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Where’s Jean Valjean when you need him? Only a handful of the shows look at all promising, and none of them seems like the kind of blockbuster that can pull patrons back into the Loop. Saturday Night Fever was roundly panned by New York critics, and the musical Mamma Mia! can’t rely upon the Abba fanatics that made it a hit in London. Tallulah, a one-woman show featuring Kathleen Turner as actress Tallulah Bankhead, might sustain its two-week engagement at the Shubert. But the lineup is heavy with revivals, including Cabaret, Annie Get Your Gun, Fiddler on the Roof, and a staging of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s TV musical Cinderella. From out of left field come Blast–sort of a Stomp! for marching bands–and Sundance Radio Theater, a play that adapts radio dramatizations of Hollywood films of the 1930s and ’40s. The Scarlet Pimpernel, which opens August 9 at the Shubert, was actually announced last year as part of the 1999-2000 season, and the fall engagement by Hubbard Street Dance Chicago is already a fixture on the Loop’s calendar. Nederlander and SFX are offering several different packages to subscribers, and they may need plenty of them to compensate for poor single-ticket sales.
Meanwhile the new partnership between Nederlander and SFX has precipitated a restructuring of operations at the three theaters, all of which will be managed by Nederlander with a single administrative staff. Jill Hurwitz has left the Shubert after a long tenure as director of marketing, and sources say that Eileen LaCario, in charge of group sales at the Oriental and Palace, has been promoted to vice president in charge of marketing for all three venues. Margie Korshak Inc. has been retained to handle public relations and advertising for the new triumvirate. Randall Green has departed the Palace after little more than a year as general manager. According to one Shubert insider, a new organizational chart is still being drawn up.
