EXCLUSIVE: The beloved Andean, marmalade-munching bear, better known by all, including our late Queen Elizabeth II, as Paddington, may have a new habitat next year — on Broadway.
Sonia Friedman, lead producer with StudioCanal and Eliza Lumley of Paddington the Musical, winner of seven Olivier Awards on Sunday night, including Best Musical, reveals to Deadline that she’s hoping to have the show up and running in New York in 2027.
“I’d like it to be next year to keep the momentum going,” Friedman tells us.
Friedman’s referring to the terrific standing-room-only run it’s having at the Savoy Theatre, where tickets are on sale through May 2027.
Come on, who are we kidding? The average lifespan of this diminutive Peruvian mammal, in captivity, is 25 years. A quarter of a century might be pushing it a tad, but this adorable creature has staying power, and it will be playing well beyond the spring of 2027.
Friedman, however, struck a note of caution about transferring to Broadway. “Look, it’s going to happen, I can’t kid you, but we have to look at the costs. Broadway is expensive, prohibitively so in some instances,” the producer behind Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Stranger Things: The First Shadow, and others, laments.
However, for now, Friedman’s obviously enjoying her time with the bear and his marmalade. Her tresses, she says, stroking her hair, “have got a bit of orange color in it. I’ve started to go a bit orangey.”
A move to New York will give director Luke Sheppard, who clinched the Sir Peter Hall Best Director prize (named for the theatrical visionary who founded the Royal Shakespeare Company and who took over the National Theatre after Laurence Olivier’s reign), an opportunity to further tighten the show and throw overboard some bits and pieces that aren’t likely to travel well.
Paddington’s signature number, “Marmalade” (my favourite, and not just because I dollop Karly’s Kitchen Three Fruit Marmalade over my sourdough toast!), created by book writer Jessica Swales, composer and lyricist Tom Fletcher, with a leg up from choreographer Ellen Kane, was performed at the Royal Albert Hall.
The song was done by Tom Eddens, who was on Broadway 14 years ago in One Man, Two Guvnors, and the special bear.
Inside the award-winning Paddington costume was Arti Shah giving the bear’s physical performance, while out of sight backstage, Paddington was being voiced to perfection by James Hameed.
Eddens, Hameed and Shah all collected Olivier statuettes.
Shah and Hameed, especially, embodied Paddington’s ethos of inclusivity and kindness to all, particularly outsiders. In her acceptance speech, Shah, all of four feet tall, pointed to her nine-year-old son Zavian, seated in the Royal Albert Hall’s orchestra seats with his dad, her artist husband Rutvig Shah, telling him: “I’m going to keep showing you that being different is a good thing.”
When Hameed took his turn at the mic, he thanked his father, Sharif Hameed, for being “my very own Paddington, who came to this country to make his own dream of building a life in this beautiful city of London.”
Later, at the afterparty held at the magnificent Natural History Museum, Sharif spoke of arriving from Pakistan 50 years ago with the equivalent of a dollar in his pocket. He was there with James’s three siblings, including Melissa Hameed, head of production on unscripted shows such as 24 Hours in Police Custody. “All my children flourished here,” Sharif boasts with pride in his eyes.
Time and time again, presenters and winners spoke movingly of how they got their start with local theater groups and youth stage initiatives: all so vital for future theater makers.
On Saturday night, I caught up again with director Jordan Fein’s sublime revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods at the Bridge Theatre, well aware that at the following night’s awards it would be in the Best Musical Revival category up against Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita -directed by Jamie Lloyd, the Almeida Theatre’s American Psycho, and The Producers playing at the Garrick.
Into the Woods scooped that prize, but Rachel Zegler was the well-deserved recipient of the Best Actress in a Musical accolade for her stupendously dazzling Eva Perón in Evita at the London Palladium.
Will it ever get to Broadway? Everyone tells me: “Yes.” But only if Zegler can be protected. Judging from the hateful messages of abuse posted to me about her, she will require 24-hour protection in New York City.
