Word: papp
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Linda, ever so slightly bored out of her mind, has gone stale in London toward the end of filming her first and maybe her last movie, Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance. She knows it and she is sorry, because she loves Pirates, and Papp, and Director Wilfred Leach, and Cast Members Rex Smith (the seraphically stupid hero Frederic), Kevin Kline (the pirate king), George Rose (the major general), Angela Lansbury (the nursemaid Ruth) and Tony Azito (the double-jointed police sergeant...
Except for Lansbury, who joined the company for the movie, they have all been together since Papp had the idea a couple of years ago that Pirates might make a few weeks of fun in the summer of 1980 for Central Park's outdoor theater. Their mutual loyalty is so strong that the five principals-Azito's role is smaller-agreed to an almost unheard-of pay scheme by which each of them took an equal and relatively small salary so that Papp could afford to make the film (hence Ronstadt's remark about acting without being...
...touch of poetry in it?"). Director Leach sees the scene as a tableau, a Victorian postcard. He has shot it before, but the results seemed to him "like a bunch of people standing in a field." Shooting it again is costing money, and Universal Pictures has begun prodding Papp about costs; the production, which is scheduled for release later this year, was budgeted at $9 million and now seems likely to come in at about $10 million. But Papp and Leach, neither of whom has made a film before, are confident that they like what they have done, and they...
...possible to present Gilbert and Sullivan in a way that is bright, fresh and respectful of tradition. That much has been proved by Producer Joseph Papp and Director Wilfred Leach of the New York Shakespeare Festival. Their Pirates of Penzance, with Pop Singers Linda Ronstadt and Rex Smith, was a smash hit in Central Park and on Broadway. The Broadway production is still running, and the road company is drawing cheers in Chicago. Ronstadt and the rest are filming Pirates in London, and a British stage cast will open the Papp production at the Drury Lane Theater there...
...appears satisfied to sample the easy pleasures of a revue, a revival, another ho-hummable show. "If you want to know why musicals do so well so long," says Neil Simon, "just walk down Fifth Avenue. All you hear are foreign languages. Musicals they can understand." Adds Joseph Papp, who as head of New York's Public Theater acts as the Shubert of the theatrical subculture: "Broadway is one big ice-cream factory...