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Chicago Tribune
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
The musical '42 Balloons' at Chicago Shakes is a producer's bet on the unknown
The 63-year-old Broadway producer Kevin McCollum is of the age when one starts to wonder about one's legacy. Then again, producers, an optimistic crew by trade and existential necessity, always have to be looking forward. No producer wants to be tagged a nostalgist. And so, at a bar on Navy Pier, one can see McCollum's famously restless mind flit back and forth between past and present, defining his oeuvre and shying away from the task. McCollum's past includes 'Rent,' 'Avenue Q,' 'In the Heights' and 'Six,' to name the biggest titles upon which his reputation and financial well-being most fully rest. In the immediate future, there is '42 Balloons.' That's the title of McCollum's latest tryout at The Yard at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, the same theater that launched both 'The Notebook' (with a short Broadway run that still stings the producer) and 'Six,' a blockbuster hit despite having the most of Broadway musical budgets. '42 Balloons' is a musical about the quixotic Vietnam veteran known as 'Lawnchair Larry' Walters, who took to the air in 1982 above Southern California while seated in a lawn chair lifted by more than 40 helium-filled weather balloons. Walters reached as high as 16,000 feet, which meant he entered the sights of commercial pilots in airspace controlled by the Los Angeles International Airport. He came down by popping his balloons with a BB gun, a metaphor waiting to happen. The Federal Aviation Administration did not appreciate the stunt, eventually charging Walters with violating controlled airspace, operating a non-airworthy craft (surely debatable, given the success of the flight) and flying without a balloon license. But Walters' lawnchair, replete with its jerry-rigged frame and attached water bottles, is still on display at the National Air and Space Museum as part of an exhibit aptly titled 'We All Fly.' The core of Walters' audacious story has long interested others. In 2009, Steppenwolf Theatre Company produced Bridget Carpenter's 'Up,' a moving play that imagined the life of a man named Walter, who once had been famous for attaching balloons to his lawn chair but then spends his days fiddling in his basement trying to re-create his moment of fame. The Disney movie 'Up' from the same year also had some similarities, and Walters has been the subject of podcasts and articles aplenty. But the possibilities for a musical from the story are pretty self-evident, given the long Broadway history of flight as a metaphor for escape, a willingness to take risks and the ever-popular craving for self-actualization. All of that pretty much describes 'Defying Gravity' from 'Wicked,' one of the most popular Broadway numbers of the 21st century: 'So if you care to find me,' Elphaba sings, 'Look to the western sky.' A broomstick? 42 balloons? The pneumatic ascent to the 'Heaviside Layer' in 'Cats'? All very much a shared metaphor. Those shows, though, were the work of a highly experienced writing and composing team. That's far from the case with '42 Balloons.' To say that the show's sole writer and composer, the 32-year-old Jack Godfrey, is a newcomer to the musical theater is to understate. '42 Balloons' is not only his first musical but his first foray into the professional theater. His director and dramaturg, Ellie Coote, is a childhood friend with whose brother Godfrey played rugby. Until recently he had a day job in London teaching English as a foreign language. Born and raised in Oxford, England, the earnest, modest and likable Godfrey says he came from a family that did not have any connections to the theater, beyond attending tours of 'Les Miserables.' But his dad wrote him silly songs as a kid and he picked up that mantle. 'I wanted to write songs for Beyoncé,' he says. Godfrey studied religion at Durham University as an undergraduate, with a year abroad at Boston College, but eventually found his way to a musical theater course at the University of London and remained, having decided to pursue a career as a writer of musicals. His only other real experience prior to '42 Balloons' has been penning music for his brother's short movie and writing a musical history of the Methodist Church ('kind of an 18th century 'Book of Mormon,' he says, 'only much less funny'). But then, some eight years ago, he came across the story of Walters on the internet and he says, 'I could relate to a story about a man who had a dream.' He started meeting with Coote and putting together a score. By happenstance, Coote knew a member of the creative team behind 'Six' and Godfrey played his score for him. That led to a meeting with Andy and Wendy Barnes, a British married couple who became late-in-life developers of new British musicals and are well respected for having discovered 'Six.' That led to a few Monday night workshops in London at the Vaudeville Theatre, staged on top of the set for 'Six,' which led to a call to McCollum, which led to a first full staging of '42 Balloons' at the Lowry Theatre in Manchester, which has now led to the show's North American premiere at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. 