Garth Drabinsky, one of Broadway’s most flamboyant — some would say notorious — producers of the 1990s, is staging a comeback with “Sousatzka,” a new Broadway-bound musical now gearing up for its premiere engagement at Toronto’s Elgin Theatre from February 25 thorugh April 9.At a recent press conference, Drabinsky shied away from discussing his 2009 conviction for fraud and forgery in relation to his defunct company Livent — which produced some of the most critically-acclaimed and award-winning musicals of the decade, including “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” “Showboat,” “Candide,” and “Ragtime” before it collapsed in a morass of cooked books. He chose instead to extol the formidable virtues of his new musical, “Sousatzka,” which comes with a creative team boasting several Tony winners and nominees, including director Adrian Noble, choreographer Graciela Daniele, librettist Craig Lucas, and the veteran songwriting team of Richard Maltby, Jr., and David Shire.As with so many of Drabinsky’s projects, the source material is of social and political relevance, dealing as it does with the relationship between a Polish piano teacher and Holocaust survivor, the eponymous Madame Sousatzka, and her prodigy student Themba, an émigré from apartheid South Africa. The producer emphasized that the musical was based on Bernice Rubens’s 1962 novel rather than John Schlesinger’s 1988 film, starring Shirley MacLaine, which received positive notices (it has a 75% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) but flopped at the box-office.With typical Drabinsky flair, the production, set in Thatcher-era England, strides across continents, from the exuberant township of Soweto to London’s Royal Festival Hall, and features a cast of 47, including Tony winners Victoria Clark (“Light in the Piazza”) and Judy Kaye (“Nice Work If You Can Get It”) and Tony nominee Montego Glover (“Memphis”). Newcomer Jordan Barrow will play the role of the aspiring pianist who finds himself pinioned between his exacting mentor and his equally forthright mother.There is a lot riding on the musical not only for Drabinsky but also for Maltby and Shire. The pair has enjoyed critical acclaim for the off-Broadway shows “Starting Here, Starting Now” and “Closer Than Ever,” but Broadway success has so far eluded them, with the musical version of the movie “Big” being their biggest disappointment. While Maltby has scored individually with “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” “Miss Saigon,” and “Fosse,” this will be Shire’s third attempt at the brass ring. On the plus side, they write some of the most beautiful, melodic and unabashedly romantic scores in theater, and judging by what was unveiled at the press event, “Sousatzka” may be their most accomplished work yet.After serving 17 months in prison, Drabinsky has found an epic vehicle for his return. “Sousatzka” has been five years in the making, with two readings and a fully-staged workshop this past summer. Its producer is known as the “hands-and-feet-on” type, a perfectionist who rides his creative team hard. That can cut both ways.A case in point is Drabinsky’s production of “Ragtime,” based on the E.L. Doctorow novel. When it debuted in Toronto in December of 1996, there was a raw, exciting energy to its sweep and grandeur, but as Drabinsky and his crack creative team continued to work the show for more than year, leading up to an opening on Broadway in January of 1998, it somehow lost its raucous and untamed brilliance. Some visual artists refer to this as “losing the painting” — working on something so long that unless a spouse or assistant yanks it off the easel its initial spark is dampened if not extinguished.Whether that will happen this time around to Drabinsky — a man as driven by perfectionism as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s anti-hero in “The Birthmark,” or as Sousatzka herself — remains to be seen. But one assumes he feels he has a lot to prove at this point in his storied career.
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