Word: stroman
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...awful Nazi musical so they can abscond with the funds when the thing flops. Add the best-possible modern substitutes for stars Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder--Nathan Lane as producer Max Bialystock and Matthew Broderick as nebbishy Leo Bloom--and Broadway's hottest musical director, Susan Stroman (Contact, The Music Man). Support them with a gaggle of Broadway backers so eager that one producer had to hold a lottery to decide which of his investors got the privilege of putting money into the show. "I told them we're all fools," Brooks recounts. "We should have a secret meeting...
Smart guys; they've seen the show. The Producers is, first of all, one of the best translations of a beloved movie to the stage ever. Most of Brooks' famous lines and bits are here, including the memorable Springtime for Hitler production number, staged by Stroman with goose-stepping pizazz. The new songs--Brooks wrote the music and the lyrics--are a sprightly retro pastiche, ranging from mock Fiddler on the Roof, to mock Astaire and Rogers, to mock Bavarian beer hall. There's a chorus line of old ladies with walkers, a flock of pigeons doing the Nazi salute...
Brooks' search for a director landed him at the doorstep of Mike Ockrent (Crazy for You) and his wife, choreographer Stroman. "I opened the front door," Stroman recalls, "and he launched into That Face, one of his songs from the show. He danced down the hallway and wound up on top of the sofa. Then he said, 'I'm Mel Brooks.'" The performance won them over, but not long afterward Ockrent became ill with leukemia (he died in December 1999). After a few months' hiatus, Stroman resumed working on her own with Brooks. "I needed someone to make me smile...
Most video choreography isn't pushing the frontiers of dance. Watch a day of MTV, and you won't see much that compares favorably with the abstract poetics of Merce Cunningham or the rich ethnic synthesis of Garth Fagan. Choreographer Susan Stroman, who won a Tony for her work on the musical Contact, says the dancing she has seen in teen-pop videos lacks the depth of stage work. "In theater, a dance piece has a beginning, middle and end, like someone telling a story with dialogue," says Stroman. "In music videos, it's about the energy and the sound...