Marcia Milgrom Dodge, who received a 2010 Tony nomination for her direction of the critically acclaimed, but short-lived Broadway revival of Ragtime, has landed her next job.
Dodge told Playbill.com that she will direct the 141st edition of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which launches at Madison Square Garden in March 2011. "We go into rehearsal right after Thanksgiving," Dodge said, "and I'm directing [and] taking [Ragtime's] Derek McLane with me to do the sets and [Wicked's] Susan Hilferty to do costumes. It's going to be a big Broadway team working on it, so we're really excited."
If experience is the key, the famed regional director shouldn't have any trouble directing "The Greatest Show on Earth." "Strangely enough," Dodge said, "I worked with elephants when I first started out in New York. I did an event at the Bronx Zoo, I did an elephant festival, and I've worked overseas in South Korea, so I've worked with some international performers and had to work with a translator. So I think that I have a little, teeny, tiny bit of experience," she laughed. "But the whole way that we invent the show is so different than doing a musical because you start with all of the acts and then you go in and try to create a theme, a narrative, loosely.
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"But I got to hire a full design and creative team – book writer, composer, lyricist, designers that I was able to select in collaboration with Nicole and Alana Feld, who are the producers." The production will feature book and lyrics by Jeremy Desmon with music by Craig Safan. "It's actually very, very exciting, and I'm a big fan of the elephants, so I'm really, really excited about it," Dodge added. |
5 comments:
what about the music?
It is interesting that this announcement is posted on the heels of much discussion about and excellent images of the 1941 show, at time when so many big names in theatre began to infuse Ringling with dramatic changes.
Ms. Dodge directed Goosebumps at the Wintergarden in Blackpool for Feld Entertainment then did additional staging for Feld’s New York and touring version. If anyone in the Sarasota area saw “Sherlock Holmes & the West End Horror” at the Asolo in 2005, then they’ve seen her directorial work. I believe she’s got it right when she states that “the whole way that we invent the show is so different than doing a musical because you start with all of the acts and then you go in and try to create a theme, a narrative, loosely."
Rising wunderkind Jeremy Desmon just finished the book and lyrics for “Curious George Live!,” an arena show from Universal Pictures Stage Productions.
Derek McLane’s see-through set for the widely acclaimed “Ragtime,” for which he earned a Tony nomination (he has also won one), suggests he might do well with an arena show.
Susan Hilferty has designed costumes for “Wicked,” for which she won a Tony, and for “Spring Awakening” (she got a Tony nomination) and her many other awards include a 2000 OBIE for Sustained Excellence in Design.
Craig Safan did some of the music for the Siegfried & Roy Vegas show as well as the very different 136th edition of Ringling, the “Circus of Dreams.”
If circus is mostly new to all of these production people, I do sense Ringling is returning to a greater emphasis on more and stronger circus acts with the new 140th edition. Highpoints of Funundrum include two excellent teeterboard acts, reminiscent of the impressive series of teeterboard displays during the 1970s from eastern Europe. It is a display that is nicely transitioned, by the way, with the elephant number (as was Bellobration with the Chinese balancing/contortion number and the elephants) with great music, costumes, and dance. Michael Picton did the music for both of these shows—the 137th and 140th, each favorites of mine —as well as for the lion and low-wire acts on the current Gold unit. Picton, by the way, began as keyboardist for the European tour of Cirque du Soleil's Quidam in 2000 and has since orchestrated some of the Franco Dragone directed Cirque spectacles in Las Vegas and China.
Dick Flint
Baltimore
If she loves the elephants as much as she says she does, I hope they give her the budget for the other half of the elephant blankets! I'm really looking forward to next year's show. ~frank
I recall reading a harsh reveiw of the Ringling show that was very critical of it becoming more of a Broadway production and less of a circus.
It was written in 1947.
Actually, John Ringling North was accused of going Broadway back in the 1930s so it's nothing new. Remember John Murray Andersen and his successor Richard Barstow were both Broadway people and collectively they "staged" the show with their Broadway touches during the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. Miles White the costumer was also a Broadway talent and created some of the show's most stunning costumes. Ditto, Don Foote.
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