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    ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ to Close on Broadway, After Reopening

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    The musical, which shuttered temporarily in January as the Omicron variant spread, has struggled with the slow return of tourists to the theater.“Mrs. Doubtfire,” the Broadway musical adapted from the popular 1993 film, announced that it will close later this month after a bumpy run that was interrupted by the pandemic closure in March 2020, and included a return amid the tumultuous current Broadway season.The show’s producer said late Thursday night that the musical’s final performance, at the Stephen Sondheim Theater, would be May 29, just over a month after it reopened after a three-month hiatus.The news comes days after the show’s star, Rob McClure, scored a Tony nomination for his comedic and chameleonic performance in the title role, but the musical failed to garner nominations in any other category.The closing reflects the challenges of this Broadway season — the first since the pandemic shutdown — when tourism remains down, coronavirus cases are a constant complication, and a large number of new shows opened around the same time in April, making it difficult for a returning “Mrs. Doubtfire” to break out.“Even though New York City is getting stronger every day and ticket sales are slowly improving, theatergoing tourists and, especially for our show, family audiences have not returned as soon as we anticipated,” Kevin McCollum, the show’s producer, said in a statement Thursday. “Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to run the show without those sales, especially when capitalizing with Broadway economics on three separate occasions.”Other Broadway productions have also struggled in this new landscape. A much-praised revival of “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” which had struggled at the box office, announced last week that it would close May 22, just a month after opening and three months earlier than planned. But on Thursday, after receiving seven Tony Award nominations and a social media campaign to sponsor female-identifying people of color with a pair of gifted tickets, it announced it will now play an additional two weeks, through June 5.Last week “Mrs. Doubtfire” grossed $477,132, and the audience was just 69 percent full. Still, the show is moving forward with a British engagement, which McCollum said is scheduled to play for a month starting Sept. 2 in Manchester, England; a U.S. tour is also scheduled to kick off in October 2023.In development for years and capitalized for $17 million, the production had gotten through just three preview performances in March 2020 when Broadway shut down. After a 19-month hiatus, “Mrs. Doubtfire” resumed previews last October and opened on Dec. 5, bolstered by a nearly $10 million grant from the Small Business Administration. It opened to tepid reviews — and a pan in The New York Times — just as Omicron began causing cases to spike again.Then, in a startling example of the financial damage caused by the pandemic shutdown, McCollum decided to close his production for several months, saying he saw no other way to save it. The musical comedy temporarily closed Jan. 10, and had planned to reopen on March 14, but later postponed its reopening until April 14. The closure cost 115 people their jobs for that period.In the statement on Thursday, McCollum expressed admiration “for our extraordinary Broadway cast, crew, orchestra, creative team and entire company who brought the show to the stage.” And he said, “They have risen to every challenge thrown at them over the last two years with a remarkable amount of resilience, good humor, passion and love for one another.”“Mrs. Doubtfire,” which had a five-week pre-Broadway run at Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theater, is about a struggling, out-of-work actor who loses custody of his children in a divorce. The father (memorably portrayed in the 1993 film by Robin Williams) is so determined to spend time with his children that he pretends to be a woman to land a job as the housekeeper.The brothers Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick wrote the music and lyrics for the show, directed by Jerry Zaks; the book is by Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell. More

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      ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ Review: Nanny Doesn’t Know Best

