A delay for 'Nice Work' with Harry Connick Jr.
"Nice Work If You Can Get It," the Harry Connick Jr., musical slated for a Boston run on the way to Broadway, has been pulled from the 2008 schedule.
Broadway Across America-Boston president Drew Murphy sent a letter this week telling subscribers that the show, scheduled to open in December, has been "officially postponed" with no new date yet scheduled. Drawing from the George Gershwin songbook, the musical was set to reunite Connick with director-choreographer Kathleen Marshall, who directed him in a much-praised 2006 revival of "The Pajama Game" in New York.
The postponement came after Marshall dropped out of the project. Murphy, who said the organization would be in touch with subscribers when new Boston dates are scheduled, said other directors had expressed interest in overseeing the show. "It just takes time to work out the details," he said.
A director's duo
At first glance, "QED: An Evening with Richard Feynman" and "Coming Up for Air - An AutoJAZZography" don't appear to have much in common. "QED" is about the famous physicist, while "Coming Up for Air" focuses on Boston-based saxophonist Stan Strickland. But Jon Lipsky, who is directing both plays to inaugurate the new Central Square Theater in Cambridge this weekend, says he's been struck by the similarities between the two.
"Although one focuses on a scientist and the other on an artist, both capture a particular moment when the men confront their mortality," says Lipsky, an actor, playwright, and director who won an Elliot Norton Award last year for his direction of "Coming Up for Air" and "King of the Jews." "They each take different approaches to the same question, but they both have the same passionate imperative for truth and beauty."
Peter Parnell's "QED," a co-production of the Catalyst Collaborative @ MIT and the Underground Railway Theater, captures the larger-than-life personality of Feynman, who was as interested in performing in an amateur production of "South Pacific" and in the sound of Tuvan throat singers as he was in theoretical physics. The QED of the title refers to quantum electrodynamics, for which Feynman won the Nobel Prize, but Lipsky says that while the play offers a window into science, it's more about the way the man thinks.
"Feynman takes a clear, rational approach to every problem, whether it's math or music or what happens to your mind when you fall asleep," Lipsky says. "When I first sat down with Stan to talk about the possibility of a play, I found the same focus and the same eagerness to explore and experiment."
The one-man show "Coming Up for Air," which Lipsky wrote and Strickland first performed in 2006, celebrates the musician's love of improvisation while looking at some of the highlights of his life, including his politics, his spiritual quest, and his near-drowning experience. "When he was going under," Lipsky says, "Stan says he thought he should look for the light, until another part of him said, 'How embarrassing to die without [recording] a good CD,' and he headed for the surface. That fearless self-awareness is inherent in both of these men."
Lipsky has been the playwright in residence at the Museum of Science and is a founding member of the Catalyst Collaborative @ MIT, which explores the connections between science and theater. "People often think of science as dry and technical," he says, "but theater offers the opportunity to demonstrate how passionate scientists are about their search for truth."
Lipsky directed a production of "QED" that ran at the Cambridge Science Festival this past spring and at the Vineyard Playhouse in 2004. Actor Keith Jochim, a longtime member of Trinity Repertory Company who starred in "Nixon's Nixon" at the Huntington Theatre in 2002, will reprise the role of Feynman he played at the Vineyard Playhouse.
Both "QED" and "Coming Up for Air" have strong dramatic arcs, Lipsky says. "I think both plays feel like character sketches, but they draw the audience inside the skin of this scientist and this musician. These men are unwilling to accept what everybody else does as a path they can follow, and they have to find their own beauty. Ultimately, they are about the human spirit, and you don't need to know anything about science or music to identify with that."
"QED" through Aug. 3, "Coming Up for Air" through Aug. 9 at the Central Square Theater, Cambridge. Tickets: $25. 866-811-4111, centralsquaretheater.org.
Scott Heller of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