'We love working on new musicals here,' says Edward Hall, Chicago Shakespeare's relatively new artistic director, as he watches rehearsals. His company has already put a lot of development work in the title alongside McCollum, whom Hall has known for years. Should '42 Balloons' follow a similar trajectory to those 'Six' queens, it's fair to say that everyone involved would be delighted. After the run at the Lowry, Godfrey got a call from McCollum. At Navy Pier, he showed he can do a pretty good impression of the producer's voice: 'Jack, it's Kevin McCollum. I want to take your show to America. How does that sound?' Ergo, '42 Balloons' has its official liftoff on Navy Pier on Tuesday night. 'I really love this country,' Godfrey says unprompted and rather touchingly after recounting the show's brief history alongside his own. 'I have this fascination with American culture and I picked an American story because I wanted to write sort of from an outsider's perspective, very much like Bill Bryson has written about Britain. I really want this show to be my love letter to America.' Fascinatingly, one of Godfrey's lyrics points out that although Walters had a camera attached to his chair, he never took one photograph; such was the difference between 1982 and today. '42 Balloons' appears very much in the McCollum aesthetic. Its physical scale and cast size is relatively modest (like 'Six'), a sampling of Godfrey's songs suggest a melodic, soft-core romanticism (like 'Rent's' Jonathan Larson), the show aims to have a certain insouciance (like 'Avenue Q') and the central character is a misfit like Man in Chair from 'The Drowsy Chaperone,' another McCollum title. Such comparisons are, of course, wildly premature and may prove ridiculous. Or apt. Such aspirations are why producers take risks on the unproven. '42 Balloons,' McCullom says, 'is about what musicals are so often about: 'How do you fly against all odds?''
Washington Post
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
A producer of ‘Rent' and ‘Hamilton' dishes about his Broadway career
As the producer behind 'Rent,' 'Avenue Q,' 'In the Heights' and 'Hamilton,' Jeffrey Seller has an eye for turning an unconventional musical into a hit. After all, none of those contemporary classics — about Bohemian artists, inappropriate puppets, a striving immigrant community and a go-getting treasury secretary — seemed poised for mainstream appeal. Yet each show won over audiences, snatched the best-musical Tony and entrenched itself in Broadway lore.
Gulf Today
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
Producer Jeffrey Seller shines a light on his own journey
Jeffrey Seller, the Broadway producer behind such landmark hits as 'Rent,' 'Avenue Q' and 'Hamilton,' didn't initially write a memoir for us. He wrote it for himself. 'I really felt a personal existential need to write my story. I had to make sense of where I came from myself,' he says in his memento-filled Times Square office. 'I started doing it as an exercise for me and I ultimately did it for theatre kids of all ages everywhere.' Seller's 'Theater Kid' — which he wrote even before finding a publishing house — traces the rise of an unlikely theater force who was raised in a poor neighbourhood far from Broadway, along the way giving readers a portrait of the Great White Way in the gritty 1970s and 80s. In it, he is brutally honest. 'I am a jealous person. I am an envious person,' he says. 'I'm a kind person, I'm an honest person. Sometimes I am a mean person and a stubborn person and a joyous person. And as the book shows, I was particularly in that era, often a very lonely person.' Seller, 60. who is candid about trysts, professional snubs, mistakes and his unorthodox family, says he wasn't interested in writing a recipe book on how to make a producer. 'I was more interested in exploring, first and foremost, how a poor, gay, adopted Jewish kid from Cardboard Village in Oak Park, Michigan, gets to Broadway and produces 'Rent' at age 31.' 