BACKSTAGE AT FIVE NEW SHOWS : How a Sting Album Led Hellman to Revival of ‘Three Penny Opera’

Jerome Hellman, the Academy Award-winning producer of such films as “Coming Home” and “Midnight Cowboy,” traces his new venture as theater producer back to an evening when he and his wife, photographer Nancy Ellison, were listening to Sting’s album “. . . Nothing Like the Sun.” They started talking about what a terrific Mack the Knife the rock star would make in “Three Penny Opera.”

Hellman, 60, had seen the Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill classic a few times in the ‘50s and was intrigued enough to pick up the original cast album. “It wasn’t a great recording, but it was enough to get me interested.”

He then set about getting the rights, which took several months, and making sure that his friend and Malibu neighbor Sting would do it. “If Sting said, ‘No,’ I might have looked elsewhere, but he didn’t. He said, ‘If you can put it together, I’m interested.’ ”

What enticed Sting to do it? “I think Sting made an intelligent assessment of his own career. He’s maturing and I don’t think he wants to play to screaming teen-agers as he gets into his 40s. He’s an artist with serious intentions.”

Early on, says Hellman, they considered larger venues than a Broadway house, “but it didn’t feel right. And I felt one of the biggest dangers would be to overproduce it, to turn it into something it shouldn’t be. It demands a closeness with the audience.”

Michael Feingold, who adapted “Happy End,” “wanted a shot at this, did lyrics on four numbers and sent them to me on spec. I felt he had a point of view on the period and passed them on to Sting who liked them. (The show’s director) John Dexter said fine.”

Hellman declines revealing the exact size of his show’s capitalization. He carried it himself during the initial stages, he says, then brought in Japanese publisher and film producer Haruki Kadokawa and theater owner James Nederlander. “I had my choice of theaters and managements. My terms were clear. I retained absolute and full control so the director and I could work as I do on films--one shared vision without which you’re lost.”

The next step was its Broadway tryout in Washington, D.C., which ends today. “Three Penny” opened on Sept. 14 there, and the reviews were terrible.

Washington Post critic David Richards called the production “slow and turgid stuff . . . The very qualities that made the Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill piece such a sensation in 1928--its bristling humor, its accusatory anger, its sullen impudence--remain pretty much locked up inside this lumbering production.”

What was Hellman’s reaction? “They were any sane person’s reaction--concern and back to work with a vengeance,” he said by phone from Washington. “The show that was reviewed was the sixth time it was performed for an audience and the sixth time Sting had appeared on any venue in this kind of format. It’s the equivalent of taking your rough cut and having a world premiere of it.

“It was and is a work in progress,” continues Hellman. “The jolt of the reviews made it easier for all of us to become appropriately critical and bear down. I’m not suggesting that bad reviews feel as good as good reviews, but sometimes they serve a constructive purpose and this was one of those times.”

“Three Penny Opera” opens at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 205 W. 46th St., on Sunday, Nov . 5. Previews begin Oct . 19. Tickets for Tuesday through Saturday evenings and weekend matinees are $42.50, $50 and $55. Wednesday matinee tickets are $35, $42.50 and $47.50.

Tyne Daly Sings and One Producer Is Inspired to Bring Back ‘Gypsy’

Barry Brown was nestled in his living room overlooking Central Park, idly switching TV channels, when he came upon Tyne Daly singing on Dolly Parton’s variety show, “Dolly.” “I was mesmerized,” says producer Brown. “I knew what an incredible actress she was, but I didn’t know she could sing. I turned to a friend and said, ‘I think I just got an idea.’ ”

Within minutes, Brown had called Arthur Laurents, who wrote the book for the musical “Gypsy.” What did Laurents think about putting the Emmy-winning actress onstage as Mama Rose in a 30th anniversary production of the show?

Laurents suggested that he bring her to New York for an audition so he, “Gypsy” composer Jule Styne and lyricist Stephen Sondheim could hear her sing. Brown called Daly’s agent to see if the actress was even interested. She was. Everybody got together several weeks later at the Imperial Theatre, where Daly sang several of Rose’s songs from the show. When she asked if they wanted to hear another, “Steve turned to Arthur and Jule and asked, ‘Do we need to hear more?’ They both said ‘No’ and Steve said, “Let’s get started.”

Calling the show “the King Lear of musicals,” Brown says director Laurents insisted that the lead had to play for a lengthy time on the road. Further encouraged by Daly’s star status, Brown and his co-producers preceded the show’s Broadway opening with a six-month, 14-city national tour. The tour, which included a stop at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in July, sent back reviews loaded with words like “fabulous,” “magnificent” and “astonishing.”

The national tour was also quite lucrative and Brown says the production is already “well on the way to recoupment. If we play to 80% of capacity, we could pay off in 30 to 35 weeks on Broadway.”

When Brown and his late partner Fritz Holt produced “Gypsy” with Angela Lansbury in London in 1973, says Brown, it cost $275,000--including all airfare and per diems. This production will cost $3 million to mount, he says. The number is low for Broadway, he says, given that both Laurents and producers kept costs down. Costumes, he says, could have cost $500,000 to $700,000, but came in for under $300,000, and sets could have come in for $1 million and came in for half that.

