On the fast track to Broadway: a musical version of the Nicolas Cage movie “Honeymoon in Vegas.”
A backer’s audition was held last week and the “checkies,” as Max Bialystock called ’em, are starting to come in.
The show, budgeted at about $10 million — that’s a lot of checkies! — has a score by Jason Robert Brown and a script by Andrew Bergman, who wrote the 1992 movie.
Brown’s music is an acquired taste I have yet to acquire. He’s an accomplished musician, to be sure, but his songs have never set my toes a-tappin’. Heavily influenced by Stephen Sondheim — as so many writers of his generation are, to their detriment — he’s attracted to dark, often pretentious material.
I know “Parade” has its champions, but a musical about the lynching of Leo Frank isn’t exactly my idea of “An Evening With Jerry Herman.”
In high school, Brown attended musical theater camp. While the other kids were rehearsing “Bye Bye, Birdie” and “No, No, Nanette,” he was working on a song cycle about teen suicide.
(“An Evening With Sylvia Plath”?)
But, for “Honeymoon in Vegas,” I’m told Brown’s written a batch of bright, witty, tuneful songs. Bergman’s book is said to be sharp and funny, which is what you’d expect from the man who wrote “The In-Laws,” “Soapdish” and “Fletch.”
The reading was directed with panache by Gary Griffin, who staged “The Color Purple.”
“Honeymoon in Vegas” tells the story of a guy who can’t commit to marriage. When he finally bites the bullet and whisks his girlfriend off to Las Vegas, a rich gambler makes a play for his fiancée. Farcical high jinks ensue.
My spies — hello, Rob Bartlett! — say Tony Danza was terrific as the gambler (James Caan in the movie). Danza’s an appealing singer — he’s performed in nightclubs for years — and he’s a fine actor, as he demonstrated as Rocky, a bartender and pimp, in the critically acclaimed 1999 Broadway revival of “The Iceman Cometh.”
T.R. Knight was appealing in the leading role, and Mary Faber
(“How To Succeed in Business”) a delight as the fiancée.
Bartlett, I’m told (by him), was unbelievably brilliant as the gangster Johnny Sandwich, a pivotal, groundbreaking role Hugh Jackman was desperate to play.
Dena Hammerstein, the widow of Oscar Hammerstein’s son, James, is producing “Honeymoon in Vegas.”
I hear she’s already started looking around for a Broadway theater for the 2012-2013 season.
The police crashed a rehearsal of “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever” last week and arrested one of the cast members.
I won’t reveal his name — he is, I’m told, battling a drug problem — but he’s in trouble for stealing money from cast members at another show he was in not too long ago.
When confronted, he promised to return the money. He didn’t and was spotted sneaking out of the theater via the fire escape.
That’s when the police were called. They took him to the station house but didn’t put him in jail.
He’s still in “Clear Day,” and I’m told his friends are trying to help him kick his bad habits.
Everybody deserves a second chance. But just in case, nanny cams are going up all over the place.
The Eyes of Broadway are on him.
The legendary Charles Busch will play the legendary Katharine Hepburn in a one-night-only performance of “Tea at Five,” an adaptation of Hepburn’s autobiography, “Me: Stories of My Life.”
The performance, on Nov. 28 at off-Broadway’s Lucille Lortel Theatre, will benefit the Ali Forney Center, which provides housing for homeless gay, bisexual and transgendered teenagers.
For tickets, go to teaatfive.org.