'Theater Kid: A Broadway Memoir' by Jeffrey Seller. AP It is the story of an outsider who is captivated by theatre as a child who acts in Purim plays, directed a musical by Andrew Lippa, becomes a booking agent in New York and then a producer. Then he tracks down his biological family. 'My life has been a process of finally creating groups that I feel part of and accepting where I do fit in,' he says. 'I also wrote this book for anyone who's ever felt out.' Jonathan Karp, president and CEO of Simon & Schuster, says he isn't surprised that Seller delivered such a strong memoir because he believes the producer has an instinctive artistic sensibility. 'There aren't that many producers you could say have literally changed the face of theater. And I think that's what Jeffrey Seller has done,' says Karp. 'It is the work of somebody who is much more than a producer, who is writer in his own right and who has a really interesting and emotional and dramatic story to tell.' The book reaches a crescendo with a behind-the-scenes look at his friendship and collaboration with playwright and composer Jonathan Larson and the making of his 'Rent.' Seller writes about a torturous creative process in which Larson would take one step forward with the script over years only to take two backward. He also writes movingly about carrying on after Larson, who died from an aortic dissection the day before 'Rent's' first off-Broadway preview. ''Rent' changed my life forever, but, more important, 'Rent' changed musical theater forever. There is no 'In the Heights' without 'Rent,'' Seller says. 'I don't think there's a 'Next to Normal' without 'Rent.' I don't think there's a 'Dear Evan Hansen' without 'Rent.'' So enamored was Seller with 'Rent' that he initially ended his memoir there in the mid-'90s. It took some coaxing from Karp to get him to include stories about 'Avenue Q,' 'In the Heights' and 'Hamilton.' ''Hamilton' becomes a cultural phenomenon. It's the biggest hit of my career,' Seller says. 'It's one of the biggest hits in Broadway history. It's much bigger hit than 'Rent' was. But that doesn't change what 'Rent' did.' In a sort of theater flex, the memoir's audiobook has appearances by Annaleigh Ashford, Danny Burstein, Darren Criss, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Lindsay Mendez, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Andrew Rannells, Conrad Ricamora and Christopher Sieber. There's original music composed by Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winner Tom Kitt. The portrait of Broadway Seller offers when he first arrives is one far different from today, where the theaters are bursting with new plays and musicals and the season's box office easily blows past the $1 billion mark. Associated Press
Straits Times
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Straits Times
Power producer of musicals Rent and Hamilton is now telling his own story
Power producer of musicals Rent and Hamilton is now telling his own story NEW YORK – American Broadway producer Jeffrey Seller is, by any measure, enormously successful. He has produced – always in collaboration with others – about 10 shows that have collectively grossed US$4.74 billion (S$6.1 billion) , about one-third of which was profit for producers, investors and others. His first big hit was Rent (1996) and his most recent, Hamilton (2015). In between were Avenue Q (2003) and In The Heights (2008), but also plenty of others that did not flourish. For a long time, Seller, now 60 and the winner of four best-musical Tony Awards, had complicated feelings about how he fit in. He was adopted as an infant and grew up in a downwardly mobile and fractious family in a Detroit suburb. Theatre was where he found pleasure and meaning – a way out and a way up. Now, he has written a memoir, Theater Kid, published on May 6. It is a coming-of-age and rags-to-riches story that is unsparing in its description of his colourfully challenged and challenging father, unabashed in its description of his sexual awakening, and packed with behind-the-scenes detail, especially about the birth of Rent. In an interview at his office in the theatre district, Seller spoke about his life, his career and his book. These are edited excerpts from the interview. Producer Jeffrey Seller accepts the Tony Award for Hamilton, which won for Best Musical at the 70th Annual Tony Awards in New York in June 2016. PHOTO: SARA KRULWICH/NYTIMES You do not need the money or the attention. Why write a memoir? I wrote it to figure out why I am here. I wrote it to try to figure out