8-31-07
The Sparrow Goes Commercial;
Lett's Goes Broadway
Carolyn Defrin in The Sparrow
The Sparrow, the award-winning audience-and-critic hit from The House Theatre of Chicago, is returning as a commercial venture for an extended run at the Apollo Theater Center, co-presented by Broadway In Chicago in a history-making alliance between downtown and off-Loop. Performances begin Sept. 26, with an Oct. 3 press opening. The announced run is through Dec. 31 but the producers have the option to extend at the Apollo.
The big news is that Broadway In Chicago will market it to its thousands of subscribers as an off-season special in the 2008 Walgreens Broadway In Chicago Season Series. There is no precedent for such a partnership between a Broadway presenter and an indigenous off-Loop company. Broadway In Chicago ventured slightly off-Loop 18 months ago when they presented The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at the 540 seat Drury Lane Theatre Water Tower Place, which was offered as part of their subscription program. But Water Tower Place still is downtown, while the 461-seat Apollo Theater in Lincoln Park definitely is not. For some theatre goers who gravitate towards Broadway attractions, The Sparrow could be their first venture to smaller and more local turf.
“This project will be very much like Spelling Bee was,” said Broadway in Chicago VP Eileen LaCario. “We’ll be working with the producing team to make sure the production is successfully marketed and maintained.”
Exactly who the producing team is remained a secret as of press time. Neither LaCario nor Nathan Allen, artistic director of The House, would even drop the name of the lead producer or producers, saying that producers (read investors) still were being lined up and various levels of participation negotiated. Neither would discuss the cost of the remount, although Allen hinted that it was over $100,000, but far less than the annual budget of The House Theatre of Chicago, which is $500,000 for Fiscal 2008.
LaCario said that Broadway in Chicago itself is putting no money in the show, although she didn’t go quite that far when asked if the New York-based Nederlander Organization—a 50 percent owner of Broadway in Chicago—might be involved. Reading between the lines of comments by LaCario and Allen, it is likely that some of the money for the show will be from the Big Apple. Allen confirmed that the producers will have rights of first refusal to take The Sparrow to the next steps of production, up to and including a Broadway staging. Another sold-out success for The Sparrow could prove to be the equivalent of an off-Broadway hit, and might spark the interest of the Great White Way. First, however, The Sparrow has to fill the Apollo, which has more than double the seating capacity of either the Viaduct or the Reskin Garage.
The Sparrow, an original fantasy romance (in the literary sense, not the romantic sense), was co-authored by Chris Matthews, Jake Minton and Nathan Allen from Allen’s concept. It opened last January at the Viaduct, and then was transferred to Steppenwolf’s Reskin Garage Theatre, playing to sold-out houses at both venues for a total of 13 weeks. In June, The Sparrow won seven Joseph Jefferson Citations including new work, production, director, ensemble, choreography, original music and projection design.
Allen directed the original production and will stage the remount with the original design team and most of the original cast of 13. All the leads will be the same. The House company will remain a non-union troupe even at the Apollo, although the cast will be paid considerably more than The House’s usual stipend at the Viaduct (typically $300-$500 for the run of a show). Allen noted that at the Apollo, The Sparrow will offer seven shows a week and possibly eight if it’s a success, while productions at the Viaduct offer only four shows a week.
An ensemble company, The House Theatre of Chicago began five years ago with 10 members and quickly expanded to 18 following their early success, The Tragedy of Peter Pan. With the production of Rocket Man two years ago, The House jumped to 28 ensemble members, particularly adding designers and technicians to the corps of actors, authors, composer and directors. Says Allen, “We’re trying to create company member participation at all levels of the creative process,” with all theatre disciplines represented from the earliest phase of project development.”
The House this past spring won the League of Chicago Theatre’s first-ever Emerging Theatre Award, which bestowed $5,000 and marketing consultancy from Broadway in Chicago.
LeCario said of the marketing partnership at the time: “It really is something we’re most interested in—especially the idea of theatres being able to go from one level to the next.”
Just as The House Theatre of Chicago enjoys the first commercial transfer in its history, Steppenwolf Theatre Company has announced the next in its long history of Broadway transfers. The current Steppenwolf world premiere of August: Osage County by Tracy Letts will open Nov. 20 at the Imperial Theatre in New York (previews from Oct. 30). The entire Chicago cast of 11 and design team will remain intact, under the direction of Anna D. Shapiro. One of Broadway’s larger venues, the Imperial Theatre generally houses musicals rather than plays, with Fiddler on the Roof and The Phantom of the Opera among the shows that have enjoyed long runs there.
August: Osage County will be the Broadway playwriting debut for actor and author Letts, a member of the Steppenwolf ensemble. He’s been represented off-Broadway with two much-talked about hits, Killer Joe and Bug, both of which are aggressively pulp-ish in style and tone. It will be interesting to observe the critical response to August: Osage County, which is radically different in style than Letts’ previous New York shows. The commercial Broadway transfer is being produced by Jeffrey Richards, Jean Doumanian, Steve Traxler and Jerry Frankel, in association with Steppenwolf Theatre Company (Martha Lavey, artistic director; David Hawkanson, executive director).