Prince Ali has found his London home! The Daily Mail reports that Broadway's Aladdin, originally in talks to open at the London Palladium or the Dominion, has finally secured the West End's Prince Edward Theatre.
Provided Cameron Mackintosh's MISS SAIGON moves to Broadway next summer (yes, please!), the Disney musical will move into SAIGON's former venue in 2016.
Mackintosh told the Mail MISS SAIGON's sets will be transferring with the show to New York to save money.
It's hard to know how shows are selling in the West End. There is no league reporting. The Stage does a Friday report on ticket sales but it is not based on actual sales numbers.
So, it's mostly individual reports about when they go to shows. I saw a picture a while ago of a half empty theatre for Wicked.
I always figured it would move to Broadway. But now we're talking a full on movie, sets & all, to Broadway. Maybe by the Fall of 2016, as I still see MISS SAIGON sticking around in the West End for another year.
A Chorus Line revival played its final Broadway performance on August 17, 2008. The tour played its final performance on August 21, 2011. A new non-equity tour started in October 2012 played its final performance on March 23, 2013. Another non-equity tour launched on January 20, 2018. The tour ended its US run in Kansas City and then toured throughout Japan August & September 2018.
A friend of mine was a wardrobe vacation swing for Les Mis a few weeks ago and overheard that Mackintosh was attempting to keep Les Mis running until at least September 2016 so that Miss Saigon could load-in immediately afterwards.
This revival has not gone as well as hoped. It's been struggling for a while, and even from opening it wasn't a complete sell out. Not helped by Camerons early comments about the first six months being sold out (using groups and agents allocations as 'sold 'out), so people assumed they couldn't get tickets. I'm not surprised he wants to save money on a broadway transfer by using the London set
I thought there was a union rule that didn't allow scenery being transferred to Broadway if it wasn't built by the local union builders.
Have there not been instances in the past where transferred productions had to rebuild their sets for Broadway to meet union requirements? Isn't this why most shows trying out of town with intentions of transferring still have their scenery built in New York? Did I make that up?
CATS when I read this, I thought that too. I don't know the official IATSE agreements in NYC. Perhaps someone on the board does. BUT why would Cam Mac say that if it wasn't possible, he would obviously know.
I remember some discussion a while back about the size and scale of the physical production in London. Seemed that it was understood that a transfer to Broadway would require the availability of a large house...or at least one with a stage that could accommodate the show.
Really hope this happens but I think Miss Saigon is doing to well in London to close in the next year and with the successful Les Miserables revival I feel it would be a big tourist "cash cow" to have three of the biggest mega-musicals of the 80s on Broadway and West End at the same time.
Did Les Mis Broadway recoup yet? Also, Miss Saigon is definitely closing in London next summer. I wonder what theatre it will go to.
As far as Cats goes, if School of Rock does really well, I can't see Webber putting up a production of Cats in NYC next year. Especially with Saigon coming in
Back to the subject matter. No idea what ,if anything, is slated to go into the Broadway. If it is available, Miss should go in there. I never realized how huge the stage was until I saw it from the front mezzanine at Dr Z. It is ******* huge.
The Broadway Theater is too big for this production of Miss Saigon. While it would be cool for nostalgic reasons, it won't work from a business point-of-view
It is not scaled down at all. It is bigger than the original from all reports...
Within Cameron Makintosh's quote in a 5/14/14 NY Times piece:
"However with our incredibly busy international openings of several different titles over the next two years, and the very limited number of theaters that could house a production as big as ‘Saigon’ on Broadway, lining up a theater and production slot is going to be very difficult particularly as many of ‘Saigon’s’ creative team are working on my other shows as well.”