A Broadway Spring Preview With Michael Riedel

This spring is shaping up to be a busy one on Broadway – especially when it comes to new musicals. Joining us with a preview is Michael Riedel, theater columnist for the New York Post and co-host of the weekly TV show Theater Talk on PBS. 

Michael Riedel on If/Then (opening March 30) 

This is an original musical, which is something unique these days on Broadway -- not based on a movie, not based on a book -- written by Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt, who did Next To Normal, which won the Pulitzer Prize. It is what its title is -- If/Then. It's a series of questions posed in one's life: if I had done this, then that would have happened. But if I'd done that, this would have happened. 

 

On Bullets Over Broadway (opening April 10) 

Woody [Allen] is taking many of the many great popular tunes of the 1920s. He's so secretive about everything that they won't release the song list, so we only know about four or five songs that are in the show. Everything else is a deep, dark woody Allen secret. 

On Rocky: The Musical (opening March 13) 

What I hear is that the special effects are really dazzling. The boxing ring lifts off of the stage and moves out over the audience and twirls around, so you in the audience, you feel that you're actually right around the ropes of the boxing ring.

 

On Hedwig and the Angry Inch (opening April 22) 

One of the very rare musicals in which rock music -- real rock music -- actually works. It's hard to write a rock score for Broadway, because rock music can be very introverted lyrically, and Broadway needs a kind of muscular, melodic quality to it, and a song that drives the characters and drives the story.... There's a song in Hedwig and the Angry Inch called "Wicked Little Town" which is a great rock song, a great ballad, and a great musical theater song, and that is really hard to pull together those three strands. 

 

On Cabaret opening April 24) 

There's a revival of Cabaret, starring Alan Cumming. I am ambivalent about this whole endeavor. I saw that revival originally in 1997, with Alan, and nobody knew who Alan Cumming was. Cabaret had not really been around in a long time, and there was an absolutely brilliant and heartbreaking performance -- Natasha Richardson as Sally Bowles.... There are no rules in show business except for one: you can't capture lightning in a bottle a second time.