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      The new family-friendly musical, adapted from the hit movie, ends up cowering in the original film’s shadow.In 1993, a film about an irresponsible father dressing up as a woman to manipulate his way back into his family’s life was a barrel of laughs. A man in a dress? Classic! He does impressions? Even better! He tries to sabotage his wife’s new relationship? Comedy gold!Truly, it was a different time.And that was the main challenge for the stage adaptation of “Mrs. Doubtfire,” a new musical that opened Sunday night at the Stephen Sondheim Theater. With music and lyrics by the brothers Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick and a book by Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell, “Mrs. Doubtfire” simultaneously tries to replicate an outdated story and update it for the times. But the show only ends up cowering in the original film’s shadow.And speaking of shadows, there is the outsize one of the incomparable Robin Williams. In the film, Williams brought his endearing playfulness to the role of Daniel Hillard, a struggling actor who lacks discipline as a father. When Daniel’s wife divorces him and is granted custody of their three children, he poses as the kindly but firm Scottish nanny Euphegenia Doubtfire in order to spend time with his kids.Rob McClure steps into Mrs. Doubtfire’s sensible shoes in this production. He’s vivacious on the stage, and his impressions, including a hilarious tongue-wagging Gollum, are precious. But the director Jerry Zaks’s ambivalent production tries to have it both ways: The story of a playful man-child with whom we empathize but whose good intentions can’t excuse his machinations. The film pulled it off at the time, primarily thanks to Williams’s charms. McClure’s Daniel, though, is more irritating than entertaining, and his antics — which include hacking into his wife’s email account to sabotage her nanny search — are more creepy than kooky.McClure as the title character, with, from left: Analise Scarpaci, Jake Ryan Flynn, Jenn Gambatese and Avery Sell.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut would Williams have fared much better in 2021, when the toxicity of this male character’s actions would raise alarms?That strain is everywhere in this production, whose 18-month pandemic hiatus coincided with renewed conversations about race, gender and equity.When Daniel asks his gay brother Frank (an amiable Brad Oscar) and brother-in-law Andre (a stylish J. Harrison Ghee) to latex-silicone-and-powder him into womanhood (the impressive makeup and prosthetics design is by Tommy Kurzman), they casually support what seems to be Daniel’s new interest in drag — until they hear his true intentions.Frank and Andre — who get a paper-thin story line about adopting a child, by the way — are very loosely meant to serve as the gay conscience of a decidedly hetero production. So they go along with the scheme, occasionally popping in for some comic relief. In one number, they also get a personal ensemble of male stylists snapping and flicking their wrists, because even the show’s gay stereotypes are dull.Lines from the movie about Mrs. Doubtfire having a penis have been excised, and in a surface-level attempt to make Daniel’s long-suffering wife, Miranda (Jenn Gambatese), a more feminist and sympathetic figure, the show’s creators have made her the owner of a body-positive activewear line called “M Body.” The pseudo-feminist song that she sings during a fashion show, “Shape of Things to Come,” is a painfully punny inspirational poster masquerading as a piece of music.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      They Adapted ‘Mrs. Doubtfire,’ and Their Personal Beliefs

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      Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick have come a long way from their beginnings in Christian rock, but they’re glad to be creating a family-friendly musical comedy.Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick “could spend hours discussing the psychology” of growing up the sons of a Louisiana pastor and ending up in show business.Wayne, 60, the older brother, made this remark with all due seriousness, during a break from polishing a musical version of the 1993 comedy “Mrs. Doubtfire” ahead of its Dec. 5 opening at the Stephen Sondheim Theater. That will be nearly 21 months after the show closed three performances into previews, shuttered by the pandemic.Karey, 56, is more talkative, but the brothers complete each other’s sentences with the rapport of siblings who began recording pretend radio shows as kids. Over two hours in a hotel lobby in Manhattan, he and Karey recounted their religious Southern upbringing, their early careers and how they went from singing in Southern Baptist churches to writing Broadway musicals.And yet, as they shared colorful anecdotes, one could draw parallels between their own professional and personal evolutions, and the changes they’ve made to their source material for “Mrs. Doubtfire.”“The sensibilities of the world we live in today are different than 1993 as we relate to all kinds of things,” Karey said. For example, the show’s producer Kevin McCollum interjected, “a man in a dress.”Three decades ago, Robin Williams raked in box office receipts by donning fake boobs and plaid skirts. As Daniel Hillard, Williams played a newly divorced father so desperate to spend time with his children he disguised himself as a Scottish nanny and became a housekeeper for his ex-wife.With help from John O’Farrell, a British satirist and co-writer of the book, the stage version of “Mrs. Doubtfire” has been updated to reflect the cellphone era, greater racial diversity and our 21st-century understanding of gender. The adaptation was seven years in the making, and along the way, further changes were necessary in the wake of the #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter movements, O’Farrell said.Rob McClure as the title character.