“Summer: The Donna Summer Musical,” which premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in California last month, is boogieing to Broadway this spring.
The late disco queen Donna Summer “had the kind of voice that comes along perhaps once in a quarter-century,” the show’s director, Des McAnuff, told Broadway.com in a statement Tuesday. “Her collaboration with [producer] Giorgio Moroder in the studio had an influence on recorded music that will last for many years to come. She not only had an effect on pop culture but she changed the roles of women in the industry. Her story is as impactful today as it was when she was living it.” The musical, featuring Summer at three points in her life, told from the night of her final concert, is set to begin previews March 28 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, with opening night April 23. The book is by McAnuff — a multiple Tony Award-winning producer and two-time Tony-winning director — Robert Cary and Colman Domingo, who plays Victor Strand on AMC’s “Fear the Walking Dead,” with songs by Summer and collaborators Moroder and Paul Jabara. In the La Jolla production, 2006 Best Actress in a Musical Tony Award-winner LaChanze (“The Color Purple”) plays Diva Donna, with Ariana DeBose (“A Bronx Tale: The Musical”) as Disco Donna and Storm Lever as Duckling Donna. No casting was announced for the Broadway show. Summer, who died in 2012, was known for such hits as “Love to Love You Baby,” “Hot Stuff” and “Bad Girls.”
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The Donna Summer Project will focus on different phases of the disco artist's career.
There's a Donna Summer musical in the works. The news comes by way of the New York Post, which reported earlier this week on a workshop (the theatre term for a low-key rehearsal) staged by Tony Award-winning director Des McAnuff (who was behind plays like Jersey Boys and The Who's Tommy). The workshop featured three different actors portraying Summer at different points in her life, as well as gender-fluid roles, with women playing roles like Helmuth Sommer, the disco singer's first husband and the man she took her surname from. The Donna Summer Project workshop starred Ariana DeBose, who also appeared in the Broadway blockbuster Hamilton, and it used classic Donna Summer songs like "Love To Love You Baby," "Bad Girls," "MacArthur Park" and "On The Radio." (Bron/ www.residentadvisor.net) CD NEWS / We’re excited to announce that on 20th May 2016, Donna’s final studio album, ‘CRAYONS’, is to be reissued by Driven By The Music/Crimson, as an expanded and overhauled format. The release date coincides with the eighth anniversary of the album’s original release but sadly also coincides with the week that marks four years since her untimely passing. This re-mastered 3CD re-issue, is packaged in a sumptuous case-bound book, as per the 2014 studio album reissues and features the original UK-configured studio album, which includes the non-US album track ‘It’s Only Love’, as well as two additional CDs with 20 mixes from the three singles released from the album. ‘CRAYONS’ bore all the hallmarks of another classic Donna Summer album...and it was. It spawned three Billboard Dance Chart #1 Singles in ‘I’m A Fire’, ‘Stamp Your Feet’ and ‘Fame (The Game)’.‘CRAYONS’ featured several producers, including Greg Kurstin, J.R. Rotem and Sebastian Arocha Morton, as well as reuniting her with a ‘Bogart’, in the shape of Evan “Kidd” Bogart, son of the late Neil Bogart, founder of Casablanca Records. Newly authored liner notes appear by noted US writer Christian John Wikane, featuring new interviews with Evan Bogart and Sebastian Arocha Morton, as well as Christian’s archive interview with Donna Summer undertaken at the time of the album’s original release. ‘CRAYONS’ left everyone wanting more, especially as the singles were all triumphant on the Billboard Dance Chart and that’s probably the best place to be...at the Top. (Bron: The Official Donna Summer on Facebook)
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