Cabaret, American in Paris on Walton Broadway season
The 2017-2018 Procter & Gamble Broadway Series of touring productions at Fayetteville’s Walton Arts Center will include three “old” shows — two by Rodgers and Hammerstein — and three “new” shows.
The season opener, Oct. 3-8, will be the recent Bartlett Sher revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I. And the closer, May 1520, 2018, will be a new touring version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music.
In between, says Scott Galbraith, the center’s vice president of programming and executive producer, the two shows he’s particularly touting are Cabaret (music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, book by Joe Masteroff and based on Christopher Isherwood’s I Am a Camera), onstage Jan. 19-21, and An American in Paris, with production Feb. 6-11.
The former is based on the Tony-winning production by New York’s Roundabout Theatre Company. “I was surprised to discover Cabaret had never played here,” Galbraith says.
The show is being billed as a Walton Arts Center debut. It’s the story of a down-atheel American-English teacher and a free-spirit British singer in a decadent nightclub as the Nazis rise to power in pre-World War II Berlin.
Songs by George and Ira Gershwin form the centerpiece of American in Paris, the new stage realization of the classic Gene Kelly-Leslie Caron movie, which took its name and focus from one of George Gershwin’s most popular symphonic works.
“It’s going to surprise a lot of people,” Galbraith says. “It took, with great creative license, the premise of the movie,” but it explores more widely the context — a city and its residents celebrating new beginnings in the aftermath of war — as it tells the love story of an American soldier and a mysterious French girl.
The rest of the 2017-2018 lineup:
Nov. 7-12: Irving Berlin’s White Christmas
Dec. 19-23: Finding Neverland (music and lyrics by Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy, book by James Graham), the musical origin story of playwright J.M. Barrie’s creation of Peter Pan
March 2-4: Rent by Jonathan Larson (20th anniversary touring production)
April 24-29, 2018: Beautiful — The Carole King Musical (music and lyrics by Gerry Goffin, Carole King, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil; book by Douglas McGrath), featuring King’s songs and chronicling the singer-songwriter’s rise to stardom
Season subscription packages are $271 to $351. Single tickets go on sale in August. Call (479) 571-2785 or visit the website, waltonartscenter.org.
Galbraith took over his current duties about six months ago, coming to Fayetteville from the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in Orlando, Fla. Prior to that he was vice president of programming at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford, Conn.
As a producer, he created short-haul, bus-and-truck tours of major shows, including The Music Man – A 50th Anniversary Tribute with Shirley Jones and Patrick Cassidy and a five-major-city run of Miss Saigon.