how I fit in. And I guess I wrote it as an exercise in squashing all of my shame at being an adopted, gay, Jewish, poor kid and always feeling like an outsider. What did you learn about yourself? I think maybe we adoptees are never sure we are going to be okay. There is something so deep about what it means to not know where you come from, and to feel that you have been rejected by the very people who created you. That has affected every part of my life. And I think that through some process of psychoanalysis, therapy and this book, I maybe have come to see that I am okay, and I am going to be okay. You grew up in a Detroit suburb, among far more affluent families, in a neighbourhood nicknamed Cardboard Village. I was so ashamed of it that I would experience extreme anxiety if someone aske d w here I lived. Everybody else was doing a little better every year, including my cousins and my friends. I just remember being so angry, like why can't we get out of here? And we never did until I produced Rent. The story of Rent is so complicated because it is this enormous success wrapped up with the enormous tragedy of the death of Jonathan Larson, the show's composer and author, hours before the first off-Broadway preview. The cast of Rent during a rehearsal in New York in March 1996. PHOTO: SARA KRULWICH/NYTIMES For many years, I felt guilty. I reap these benefits from Rent, and Jonathan never got to see it. But with the passage of time, my feeling has changed because now I realise that Jonathan changed American musical theatre forever, and all contemporary American musical theatre now stands on his shoulders. Jonathan changed Broadway, and Broadway is better for it. Your other key creative relationship has been with Hamilton's creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda. In the book, you describe wondering if his gift was divine. Actor and composer Lin-Manuel Miranda on stage during a Hamilton performance at Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York City in February 2016 for the 58th Grammy Awards. PHOTO: AFP I remember two things the first time we did a reading of In The Heights. The first was the opening number. Every hair on my arm rose because the juxtaposition of this warm rap with this Broadway choral singing was completely new to my ears. And a half-hour later, when this older woma n s ings about her experience arriving on the shores from Cuba as a little girl and becoming a housekeeper on the Upper East Side, I thought it was one of the most beautiful arias I 'd heard in my life. But I also went, 'How does this young man understand the lifeblood of a 70something Cuban woman?' And that's when I thought for the first time, 'Is he channelling God?' You knew from the beginning that Hamilton would be amazing? I knew from the beginning that Hamilton was yet another step forward. I did not know from the beginning that it would become a phenomenon. That came with time, and with the audience. We talked a lot about your successes. You've also had failures. How do you handle that? Failure at making a new musical is crushing to me, and I spend hours, days, weeks, months, years after analysing what went wrong. What could I have done differently? I was developing The Last Ship (a musical with a score by English singer-musician Sting) at the same time that I was developing Hamilton, and I was a fervent believer in both. And when The Last Ship could not find a Broadway audience, it broke my heart. I love all of my shows, and all I can do is my best, and know that ultimately I do not control their destiny. What I must do as a producer, though, is accept their fate. And that means making the tough decision to close when you know it is not working. How are you feeling about the state of Broadway, artistically and financially? I'm going to equivocate. On a positive level, this year, we are going to do the highest attendance we have had since 2018 to 2019. We have seen the arrival of more than 10 new musicals. Both of those facts are cause for celebration. But it is getting harder and harder to make money, and I am concerned about if and when the investment money starts drying up. We have not had a megahit since Hamilton, and that is a problem. What is your advice for someone who wants to be a theatre producer? Find the next Jonathan Larson. Find the next Lin-Manuel Miranda. Everything else will fall in place if you get the team. Find the artists. NYTIMES Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Scoop
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
CAST ANNOUNCED For The New Zealand Premiere Of The West End Hit Peppa Pig's Fun Day Out LIVE!
