A world premiere of what could be a Broadway-bound musical is one of the out-of-the-ordinary aspects of the 2007 Utah Shakespearean Festival season in Cedar City.
Others include opening-week guest appearances by playwright Ken Ludwig and the late Thornton Wilder's nephew, Tappan Wilder.
Festival director R. Scott Phillips and founder Fred C. Adams stopped by the Deseret Morning News recently to report on this season's highlights, and they're excited about the world premiere of "Lend Me a Tenor: The Musical" and how things are shaping up for the other five productions.
This year's slate includes Thornton Wilder's classic "The Matchmaker" (the basis for "Hello, Dolly"), Shakespeare's rarely produced "Coriolanus" and George Bernard Shaw's witty romance, "Candida."
Also on the calendar this summer are two Shakespearean classics: "King Lear" and "Twelfth Night." (The latter will have additional matinee performances on Wednesdays and Saturdays in Southern Utah University's Auditorium Theatre.)
Two thespians with longtime connections to the festival — Peter Sham and Brad Carroll — have been collaborating on "Lend Me a Tenor: The Musical," an adaptation of Ludwig's farce, for the past three years.
Sham has written the book and lyrics, and Carroll, who now lives in Cedar City, has composed the music. And another former festival colleague, Roger Bean, is directing the production.
"Peter had worked with Roger before and really wanted him to direct the show," said Adams. "The thing that's exciting about this is that it's a very, very clever and funny farce, and the musical improves on the original script."
Set in the mid-1930s, "Lend Me a Tenor" revolves around one chaotic night at the Cleveland Grand Opera House, where an Italian singer, Tito Merelli — "the world's greatest operatic tenor" — shows up just at curtain time but is unable to perform.
The comedy kicks into high gear with a stage-struck bellhop, the tenor's jealous wife, a scheming diva and a host of other characters.
Adams said that in the original comedy Tito ends up in an adulterous situation with the opera's leading soprano, but that has been deleted from this version. "Peter Sham had played the role previously, and he didn't feel right about it. Tito professes his love for his wife but still goes to bed with this floozy. It doesn't develop the plot and it's not part of the musical."
He also said he was impressed as he watched a run-through. "The opening number is taken directly from Verdi's 'Otello.' The voices in the chorus were ... well, I was taken aback."
Adams described the score as "brilliant." "If you can walk out of a musical and hum the melodies, then it's working." He added that there will be supertitles for the music sung in Italian.
The festival commissioned "Lend Me a Tenor: The Musical." If it goes on to Broadway, London or elsewhere, the festival will receive 5 percent of the royalties for the next seven years. (Samples and snippets of some of the music are available online at www.bard.org/news/audio.html.)
Phillips and Adams hope to have a cast recording available sometime during the summer.
Here's a glimpse at the other five mainstage USF productions this summer:
CORIOLANUS is directed by Henry Woronicz, who has been associated with the festival as both director and actor over the past several years, in addition to 11 years as resident actor and director for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Previously in Cedar City, Woronicz directed "As You Like It" in 2002 and "The Taming of the Shrew" in 2004, when he also played the title role in "Macbeth" and was Dr. Bradman in "Blithe Spirit."
"You're going to be surprised and find yourself enjoying 'Coriolanus' and not expecting to," said Adams. "The fellow playing the title role is Jamie Newcomb, who is new to the festival but not a newcomer to the stage. He spent nine seasons in Oregon and has worked with the Denver Center Theatre and South Coast Rep in California. He's a really gifted actor with language and text. He's a relatively small guy but very strong vocally. He will chew up the scenery."
Woronicz is shifting the time period from ancient Rome to the Renaissance, which he hopes will make it more stimulating.
Leslie Brott, who has performed at the festival over the past 12 seasons, will play Coriolanus' headstrong, domineering mother, Volumnia, who. like her son, is a force to be reckoned with.
THE MATCHMAKER, Thornton Wilder's 1955 comedy about a scheming matchmaker who is hired to find a new wife for widowed businessman Horace Vandergelder, is directed by Roger DeLaurier. Younger theatergoers probably know the plot best from its 1964 musical version, "Hello, Dolly!"
Wilder's nephew, Tappan, will be coming to Cedar City for the opening, according to Adams. "He sent us a copy of Wilder's original script, where the final line had been changed. Tappan Wilder's daughter loves the outdoors and comes to Utah every summer to hike."
Adams and Phillips hope to have a display at the theater showing the page from the script with the revised final line.
Leslie Brott will play Dolly Levi, with Dan Kremer as Vandergelder. (Kremer will also be seen in the title role of "King Lear.")
"We've watched him for years at Ashland and we're excited to get Kremer down here. 'Matchmaker' will be fun for the whole family, as will 'Twelfth Night,"' said Adams.
TWELFTH NIGHT, is directed by B.J. Jones, an enthusiastic director from Chicago who "is a combination of Michael Don Bahr and Fred Adams," according to Phillips. "He has an anything-is-possible attitude." Jones is setting the comedy in a Gypsy camp.
His cast will include Shelly Gaza as Viola, Michael Sharon as Orsino, Phil Hubbard as Sir Toby Belch, Donald Sage Mackay as Malvolio, and Carey Cannon as Olivia.
KING LEAR, directed by J.R. Sullivan, is considered Shakespeare's grandest and stormiest tragedy. Phillips says the staging for "King Lear" is built around a disc-like medallion in the center of the stage — a huge round circle of earth.
As Lear begins to fall apart (after spurning his youngest daughter, the one who truly loves him, and placing himself into the cruel hands of his other two ambitious children) the medallion slowly disintegrates. Writer G.K. Hunter has described the drama as "a Stonehenge of the mind."
Performing opposite Don Kremer as Lear are Carole Healey as Goneril and Carey Cannon as Regan, his two older, self-obsessed daughters, and Shelly Gaza as Cordelia, the youngest daughter who loves her father but who is disinherited by him.
At the end of the play, those who've met tragic ends are buried under the rubble of what's left of the medallion.
CANDIDA, George Bernard Shaw's comedy about marriage, is directed by the festival's casting director, Kathleen F. Conlin.
"'Candida' has a sweet humor about it," says Adams. "It sound kind of grim and austere but it's not. There is wonderful wit in it as Shaw is tweaking the institution of marriage. You have this misogynist writing about marriage, but it's not negative. Shaw is saying that marriage is only as successful as the two of you can make it."
The central character is Candida (played by Anne Newhall), an attractive young woman who is taken for granted by her husband, the Rev. James Morrell. He, on the other hand, is content with what he feels is the "perfect relationship. Their marriage is tested by the arrival of a young poet, Eugene Marchbanks, a painfully shy youth.
Newhall may be best remembered for her role as Billie Dawn in "Born Yesterday," among other USF appearances. The cast also includes Donald Sage Mackay as Rev. Morell, newcomer Shawn Fagan as Marchbanks, and Kieran Connolly as Mr. Burgess, Candida's father, a drunken reprobate who stirs things up.
E-mail: ivan@desnews.com