ATW - Downstage Center
ATW - Downstage Center
American Theatre Wing
Tom Viertel (#226) - October, 2008
58 minutes Posted Nov 3, 2008 at 4:17 pm.
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Show notes
Prolific producer Tom Viertel, who with his partners Richard Frankel, Steve Baruch and Marc Routh have been responsible for such shows as "The Producers", "Hairspray", and the John Doyle-directed "Company" and "Sweeney Todd", talks abut producing on Broadway and the pending closing of the long-running "Hairspray". He relates his own theatrical heritage -- his grandfather was a contractor who built the Mark Hellinger Theatre, among many others, and his father was a playwright -- and how he began his own theatrical career as a hobby while working at the family real estate concern. Among the shows he discusses are his first theatrical foray with two magicians he first saw in a 50 seat theatre in Los Angeles -- Penn and Teller; the extraordinary auditions of two now well-known actresses, Donna Murphy and Laura Benanti, for "Song of Singapore" and "The Sound of Music" respectively; the counterintuitive decisions that led him to produce Theatre de Complicite's "Mnemonic" as a commercial production and to revive "Gypsy" with Patti LuPone on Broadway only five years after the prior production; the travails of producing "Smokey Joe's Cafe"; and why in his spare time he's so committed to his volunteer role as chairman of Connecticut's Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. Original air date - October 31, 2008.