A stage musical based on the 1957 novel Doctor Zhivago, which became a celebrated David Lean film in 1965 starring Omar Sharif, is headed to Broadway next year, Broadwayworld.com reports. The show will likely move into the Broadway Theatre after Cinderella closes January 3, though no details have been confirmed.
Doctor Zhivago premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in 2006 and ran at Sydney's Lyric Theatre in 2011. The music is by Lucy Simon (The Secret Garden), with lyrics by Michael Korie (Grey Gardens) and Amy Powers (Sunset Boulevard) and a book by Michael Weller (Spoils of War, the movie "Hair"). Changes to the show are reportedly in the works for the Broadway run.
In his Sydney Morning Herald review of the 2011 production starring Anthony Warlow and Lucy Maunder, Jason Blake wrote that "the dramatic heft and technical fluency of this quasi-operatic filleting of Boris Pasternak's novel makes for engrossing entertainment," adding that "Dr Zhivago deserves a wide audience. It only remains to be seen if there's a big enough one out there with an appetite for this kind of serious-minded show."
It makes this writer wonder whether the revisions for Broadway will aim to excise some of that serious-mindedness. This is, after all, 21st century Broadway.
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