Brown also has big plans for both Daly and “Gypsy.” He hopes the longtime TV cop will stay with the show through summer 1990, take some time off, then open that fall in London “where ‘Cagney & Lacey’ is a big show and she’s a star.”

Back at home, Brown wants to do unto “Gypsy” what producer David Merrick did unto “Hello, Dolly,” succeeding Carol Channing with several other stars. Names that he says have been discussed include, “in alphabetical order,” Carol Burnett, Bette Midler, Liza Minnelli and Bernadette Peters. “All would be good and each would be very different, not only from each other but from Tyne.”

“Gypsy” opens at the St. James Theatre, 246 W. 44th St., on Nov. 16. Previews begin Oct. 27. Tickets for Tuesday through Saturday evenings and weekend matinees are $25, $45, $50. Wednesday matinee tickets are $20, $40 and $45.

It Takes a Lot of Money Just to Open a ‘Grand Hotel’

The run-through of Tommy Tune’s “Grand Hotel,” sans set and costumes, had just ended when producer Martin Richards leaned over to point out assorted investors in the small, invited audience. “I never had this luxury with any other director,” he whispers to a reporter. “It’s like introducing your child without having it properly clothed.”

The fact the child’s there at all is an “incredible feat,” Richards adds. “Two months ago, we decided to do a workshop as a test. After two weeks, Tommy decided he wanted to do it. No SEC papers had been filed, nothing, but Tommy felt let’s do it--the energy and excitement had been built up.”

Based on the 1929 novel by Vicki Baum, “Grand Hotel” features music by Robert Wright, lyrics by George Forrest and book by Luther Davis, the same Tony-winning creative team who brought us “Kismet.” Their very different earlier version, called “At the Grand,” starring Paul Muni, played the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera in 1958, but did not go on to Broadway.

“Grand Hotel” has a completely new look and sound. Richards read the script and heard several songs from the show last December, and when Tune got involved a month later, “that was the clincher. I said, ‘I loved the material but it depended on the director--it had to be done in a contemporary way.’ ”

Producer Circle put up $300,000 in seed money, financed a workshop at the Diplomat Hotel last April, and given Tune’s enthusiasm, started shopping the show to theater owners. Richards says they got $1 million from the Jujamcyn theater chain, owners of the Martin Beck Theatre, where the show opens Nov. 12, and further commitments from other producers totaling $4,750,000.

Richards still doesn’t know how he put the financing together so fast, especially since everybody was trying to raise money from the same people. “It’s the same group of crazies that really love the theater--maybe 40, maybe more,” says Richards, a former singer and casting director. “You have to be very brave to do it. I make movies and have never lost a nickel. I’ve lost money in the theater, but I keep doing it because of the live energy.”

Richards and his wife, Mary Lea Johnson, have already produced or co-produced 16 other Broadway shows, including Beth Henley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Crimes of the Heart” and Tony-winner “La Cage aux Folles.” Many of their shows have been directed by Harold Prince, including such hits as “Sweeney Todd” and “On the Twentieth Century” and such financial failures as “Grind” and “Rosa.”

Richards clearly enjoys working with directors like Prince and Tune, but says at one point that “the business side stinks. . . . At one time, every show was seen. Now the superhit makes money and a hit breaks even and the rest go down the tubes.”

Hope is running high on “Grand Hotel.” Paramount Pictures came in as a producer during the Boston run and Richards says the film company has a first refusal on any future film.

The 1989 “Grand Hotel,” which finished its pre-Broadway run last night in Boston, shares just one song with the 1958 production. This time out, Liliane Montevecchi plays the Greta Garbo role from the Oscar-winning 1932 film, and the cast also includes Karen Akers, Timothy Jerome and Jane Krakowski.

But there’s still work to do. The Boston Globe’s reviewer, Kevin Kelly, called the show a “sophisticated entertainment with real potential,” qualifying his review with the remark the show needed work before going to Broadway. Tune and company are indeed “working like crazy,” Richards said a few days later by phone from Boston. “It’s been getting better and better.”

“Grand Hotel” opens at the Martin Beck Theatre, 302 W. 45th St. on Nov. 12. Previews begin Oct. 17. Tickets are $45, $50 and $55 Monday through Saturday evenings and Saturday matinee. Wednesday matinee tickets are $37.50, $42.50 and $47.50.

Three Old Friends Decide to Put on a Show: ‘City of Angels’

Nick Vanoff is a stage and television producer. He is also a patient man. For years, he talked with Cy Coleman and Larry Gelbart about one day working together on a show. He’d known composer Coleman for 35 years and playwright Gelbart nearly as long.

When Coleman and Gelbart finally finished their new musical comedy thriller “City of Angels,” says Vanoff, “they sent me the book, and I liked it. They came over to my house (in Los Angeles) and played (the music) for me and my wife. We both loved what we heard, and I then naively went about doing it.”