How do people get filled with so much hate? I’m sorry, but folk aren’t set a good example by people in power who spout wounding invective.
Might I suggest that such people, and nice people too, rush to the Theatre Royal Haymarket to catch The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, based on Rachel Joyce’s best-selling novel about a regular bloke, here played by an utterly heartbreaking Mark Addy, who was egregiously denied a nomination, who travels on foot to visit an old friend while his wife, beautifully realized by Jenna Russell, whose performance was recognized, remains at home. I say “rush” because its run ends this Saturday, April 18.
I just wish there was an intimate space available for it to move into.
James Graham’s play Punch took the Best Play prize and the great artist Julie Hesmondhalgh won the Best Actress in a Supporting Role. It’s a powerful drama about forgiveness that Graham is adapting into a television mini-series.
The night’s big shining star was the venue itself. The Royal Albert Hall has never looked in better nick. BBC and BBC iPlayer viewers who caught the recorded broadcast saw it open with a splendid performance of the Masquerade number from Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera staged on the RAH’s grand Diamond Jubilee Steps and its sweeping forecourt, using Gillian Lynne’s original choreography, followed by a rendition of the title song that moved from the steps, into the building’s winding corridors and then onto its mammoth stage. I gulped when show host Nick Mohammed remarked that The Phantom of the Opera was celebrating its 40th anniversary because I covered both its first preview and opening night.
No wonder the good Lord was in such a good mood when he came on to present Elaine Paige with an honorary Olivier. The Olivier show was all about Andrew Lloyd Webber’s shows.
Half a century ago, Paige created Eva Perón in Evita, originated Grizabella in Cats and played Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard at the Adelphi and on Broadway, taking over from Betty Buckley. All three musicals composed by Lloyd Webber, all seen by me.
I was stirred by a comment Paige made that keeps swirling in my head. “Thank you for letting me spend a lifetime doing what I love,” she told the audience.
That struck a deep chord.
Oh, yes, the thing about the Oliviers at Royal Albert Hall is that it gave the show distinction, a sense of awe. It looked so right and proper there in a way that the BAFTAs, held at the much younger Royal Festival Hall across the Thames, does not.
Now, the Oliviers were not perfect. There were gaffes, but in the room they didn’t seem to bother the audience, which at times sent waves of warmth Nick Mohammed’s way. Strangely, that same warmth didn’t always come across when I watched the BBC’s two-hour edited version in the early hours with a cup of tea, and marmalade on toast.
A tiny little moment niggled at me. When Rosamund Pike won Best Actress in a Play for Suzie Miller’s National Theatre production, Inter Alia, now playing at Wyndham’s Theatre, she paid tribute to her fellow nominees, including Marianne Jean Baptiste, but the camera panned on the wrong thespian. Mmm.
Same happened with Sophie Thompson when nominations were read out for her Best Supporting Actress category. The cameras trained their lens on the woman seated next to her.
I also felt that an Olivier Awards host should do a bit of singing and hoofing as Mohammed’s Ted Lasso colleague Hannah Waddingham did when she hosted.
The lady oozed star quality.
Both at the RAH and on the telly, the In Memorium segment seemed flat, perhaps a singer could’ve accompanied the remembrance?
And, I gotta ask this: Why was Elizabeth Hurley allowed to sashay on to present the night’s top Best Musical trophy? What has she ever done for musical theatre? Can she carry a tune? Where was Hannah Waddingham or Michael Crawford, for heaven’s sake! Tim Rice could’ve done it.
But, really, these are minor quibbles. I enjoyed it. I laughed; a sign which might suggest that my sense of humor hasn’t gone on hiatus, which is what seems to happen whenever I tune into Sky’s Saturday Night Live UK.
Ah, I see the sun’s shining. I’ll have a ten-minute break for another cuppa orange pekoe with a slice of toast slathered with “mar-ma-lade.”
English (US) ·