Me thinks Harvey Weinstein is preparing to put out the plank again on the good ship “Finding Neverland.”
The victim this time? Jeremy Jordan, who’s playing J.M. Barrie in the new $10 million musical about the creation of “Peter Pan.” The show, now in tryouts at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., is due to open on Broadway in the spring.
Last week, I suggested Jordan might be wary of Matthew Morrison, who played Barrie in a workshop of “Neverland” this winter. “Glee” is ending and since that show has a big following among teen girls, he’d be a mini-“Wicked”-like draw.
Lo and behold, a message in a bottle washed ashore saying Weinstein was in “secret negotiations” to hire him. Jordan could be tossed overboard without a life preserver. Sources say his contract doesn’t guarantee him a Broadway run, or even a payout if he’s cut loose after tryouts.
“We are thrilled and happy with the cast in Boston,” says Victoria Parker, the show’s executive producer. “No future casting decisions have been made at this time.”
That doesn’t sound like an emphatic denial to me. But Jordan won’t be the first victim on “Finding Neverland.” Weinstein deep-sixed the show’s original creative team — songwriters Michael Korie and Scott Frankel and book writer Allan Knee — after an early tryout in England. They were replaced by British songwriter and pop singer Gary Barlow and playwright James Graham.
The original director, Rob Ashford, abandoned ship. The show is now being staged by Diane Paulus, who directed “Pippin” and runs A.R.T.
Paulus is a bloodthirsty buccaneer herself. When castmember Roger Bart expressed reservations about the script on the first day of rehearsal, Paulus threw him to the sharks.
“Finding Neverland” opened last month to mixed reviews. The local papers were positive, but the New York Times and deadline.com expressed polite reservations — too sentimental, a bit twee, sexless, overly perky tunes. If those issues aren’t addressed by the time the show opens here, New York critics will do their own bloodletting.
On a cheerier note, I’m told the A.R.T. box office has never been more robust. “Finding Neverland” has, at least financially, outperformed the revival of “Pippin,” Paulus’ last Broadway-bound tryout there.
Weinstein, meanwhile, ducked the issue when I asked him yesterday about Jordan’s future.
“The million-dollar question is, ‘Will Michael take the Riedel Challenge?’ ” — a reference to his insistence that I come to Boston to inspect his ship for myself.
I’ll probably come up for the show’s final performance Sept. 28.
I’ll be easy to find: Given the number of bodies floating in this show’s wake, I’ll be the guy wearing the inflatable-ducky swimming float.