From Playbill:

Ragtime, which bowed on Broadway only a decade or so ago, will return on Oct. 23 at the Neil Simon Theatre. The production is from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where the Terrence McNally, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty show, based on the E.L. Doctorow novel, features the direction and choreography by Marcia Milgrom Dodge.

The show has many fans among die-hard musical theatregoers, and remains Ahrens and Flaherty's most high-profile musical. Many think the original run was cut short by the enormous success of The Lion King the same season.Kevin McCollum, Roy Furman, Roger Berlind, Max Cooper, Tom Kirdahy/Devlin Elliott, Jeffrey Sine, Scott Delman, Roy Miller, LAMS Productions, Inc., Wendy Federman, Emanuel Azenberg in association with The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.


I am so excited....this is my absolutely favorite show!

I loved it too when I saw it at the Ahmanson Theatre in L.A. before it reached Broadway. I was rooting for it over "The Lion King" as I think it is a stronger show overall and moved me in ways "Lion King" did not.

This for me was easily the best new musical of 1998, and had the most accomplished and emotionally rich original score I'd heard of any musical since Les Miserables nearly ten years before.

It was unfairly overshadowed that season at the Tonys by the admittedly visionary stagecraft wizardy of The Lion King and the sexually charged revival of Cabaret.

I also saw the Papermill's version of the stripped-down London production about four years ago. It was excellent and proved the show need not be a spectacle to work. It'll be interesting to see another version of the show, and I wish the production the best, though I still think it might be a challenge to get an audience outside of the diehard musical theater crowd.

Looks like Bye Bye Birdie has found its Tony revival competition this season!

I think the revival of A Little Night Music will provide heavy competition as well.

quote:

Originally posted by Rand0mDude:
I think the revival of A Little Night Music will provide heavy competition as well.

Oh right! How could I forget? Well, at least we won't have a repeat of this year, where only two of the revival musicals deserved to be there and the other two were just filler. Ugh.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. While Ragtime and Little Night Music productions have already been acclaimed, the new Bye, Bye Birdie could be a potential dud. They need to do something truly special with it so that it gets respect from the tough New York crowd.

Brantley's review of the West End production of "Little Night Music" also acknowledged that the success of that particular staging depends almost entirely on the performances of the cast. So casting seems to be a major part of the equation for success of the New York staging.

And "Finian's Rainbow" could be in the Revival battle too...