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For ‘Dreamgirls,’ Pacific Overtures
SEOUL,
South Korea — Several months ago, when John F. Breglio told fellow New
York producers that he was not only remaking “Dreamgirls,” the 1981
Broadway hit musical based loosely on the career of the Supremes, but that he was also going to South Korea to do it, they were puzzled, to say the least.
“Then they really laugh,” he said, when he told them “that it’s in Korean with Korean actors.”
Mr.
Breglio, the executor of the estate of Michael Bennett (who directed
and choreographed “Dreamgirls” and “A Chorus Line,” among others),
calls his venture an experiment. His $6.7 million “Dreamgirls” opened
to a packed theater here on Feb. 27 and has drawn good reviews.
What
Mr. Breglio’s company, Vienna Waits Productions, is doing with its
South Korean partner, Shin Chun Soo, the president of the OD Musical
Company in Seoul, is unusual for American theater producers, some of
whom said they were skeptical that elements of a Korean production
would transfer smoothly to an American stage. Nevertheless, Mr. Breglio
plans to open the show, with a new American cast, at the Apollo Theater in Harlem in November.
Mr.
Shin, representative of South Korea’s new, voracious appetite for
musical theater, bankrolled the production: royalties for American
artists, a local cast, costumes and a $1.5 million set.
The
financial incentives for Mr. Breglio to go to South Korea were
significant, coming as many Broadway producers are struggling to cover
production costs. The fact that the set was made and financed here, and
will be transferred to the United States for the run there, is a big
savings for the American producers.
The South Korean side is also
covering the lion’s share of the entire tryout costs: wages and
expenses for the 20-member American creative staff during its stay here
(which ran from a month to 10 weeks), the Americans’ lodgings and
meals, the costs of choreography and stage and costume designs (though
the costumes will be remade for American actresses). By the time
“Dreamgirls” reaches the Apollo, Mr. Breglio said, he will need to have
raised only around $5 million, half of what it usually costs to put on
a show in the United States. “This model is more important than ever
because there is a real threat right now in the United States to
getting these shows done,” he said in an interview here. “Even without
the crisis, Broadway has gone very expensive.”
Economics are not
the only reason for the strategy. In an era when “the Internet and
YouTube does not allow you a great deal of time to develop and make
mistakes,” Robert Longbottom, the director of the production, said,
“coming to Korea was about as far out of town as you could get.”
If
this works, other Broadway producers will follow suit, said Jack M.
Dalgleish, a New York producer who was not part of the “Dreamgirls”
crew but helped to facilitate the partnership of Mr. Breglio and Mr.
Shin.
“We are looking for new ways to develop musicals,” he said.
Some
longtime Broadway producers remain skeptical of the artistic value of
transferring “Dreamgirls” — or any other production, for that matter —
from South Korea to the United States, when the cast and language in
Seoul will be different.
The main purpose of out-of-town tryouts
is to have time to work with a cast and a creative team to perfect a
show, and to fix weak parts of a production, based on audience
response. Given that “Dreamgirls” will have an American makeover in the
United States, the South Korean production seems less about rethinking
the out-of-town tryout than about tapping a new market of investors.
“I
don’t think South Korea represents a trend for Broadway,” said Emanuel
Azenberg, a Broadway producer. “I think it represents a country where
‘Dreamgirls’ is happening. We went through this with Japan before —
American shows had to go to Japan at some point. But I don’t know what
you really gain aesthetically by trying out one version of a show in a
foreign country first.”
For South Koreans, though, the
arrangement is a matter of pleasure and cultural explorations. Many
here are not especially familiar with African-American heritage. But
the universal themes of the story — three young women struggling to
escape men’s exploitation and make it on their own in show business,
the power of sisterhood and redemption — made the 2006 Hollywood movie
adaptation hugely successful in South Korea, a country with a new
generation of assertive women moving from the margins of society to the
center.
South Korea is a natural place for American producers to
look: the country has 180 musicals already running or scheduled to go
onstage in the coming weeks. Ticket sales for musicals grew 25 percent
last year, according to Interpark, the country’s largest online ticket
seller. “Dreamgirls” was leading the musical rankings this week.
Among
the cultural differences the producers had to overcome were the
hesitancy and even embarrassment that Korean actresses feel about
expressing strong emotions.
“The women are not as confrontational
as they are in the United States,” Mr. Longbottom said. “Pointing your
finger at someone’s face and chasing them around the stage and yelling
at them was something that didn’t come naturally to this group of
people.”
Kim So Hyang, who played Lorrell Robinson, one of the
three young singers, said she initially felt “resistant” to the
American director’s demand for “what we Koreans considered overdoing it
and exaggerated acting.”
Many Korean actresses hope to perform on
Broadway one day. Like the African-American women of “Dreamgirls,” who
rose from the fringe of show business to stardom, Korean musical
performers have only recently begun enjoying a national following after
years of being dismissed as crude imitators of a foreign art form.
Hong
Ji Min, who plays Effie White, the show’s full-figured, gospel-voiced
lead singer, said she struggled to render the deep vocal flavor of the
character.
But working with the composer, Henry Krieger, whom the actresses called Grandpa, was their own dream come true.
“We
cry after each show,” Ms. Hong said. “This has a story that feels so
close to our heart. It’s about the show business. It’s about having a
dream.”