City warms to the sound of music-als

Hollywood to Broadway, an original musical featuring artists and directors from Broadway, has begun its five-month run at the Shanghai Center Theater and is proving a hit thanks in no small part to its Chinese producers.

Producer Paulina Lu (Zhu Lei) and her husband Peterson Lu, a real estate developer, invested 20 million yuan ($2.9 million) in the project and hired all of the actors from Broadway to give it every chance of success.

As the title implies, the show traces the development of musicals in American pop culture from the early years of Hollywood movies to the days of live Broadway shows. Telling the story of a young woman who dreams of one day becoming a Hollywood star, it incorporates songs from more than 40 previous musicals, movies and golden hits from great entertainers like Elvis Presley.

Audiences are taken on a journey through the history and development of the musical in 90 minutes, said Lu, a former dancer and choreographer who later worked as a performing agent. She said she hopes her first original musical production will attract Chinese audiences, though it is staged in English by American actors.

"Shanghai audiences are quite familiar with Broadway musicals and they have enjoyed them very much over the past few years," she said. "I thought it was time for them to experience something new, aside from the plays they were already very familiar with."

As she wanted to produce an authentic Broadway musical but one that the Chinese people would easily understand, she made the storyline easy to follow and kept the dialogue as short as possible.

"We borrowed songs from familiar musicals and movies," she said. "Some are very familiar to them already."

She said her ultimate dream was to create a Chinese musical.

"So far some people have tried to do this without achieving much success," Lu said.

She decided to compose the entire crew of talented actors from Broadway, as well as hiring director Jenn Rapp (Finding Nemo: The Musical) and music director Randy Glass (Smokey Joe's Caf, Chicago).

The first round of performances will last for five months at the Shanghai Center Theater.

"I would consider us quite successful if I could recover 60-70 percent of the total investment," Lu said. "Then we'd enter the second phase and start to work on a revised edition."

Although China's music and theatrical academies pump out 20-30 graduates who major in musicals each year, few are able to find performing jobs.

Lu said she hopes to redress this imbalance by hiring them for the second edition of her production.

"In the end maybe the story will change to one concerning a Chinese girl's dream about making her way from Shanghai to Broadway, instead of what we have now, with Hollywood as the starting point," she said. "Then we could turn it into a real Chinese production."

Her ultimate ambition is to create a masterpiece that can later be staged back on Broadway.

Until Jan 31Shanghai Center Theater 1376 Nanjing Road W.

南京西路1376号，上海商城剧院

Tel: 962-388

Tickets: 180-1,080 yuan

(China Daily 10/24/2009 page14)