‘Motown: The Musical” was loading into the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre yesterday, but there was one thing I couldn’t find amid the trucks, trolleys and crates: a script.
The $12 million musical has been in rehearsal for weeks — the first preview is March 11 — but a workable plot has yet to emerge.
How do I know this?I heard it through the grapevine!
The problem, sources say, is that Berry Gordy Jr. initially insisted on writing the script himself, with a bit of help from screenwriter David Goldsmith.
But because they had so much material to cover — Gordy’s life, the creation of Motown, its place in American popular culture — they quickly found themselves tangled up in that grapevine.
And so a few months ago, Dick Scanlan, who wrote the book to “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” joined the show as a “script consultant.”
There were rumblings this week that the producers were looking to bring in yet another writer to help sort out the material.
But lead producer Kevin McCollum told me that wasn’t the case.
“David and Dick will be billed as ‘script consultants,’ ” he said, “but they are the only two writers working with Berry. This is Berry’s story, and from the beginning, he recognized it needed to be seen through someone else’s prism.”
McCollum acknowledged the script was “still in flux,” adding that Scanlan’s job is to whack away at the mountains of material.
“And because we have no flying, we will hit our first preview date,” he added with a laugh.
It’s no secret that Gordy’s a control freak. You don’t build up an empire like Motown by being Mr. Laissez-Faire. But creating a musical requires collaboration, which is why a number of people Gordy initially approached to work on the show passed.
“They were afraid that Berry Gordy wouldn’t give them creative control, and that he wouldn’t tell the real behind-the-scenes stuff,” a source says.
Another source, a bitchy one, says: “Look at who they got to direct it — Charles Randolph-Wright. They went through the Rolodex and couldn’t find anyone until they got to W! Or R, if you want to be charitable.”
(Randolph-Wright, it must be said, isn’t exactly Mike Nichols. His major directing credit is “Bea Arthur on Broadway.”)
But McCollum says “Motown” doesn’t ignore the music label’s dramas.
“Motown was a family, and like all families there were conflicts,” he says. “Berry addresses many of those conflicts.”
OK, but let’s be practical. Nobody’s going to “Motown: The Musical” for the plot. What they want is the Motown catalog, perhaps the greatest catalog in the history of pop music.
Says McCollum: “Oh, we’ve got the songs. That’s one thing I can assure you of. We’ve got the songs.”
Director Stephen Daldry has assembled a first-rate cast for “The Audience,” a new play by Peter Morgan about Queen Elizabeth and her prime ministers.
Joining Helen Mirren (who plays the queen, naturally) are Haydn Gwynne (Margaret Thatcher), Rufus Wright (David Cameron), Michael Elwyn (Sir Anthony Eden) and Nathaniel Parker (Gordon Brown).
Best of all, though, is the great Robert Hardy as Winston Churchill, a role he played more than 30 years ago in the TV miniseries “Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years,” for which he won a BAFTA award.
As PBS viewers of a certain age will recall, Hardy was the veterinarian in “All Creatures Great and Small” in the 1970s.
Now 87, he’s one of England’s finest actors but rarely appears onstage anymore, so this should be a treat.
“The Audience” begins performances in the West End next week. Plans are already in the works for a Broadway production next season.