Gossip

Broadway’s Movin’ Out & Over to London???

Producers are hoping to bring the Tony Award-winning hit Movin’ Out to the West End. Described as a “Broadway ballet”, the piece follows a group of 1960s high school friends from Long Island, New York, as they dance their way through the Vietnam war, lost lives, lost loves and lost dreams to a score of Billy Joel pop hits. The production was nominated for ten 2003 Tonys and won two, for Joel’s orchestrations and Twyla Tharp‘s choreography. It’s still going strong at New York’s Richard Rodgers Theater, but will it appeal to London audiences? Movin’ Out has been hailed by Whatsonstage.com’s own Mark Shenton, on seeing it Stateside, declared it the most “exciting” show he’s seen in years and one which “follows Contact in creating something genuinely original out of the possibilities of narrative dance” (See New York Nights, 9 Dec 2002 & 24 Feb 2003). Which doesn’t necessarily bode well. Despite ecstatic critical acclaim over here and, again, multiple Tonys over there, the West End transfer of Contact, choreographed and directed by Susan Stroman, closed this past April after just seven months (See News, 23 Apr 2003). Let’s hope that, if Movin’ Out does indeed move in, it doesn’t move out again quite so hastily.