For 20 years, Jerry Herman, the composer of "Hello, Dolly!" and "Mame," had to put his dreams for a successful production of "Mack and Mabel," his failed 1974 musical, on ice. And that, oddly enough, was where the show found new life.
After Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, the English ice-dancing champions, skated to the show's overture on British television, the score became a sensation.Soon, a concert version of the show (based on the lives of silent film director Mack Sennett and his star Mabel Normand) was arranged. This fall, a reworked version of the musical not only opened in the West End of London, but also won The London Evening Standard Award for best musical.
For Herman, who two years ago moved to Los Angeles after concluding that his style of old-fashioned musical was out of favor, the London success is a vindication. "I don't know how to describe to you the thrill of accomplishing a 21-year-old dream," he said. "It was like a 21-year, out-of-town tryout."
- Nathan Lane can't help himself. Sitting next to Carol Channing in the Times Square TKTS trailer, waiting to head out to switch on the Theater Development Fund's Christmas tree in Duffy Square with her, he grinned mischievously and said: "We're announcing our tour of `Private Lives' together."