Buying Time at the Body Politic
Can Clever Dick rescue the Body Politic? In yet another effort to put its financial house in order, the Lincoln Avenue theater is turning over its space to a commercial producer who hopes he has a hit on his hands. On April 26, Rosenfeld Productions Inc. and the Body Politic will open Clever Dick, a mystery spoof by author-director Charles Marowitz; it’s described as “an Agatha Christie whodunit as written by Joe Orton.” Capitalized at around $150,000, the show is being called a coproduction, but in fact producer Malcolm Rosenfeld is raising all the money and will have the final say. “We needed a theater of this size and intimacy,” explains Rosenfeld, “and the Body Politic needed us at this moment. In essence we’re covering the theater’s administrative costs.” With shaky funding and an uneven production track record, the Body Politic has been in a state of flux for some time. The company’s managing director, Nan Charbonneau, is the second in two years. She has pushed the not-for-profit organization firmly toward the commercial sector to buy time to sort out its problems. Last summer (before Charbonneau’s arrival) the Body Politic stage was turned over for seven months to commercial producers Cullen, Henaghan & Platt to present Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune and The Good Times Are Killing Me. Though Body Politic received substantial rental fees from that deal, they evidently weren’t enough to solve all the company’s problems.
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Chicagoans on Broadway
Chicago will be well represented on Broadway this season. Steppenwolf’s opening will be followed on April 29 by A Change in the Heir, a fractured-fairy-tale musical with a score by Daniel Sticco and George M. Gorham. The show, which will receive a $900,000 production at New York’s Edison Theatre, was first presented by the New Tuners Theatre, a local not-for-profit company founded by Theatre Building operators Byron Schaffer Jr and Ruth Higgins. New Tuners was established to develop and produce new musicals, and A Change in the Heir is “the first musical we developed from scratch,” says Schaffer. He isn’t letting the glittery allure of Broadway go to his head. Two previous plays he was involved with moved on to New York and quickly disappeared. “I’m making no predictions about the fate of A Change in the Heir,” he says. “There are so many variables.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Kathy Richland.
