Group’s Name Espouses Goal--New Musicals

Several entertainment companies joined forces to enlist Harold Prince, Terrence McNally, Jimmy Webb, Erica Jong, Marsha Norman and Marvin Hamlisch in a group that will create 16 musicals during the next four years.

The organization, New Musicals, will present the shows at the State University of New York at Purchase, 25 miles north of New York City, and later on Broadway and at other theaters around the country.

“This partnership refuses to accept the current depressed state of the American musical theater,” said Martin J. Bell, producing director of the group, whose partners include Capital Cities-ABC Inc., which owns ABC television; Columbia Artists Management Inc., the classical concert management agency, and Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns and operates five Broadway theaters.

New Musicals will have a $10-million budget to produce an initial season of four shows, the first of which will open in May, Bell said Tuesday. They include “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” “The Secret Garden,” “My Favorite Year” and “Fanny Hackabout Jones.”

“All the problems come from one source--the cost of production,” Bell said. He said New Musicals has agreements with Actors Equity, the Dramatists Guild and the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers that will enable it to lower production costs.

The first production will be “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” directed by Prince, with a book by McNally and music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb. The show will star John Rubinstein and Kevin Gray and will play at Purchase on May 1 through June 10.

Among projects under consideration for future seasons, according to Bell, are a contemporary musical version of “Pinocchio” by Jimmy Webb; a musical about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt by Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford and an unspecified work from Hamlisch.