More news on the hotties-returning-to-Broadway front. Tony nominee Harry Connick Jr. is planning his next New York theatrical outing in yet another "new Gershwin musical," this one called Nice Work If You Can Get It. Connick proved himself a fine comic actor as Grace's sometimes husband on "Will & Grace," although he was often a bit stiff in the recent revival of The Pajama Game.
Connick's PG director, Kathleen Marshall, will direct and choreograph NWIYCGI, which will hopefully help her atone for the sins of Grease. The book for will come from Joe DiPietro, who penned the long-running I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change and the not-so-long-running All Shook Up. At one point, the show was called Heaven on Earth, and was purportedly based on the original Gershwin musical Oh, Kay!, although it's not clear whether that remains the case. The show also appeared at the Goodspeed Opera House in 2001 under the title They All Laughed.
When I say "yet another" new Gershwin musical, I of course refer to the fact that everyone seems to think the Gershwin songbook is ripe for the picking when it comes to putting together a "new" show. You might think that the idea of a "jukebox" musical is a relatively recent invention, but people have been plundering George Gershwin's marvelous work ever since he passed away in 1937. My One and Only and Crazy for You are only the most recent examples. Hollywood also recycled Gershwin tunes for quite a few movies, including "An American in Paris" "Funny Face," "Rhapsody in Blue," and the disastrous "They All Laughed."
Of course, there are many reasons that it's so tempting to appropriate Gershwin songs. Firstly, they're just so many of them that are outstanding. But it's also because most of them were written at at time when show songs didn't always have a tremendous amount to do with the show itself. Many of the songs were just written to be hits, and if the song happened to serve some purpose in the show, well, even better. It's interesting to note that you rarely see anything from Of Thee I Sing, Let 'Em Eat Cake, or Porgy and Bess in any of these compilation shows, because those three Gershwin shows were crafted post-Show Boat, a time when the creators of musical theater were much more interested in creating integrated works.
Nice Work if You Can Get It is currently scheduled for a February 2009 opening in New York after a December tryout at Boston's Colonial Theater.
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