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn the film, Sally Field portrayed the ex-wife, an imperious interior designer prattling on about Regency-style tables and Flemish tapestries. The musical finds her character, Miranda (Jenn Gambatese), designing sleek orange-and-pink athleisure wear for women who “work hard and then work out.”With Rob McClure, who plays Daniel, sitting next to her onstage, Miranda plays a confessional piano ballad, called “Let Go,” about her unfulfilling marriage. That spotlight moment supplants a less sympathetic number, “I’m Done,” which was cut after the 2019 Seattle tryout. Reviews for that production were mixed, though McClure’s performance was roundly praised.To better contextualize the man-in-a-dress schtick, the costume designer Catherine Zuber helped create the contrasting character of Andre, Daniel’s gender nonconforming brother-in-law (played by J. Harrison Ghee, who took over Billy Porter’s role in “Kinky Boots”).Andre wears flowy caftans as fashion rather than a joke. And he saves the day by distracting a court-appointed social worker who shows up at Daniel’s ramshackle apartment.McClure, meanwhile, changes in and out of his Doubtfire costume and winds up with a pie in his face, reprising an iconic image from the film. “This is all going to end badly. You do know that, right?” Andre deadpans after the ordeal.Championing families and fatherhood is what drew the Kirkpatricks to the “Doubtfire” story.Their first Broadway musical, the 2015 show “Something Rotten!,” about an Elizabethan theater troupe struggling to compete with Shakespeare’s Globe, was completely original.They had hoped their second would be too, but McCollum persuaded them to choose from a library of 20th Century Fox films he’d been hired to work on. The team settled on “Mrs. Doubtfire” because “we could relate to this story of a dad who would do anything to be with his kids,” Karey said. (Collectively, the three writers and their producer are fathers to 10 children.)The Kirkpatricks’ own father was a Southern Baptist music minister later called to the pulpit himself. He moved the family from Alexandria, La. to Baton Rouge to lead a nondenominational church.Household routines included hymn singing, piano practicing and no cursing. To this day, their mother will voice her displeasure with one of the brothers’ projects with a single word: “Language.”“I used to write everything knowing our parents would read it, and not swear or do anything offensive,” Karey said. “I had to liberate myself from that.”Brian d’Arcy James, second from left, in “Something Rotten!,” the Kirkpatrick brothers’ first Broadway musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWayne added, “Growing up in that environment, there was so much taboo.” But thankfully, their parents had long been supportive of their artistic interests, even dressing their young sons in matching outfits to perform patriotic numbers like “Yankee Doodle.” As adolescents, they took guitar lessons at Bible camp and came home begging for a Sears catalog guitar.As soon as Wayne learned how to change chords, he was transcribing songs and writing his own. Karey craved the spotlight more, acting in shows at their arts magnet high school. Yet he said he sensed that his older brother was the greater musical talent.“At age 18, I decided I was going to be his manager,” Karey recalled. His chance to play impresario came in 1983, when as a freshman studying music business at Belmont University in Nashville, he was assigned to interview someone from the industry. He picked Amy Grant, the first solo Christian music recording artist to have an album certified gold.“But I had ulterior motives,” he said. He had a crush on Grant and wanted to promote Wayne, so after the interview, he invited the secretary from Grant’s office to lunch and slipped her a three-song cassette.Sure enough, Grant’s manager called. He liked the songs. Were there more?Karey returned with another tape. The manager called again, and this time he said, “Can I meet your brother?”“I’m not a self promoter,” Wayne said, admitting that were it not for his loquacious brother, the duo might never have embarked on their parallel careers. Karey soon dropped out of Belmont to pursue acting. By 1993, the year “Mrs. Doubtfire” came out, Wayne had written more than 200 contemporary Christian songs, including multiple chart toppers for Grant (like “Good for Me” and “Every Heartbeat”) and Michael W. Smith (“Place in this World” and “Go West Young Man”).Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More