complain, is too rigid.
“We need to throw the whole thing up in the air and put on the best television show we can,” another Tony insider says. “We’ve got to stop fighting about which shows get on the telecast or how much time they get for their numbers. All we do is nitpick. We’ve lost sight of the big picture – which is to put on a TV show that’s entertaining.”
It’s ridiculous that, with all its terrific writers, directors, choreographers and performers, Broadway produces such a limp show.
If the League and the Wing don’t get their act together, they’ll find themselves passing out Tony Awards over lunch in the Belasco Room at Sardi’s.
BETTY Buckley is in magnificent form at the Blue Note, where she’s performing her new act, “Songs for a Summer Night,” through Sunday.
She swings through some jazzy arrangements of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Hello Young Lovers,” “Many a New Day” and “Oh What a Beautiful Morning,” then melts hearts with a gorgeous account of two Michel Legrand standards, “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?” and “The Summer Knows.”
It’s always a treat to see Buckley in a nightclub, but why is no one writing a musical for this great performer?
Broadway’s the poorer for it.