Broadway hits filled with music in fall schedule

NEW YORK — The sound of Broadway this fall will include Stephen Sondheim, Bob Dylan and Marvin Hamlisch, not to mention Tom Stoppard, George Bernard Shaw, Victor Hugo, P.L. Travers and Dr. Seuss.

Musicals, as usual, dominate, and, before New Year's Day, nine will arrive in New York.

Let's start with these shows — in the order of their openings.

BIG REVIVAL — "A Chorus Line" could be the season's most poignant production — a reminder of what the American musical theater lost when its creator, director-choreographer Michael Bennett, died of AIDS in 1987. Bennett's show about a group of dancers auditioning for a Broadway musical ran from 1975 into 1990 — then the longest running musical in Broadway history.

Now "A Chorus Line," which has a score by Marvin Hamlisch and Ed Kleban, has been re-created by several of Bennett's original collaborators including Bob Avian, who co-choreographed the show with Bennett, and Baayork Lee who was in the indelible first cast.

The revival, headed by Charlotte d'Amboise and Michael Berresse, opened Oct. 5 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre.

NEW VENTURE — Can director-choreographer Twyla Tharp do with Bob Dylan what she accomplished several seasons back with Billy Joel and "Movin' Out" — create a long-running musical success? Her new theatrical venture is called "The Times They Are A-Changin'," a coming-of-age story set in a circus, and using such Dylan standards as "Blowin' in the Wind," "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Lay Lady Lay, "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" and, of course, the show's title song.

Michael Arden plays the young man, Thom Sesma his tyrannical father and Caren Lyn Manuel a beautiful circus performer. Sounds like a love triangle. You can find out Oct. 26 at Brooks Atkinson Theatre.

MOVING TO BROADWAY — Christine Ebersole earned cheers for her performance as Little Edie Beale in "Grey Gardens," when the musical was done off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons last season. Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson, as Edie's equally eccentric and reclusive mother, head the Broadway production that opens Nov. 2 at the Walter Kerr Theatre.

Based on the Maysles brothers' film documentary about relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, "Grey Gardens" has a book by Doug Wright, author of "I Am My Own Wife," and music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie. For those who can't wait to hear the score, a cast recording has just been released by PS Classics.