Press Release – Blackout Music Management An all-Australian cast has been confirmed for Peppa Pig's Fun Day Out LIVE! with Zoe Crisp (Avenue Q, We Will Rock You) cast as Peppa Pig in the upcoming tour this June/July school holidays. The New Zealand premiere follows a smash hit season in London's West End, and is the first time Peppa Pig has graced New Zealand stages since 2018. The rest of the multi-talented, infectiously fun cast includes Romy Juliette Glass (Legally Blonde; Universal Studios Singapore roles) as Daisy; Maddison Price (Queensland Pop Orchestra, QPAC's The Wizard of Oz in Concert) as Suzy Sheep; Jake Waterworth (Tigger in Disney's Winnie the Pooh: The New Musical Adaptation) as Danny Dog. Joining them are Zuleika Khan (PAW Patrol Live, Offspring, Please Like Me) as Mummy Pig and Miss Rabbit; Jacqui Dwyer (Disney's Winnie the Pooh: The New Musical Adaptation) as George; with Daddy Pig played by Benjamin Richards (Heathers, Cry Baby). Titular star Zoe Crisp remembers growing up watching the Peppa Pig TV show with her twin brother: 'My brother and I related very much to Peppa and George's sibling relationship. I was a tiny bit bossy and he didn't have a lot of words,' says Zoe. A WAAPA graduate with a range of professional credits, Zoe recently toured with the National Theatre for Children, playing various characters with lots of silly voices (an evil cat, a dopey dog and plenty more!). In her free time, Zoe passionately supports causes to conserve our wildlife for future generations. 'Peppa Pig has captured hearts for so many years. The characters are so loved and iconic – I can't wait to bring the magic that is Peppa Pig to life on stage!' says Zoe. New Zealand audiences are proving just how much they really adore Peppa Pig and her oinktastic adventures, with the tour adding extra shows for Auckland since the first extension was announced in March before Peppa Pig and Friends hit Wellington, Christchurch and finally, Hamilton. Presented by TEG Life Like Touring and Fierylight, the stage show is based on the much-loved animated series. Peppa Pig is currently the #1 kids show on Nick Jr. and #2 on ABC Kids Australia, while the show's theme song received a whopping 165 million views in just six months of 2024. Packed with fun, games and special new puppets, this new live show will see small audience members squealing with delight. The best seats are selling faster than families can say 'Peppa Pig's Fun Day Out LIVE!', so audiences are advised to act fast and book tickets via Prepare to sing and dance with colourful scarecrows, feed the penguins, build big sandcastles, and even swim in the sea! Packed full of songs, dance and muddy puddles, Peppa Pig's Fun Day Out LIVE! guarantees giggles and snorts for all Peppa fans and is a perfect introduction to theatre. 'We are excited to be bringing Peppa Pig back to New Zealand in 2025 with TEG Life Like Touring,' says the show's director and writer, Richard Lewis from Fierylight. 'For Peppa Pig's Fun Day Out LIVE! we have created lots of new puppets our New Zealand audiences wouldn't have seen before. We bring together all sorts of different techniques to make the action and fun with Peppa, her family and friends come to life on stage. Also, the level of audience interaction has increased, with even more opportunities in this new show for the audience to sing along, dance and to get involved.' In 2025 Peppa Pig celebrates 21 years on our screens, having first aired in May 2004. She has also been performing live stage shows for 16 years, with Peppa Pig Live playing to sell-out crowds across New Zealand, Australia, USA, UK, Ireland and Asia, entertaining almost 3 million people. Join Peppa, along with her family and friends, in their latest new adventure as they go to the zoo and also the beach for a special party – it's going to be an exciting and fun packed day, promising interactive fun, songs and games for pre-schoolers. It's the perfect family treat. Facebook: @PeppaPigLiveAUNZ Instagram: @PeppaPigLiveAUNZ PEPPA PIG'S FUN DAY OUT LIVE! NEW ZEALAND TOUR 2025 Sky City, Auckland Sat 28, Sun 29 & Mon 30 June 2025 St. James Theatre, Wellington Sat 05 July 2025 Isaac Theatre Royal, Christchurch Tue 08 July 2025 Globox Arena, Hamilton Sat 12 July 2025 Content Sourced from Original url