Vanoff then called Roger Berlind, whose latest musical was “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway,” and asked him to get involved. Sitting with Vanoff at a restaurant near the show’s rehearsal hall, Berlind nods in agreement: “I read the book, heard the score and had the same exact reaction.”

It was a go.

With a cost of $4.2 million, the show has a list of producers that also includes both Jujamcyn Theaters, owner of the 1,250-seat Virginia Theatre where the show opens Dec. 7, and the Shubert Organization, which Vanoff says is “very high on the property.” Also part of the producing team is Suntory International, a Japanese firm that co-produced “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway.”

The show’s unusual staging features an amalgam of film and stage techniques. As Vanoff and Coleman explain it, “City of Angels” is set in the late ‘40s and portrays a novelist’s trials and tribulations writing a screenplay based on his detective novel. “One set is the movie he sees in his head as he writes it,” says Vanoff. “Those scenes are in black and white. The action, which is real life, takes place in color, as life is.”

Gelbart, whose play “Mastergate” opens on Broadway this month, earlier wrote “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and “Sly Fox.” Tony winner Coleman wrote the scores for such shows as “Sweet Charity” and “On the Twentieth Century.” Lyrics are by newcomer David Zippel. Director Michael Blakemore directed “Noises Off,” among other shows.

“City of Angels” opens directly on Broadway. “We feel the book is in very good shape and we like what we have,” says Emmy-winning TV producer Vanoff, who also produced Jackie Mason’s smash hit, “The World According to Me!” “Usually, you’re out of town seeing the book, and we think the book is strong enough. It is a fairly complicated show to do scenically. So instead of going out of town, we added extended rehearsals and previews.”

Listen to composer Coleman, interviewed later that day after an audition for his next musical, a show based on the life of Will Rogers. “We’re doing something that’s not only a musical, but flashy, new and I hope very welcome on the Broadway scene,” says Coleman of “City of Angels.” “It’s one of the first book musicals to come along in a long time.”

“City of Angels” opens at the Virginia Theatre, 245 W. 52nd St., on Dec . 7. Previews begin Nov. 14. Ticket prices are $40, $45 and $50 Tuesday through Saturday evenings and weekend matinees. Wednesday matinee tickets are $35, $40 and $45.

Off-Broadway Hit Revival Moves to Not-for-Profit Broadway House

The Broadway season’s first hit musical is being produced at Circle in the Square Theatre, one of Broadway’s two not-for-profit houses.

The show is a revival of the Stephen Sondheim/Hugh Wheeler musical, “Sweeney Todd.” Director Susan H. Schulman’s chamber version of “Sweeney,” which packed the tiny York Theatre off-off-Broadway, was picked up by Circle. The audience size jumped from 99 to 600 but critics have generally agreed the show didn’t suffer with expansion.

The productions at both the York and Circle are scaled down considerably from the 1979 Tony-winning version at the 1,900-seat Gershwin (then called the Uris) Theatre. These simpler productions also take a different perspective on “Sweeney Todd’s” dark tale of a vengeance-seeking barber whose murder victims are the key ingredient in his downstairs neighbor’s best-selling meat pies.

The original production, directed by Harold Prince, had a massive steel set that used pieces hauled in from a closed New England foundry and created the dark mood of workers crushed by the Industrial Revolution. The show centered less on Len Cariou’s “demon barber of Fleet Street” than on Angela Lansbury’s pie maker.

In Schulman’s vision, the story is more the personal tragedy of a man who avenges the loss of his wife and child and less the impact of the Industrial age. Beth Fowler’s pie-maker is softer, more sympathetic, and so is Bob Gunton’s Sweeney Todd. “The focus is Sweeney,” says Circle in the Square’s producing director Paul Libin, “where it should be. A little part of you is cheering for Sweeney.”

While many regional theaters around the country have regularly featured crowd-pleasing musicals, Libin says this is just Circle’s third musical since 1972. “We’ve always wanted to do musicals,” says Libin, “but one of the reasons we haven’t is that musicals are expensive.”

Circle’s costs run higher than other not-for-profit theaters, says Libin, because of its Broadway environment, yet its costs are still considerably below its larger Broadway neighbors. “Sweeney Todd” is running under $600,000 to produce at Circle, says Libin. But if the show moved to a commercial Broadway house, he says “you couldn’t do it for less than $5 million.” (It cost $1.2 million in 1979.)

While Circle in the Square has 12,000 subscribers, they are apparently a pretty patient group of people. Ever since George C. Scott suggested in 1982 that they simply extend his popular run in Noel Coward’s “Present Laughter” rather than move the show to a bigger house, Circle has run shows at this theater without fixed closing dates. (They also present shows at Circle Downtown and occasionally elsewhere.) Tina Howe’s play, “Coastal Disturbances,” played there just under a year, Libin says.

“We used to have to close down successes and keep failures running,” says Libin. “Our subscribers commit to three plays, and history has proven that subscribers are happy to wait with their and our success. I pray they’ll feel the same way about ‘Sweeney Todd.’ ”

“Sweeney Todd” is playing at Circle in the Square Theatre, 235 W. 50th. Tickets for Friday and Saturday evening performances are $40. Other evening performances and weekend matinees are $37.50.