The persistent chatter that Broadway is all about revivals has by now fallen away. Last season there were only five as opposed to ten original musicals and there is a good reason for that. The rate of return on revivals, whose royalty pool is compromised by the inclusion of several of the original creative team, is less lucrative. This factor is balanced by the value of a proven brand name. And the three revivals of the fall season — “Fiddler on the Roof,” “The Color Purple,” “Dames At Sea” — each have a variable worth when it comes to that dividend.The most celebrated, of course, is “Fiddler,” the 1964 Jerry Bock-Sheldon Harnick classic, which ran for eight years on Broadway and has been revived three times. The last revival in 2004, directed by David Leveaux and starring Alfred Molina, was deemed something of a disappointment even though it ran for two years. Directing this time around will be Bartlett Sher, whose recent “King and I” was a smash hit. Danny Burstein, a five-time Tony nominee, is slated to play the iconic role of Tevye, the poor Jewish milkman with three daughters of marriageable age. Paternal love is tested time and again as the young women push against the early 20th Century cultural mores of their Russian village. (Novelist Philip Roth famously called the musical “shtetl kitsch.”) Sher and Burstein are likely to defuse that charge with a show that cuts through the treacle with taste and intelligence. Part of the lore surrounding the musical is that it almost closed before ever reaching Broadway during its troubled out-of-town tryout. When director Jerome Robbins asked the creators, “What is the show about?” they began to tell him the plot. “No, no,” said Robbins. “Don’t tell me the plot. Tell me what its about.” The creators thought for a moment and one piped up, “Well, I guess it’s about tradition.” Said Robbins, “That’s your opening number.” The rest is history. Previews begin at the Broadway Theatre on November 20 prior to a December 20 bow.“The Color Purple” has the Pope behind it. Well, almost. The musical has been the passion project of Oprah Winfrey — aka “Pope-rah” — since it originally bowed in 2005 on Broadway, where it ran for three years and won a Tony Award for LaChanze in the central role of Celie. The epic saga of an unlettered and much-abused young woman growing up in Depression-era rural Georgia has captivated the public since novelist Alice Walker created it in epistolary form in 1982. Three years later, Steven Spielberg made it into a lavish Oscar-nominated film starring Whoopi Goldberg as Celie and Winfrey as her best friend Sofia. Despite the long run on Broadway, the show barely eked out a profit because its break-even margin was so high. In 2013, director John Doyle, known for his minimalist approach, mounted a scaled-down version of “The Color Purple” at London’s intimate Chocolate Menier Factory. Winfrey and producer Scott Sanders saw it there and this revival was born, with Cynthia Erivo as Celie, Danielle Brooks as Sofia, and Jennifer Hudson as Shug Avery, a glamorous nightclub singer. Erivo, the 28-year-old daughter of Nigerian-émigré parents, is said to be the one to watch in this show, having earned raves from the London critics. “The Color Purple” begins previews at the Bernard Jacobs Theatre on November 9 prior to a December 10 opening night.“Dames at Sea” is something of an outlier, a throwback to the silly Busby Berkeley musicals of the 1930s but with a cast of six and two pianos instead of the usual multitudes. That has always been among the show’s charms since it emerged in 1966 on the tiny stage of the Café Cinno, one of the temples of off-off-Broadway at the time. Since then the musical has been a popular item in high school and college repertoire. It is also best known as having marked the professional debut of Bernadette Peters, who starred in the show once it transferred in 1968 from the Café Cinno to a long off-Broadway run. Eloise Kropp will now play Ruby, who arrives in New York, “….with nothing but tap shoes in her suitcase and a prayer in her heart.” There’s little suspense about how that will turn out — love and stardom beckon — but director-choreographer Randy Skinner, a three-time Tony nominee, is sure to put the cast, including Lesli Margherita, Mara Davi, and John Bolton, through some tap-happy steps. Skinner, by the way, assisted Gower Champion on “42nd Street” before he staged “No, No, Nanette” for the Encore series, and both of these shows were of a piece with “Dames at Sea.”The musical begins previews at the Helen Hayes on September 24 prior to opening on October 22.
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