Michelle Williams has been asked to wash that man right out of her hair in a new big-screen version of the landmark musical South Pacific.
The actress, who appeared in the recent Disney hit Oz The Great And Powerful, has been offered the role of U.S. navy ensign Nellie Forbush, the hick from Little Rock nursing injured sailors and soldiers in the New Hebrides Islands during World War II.
Michelle, 32, sang during a scene in the 2011 movie My Week With Marilyn. We met several times during that year’s awards season and she told me she was attracted by the idea of doing a full-blown film musical, saying the singing and dancing would be ‘liberating’.
Nominated for an Oscar three times for performances in Brokeback Mountain, Blue Valentine and director Simon Curtis’s Marilyn movie, Michelle has the quality and skill to play Nellie with aplomb.
It’s early days. The planned film’s director Michael Mayer and team of producers have not yet entered official pre-production.
But there’s already a screenplay. It’s by the author Lynn Grossman. Her husband, Bob Balaban, is one of the film’s producers with Ileen Maisel, Lawrence Elman and Denis Wigman.
Grossman’s script is richly developed and not sterile like the one used in Joshua Logan’s 1959 picture, which starred Mitzi Gaynor as Nellie and Rossano Brazzi as Emile De Becque, the French-born plantation owner who doesn’t want to let Nellie go after meeting her one enchanted evening.
Grossman, I’m told, has gone back to the source material used by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II for their original stage show: Tales Of The South Pacific, the Pulitzer prize-winning novel by James Michener.
Michelle Williams' consistently good performances have earned her an offer to play the part of bold NellieFor instance, the stage and film let us assume that when Nellie sings I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair, she’s referring to De Becque.
More... BAZ BAMIGBOYE: True life 'Slumdog Millionaire' comes to the National TheatreNot so. Grossman has drawn on Michener’s prose and has set up the song in a more dramatic way.
Nellie has been out for a ride with an operations officer, Lieutenant Bill Harbinson, an arrogant All-American guy — who turns out to have a wife.
That’s the man Nellie wants to shampoo out of her hair.
Michelle's role in Brokeback Mountain earned her an Oscar nomination - and producers believe she could pull off the role of Nellie with aplombOther numbers, including There Is Nothing Like A Dame, Some Enchanted Evening and Bali Hai, are set up in a similar dramatic way, emerging out of the narrative organically.
I’ve heard a rumour that the producers would like Les Miserables star Hugh Jackman to play De Becque, but he’s known to have his eye on another character from the Rodgers and Hammerstein catalogue: Carousel’s Billy Bigelow, though I don’t believe a new screen version of that will happen in the near future.
There’s also chatter about trying to cast someone like Justin Timberlake to play Lieutenant Cable, the young officer who becomes infatuated with Bloody Mary’s under-age daughter, Liat.
It’s certainly a mammoth undertaking, but if the producers can assemble a first-rate cast and an A-list crew, then I’ll be on the first navy boat to see this baby.
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Robert Sherman never has to wander far to be reminded of his late father.His dad, Robert B. Sherman, co-wrote (with his brother Richard) the songs for Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Now Robert Jr has written his own musical called Bumblescratch, featuring a rat named Melbourne. The story is set during the Plague and Great Fire of London.Sherman started writing it before his father passed away last winter. ‘He listened to one song and shouted: “That’s your hit!” I’m pleased he at least heard some of it,’ he says. I’ve heard a few songs and they’re fun and inventive.
Robert is holding a workshop for Bumblescratch today and hopes to be able to mount a production in London.‘I always wanted to write a sung-through musical that starts with the plague and ends with the fire; it’s an era full of rich drama,’ he adds.
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Watch out for...Kerry Ellis, the singer with such an expressive vocal range, who is in concert at the London Palladium on Sunday. Ms Ellis followed Idina Menzel as Elphaba in the musical Wicked at the Apollo, and she’ll be joined at the Palladium by three of her own successors: Louise Dearman, Alexia Khadime and Rachel Tucker. They’ll perform the number Defying Gravity in a new arrangement orchestrated by Craig Adams. Other guests stopping by include guitar virtuoso Brian May and singer Rory Taylor. Ticketmaster and See Tickets are handling seats.
David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s fabulous disco-retta Here Lies Love, which is the best new show in New York.It was Byrne’s concept, and he explores Imelda Marcos’s life from regional beauty queen to Iron Butterfly, through her marriage to Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos. (It sounds a bit Evita-ish, but it’s not.)
Stealing the limelight: Ruthie Ann Miles is remarkable in Here Lies Love, New York's best new showRuthie Ann Miles is outstanding as Imelda. We all know about her famous collection of shoes, but they’re not even mentioned in Alex Timbers’s sublime production.We see Marcos’s rise and his conflicts with political opponent Benigno Aquino. It’s all done to a terrific disco beat as we, the standing audience (the less mobile can sit upstairs, but it’s fun to strike a pose or two on the floor), move around the auditorium as the action switches around the room. This is cutting-edge theatre at its best. In fact, I’m still humming the score!Several London producers have been to seen it, though I think the best home will probably end up being the National’s Cottesloe auditorium.
Aiden Gillen, who will play the title character of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last, unfinished, novel The Last Tycoon in a 90-minute BBC Radio 4 drama on May 18, adapted and directed by Bill Bryden. Fitzgerald’s novel, written 16 years after The Great Gatsby, was influenced by his brief stint working in Los Angeles. The main protagonist Munro Stahr is loosely based on workaholic creative movie mogul Irving Thalberg, who ruled Hollywood in the Thirties. Bryden and his producer Laurence Bowen have gathered a fine ensemble around Gillen, including Charlotte Emmerson, Jack Shepherd and Hilary Connell.And while we’re on the subject of Fitzgerald, do check out Baz Luhrmann’s new version of The Great Gatsby. It’s good, though it will prove divisive, especially at the Cannes Film Festival, where I’m sure there’ll be catcalls amid the applause.Daniel Evans, Sheffield Theatre’s award-winning artistic director, who will direct a new production of Lionel Bart’s Oliver! at the Crucible Theatre from November 29 until January 25. Casting started this week, but Evans has already assembled a top-flight creative team, including Peter McKintosh as production designer and lighting maestro Howard Harrison.
