A little sneak preview

The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis held a sneak preview yesterday for the new musical based on Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie books. Steve on Broadway was there and as usual provides an excellent firsthand account.

Also, you can hear from director Francesca Zambello and get a taste of three songs from the show in a short video clip on the Guthrie's web site.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Zambello said that the musical will take place in the 1880s and focus on a teenage Laura. The story will open in western Minnesota, then move to South Dakota, where the Ingalls family relocated to file a land claim. "They were constantly moving," Zambello said. "They were poor, poor people, constantly in search of land that would yield them something."

Casting for the show will be announced in April, according to a story by Dominic Papatola in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Previews start on July 26, with opening night on Aug. 15. The musical runs through Oct. 5.

And while there's no specific mention of a Broadway run, Papatola says the Guthrie is working with a team of commercial producers led by Ben Sprecher, who most recently helped bring A Moon for the Misbegotten to Broadway last spring. Coincidentally, Moon was my first-ever Broadway show.

The Little House books were some of my favorites from childhood, so I'm looking forward to my first-ever trip to Minnesota this fall, when I'll take in the tuner with my two very wholesome, theater-loving Midwestern friends.

Little House, big plans

I'm hoping to make my first visit to the Land of 10,000 Lakes for the world premiere of a new musical based on the Little House on the Prairie books. I haven't heard much about the project since it was announced in November by Minneapolis' Guthrie Theater. But apparently, things are moving right along. In fact, they may be moving in an unexpected direction.

The Guthrie's artistic director, Joe Dowling, said last fall that the producers were looking at a national tour after the show's premiere. I wonder if things have changed? In an article earlier this month in the Newark Star-Ledger, Michael Sommers writes that the Little House musical is coming to Broadway in the fall. It seems a little soon for a Broadway debut, but who knows?

I found a logo for the show on the Guthrie's Web site - and I kind of like it. The stalks of wheat and cursive script give it a bit of an old-fashioned look. It's a nice contrast with the more modern typeface for "on the prairie." Together, they project a sense that this is a combination of something old and something new. And the beautiful but slightly ominous reddish-brown sky evokes the wide-open spaces of the 19th century American West.

Here are photos from an open call for auditions held earlier this year at the Guthrie that attracted 125 girls and a much smaller number of boys. Most of the girls said they'd come because they were huge fans of the books, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

While the Guthrie doesn't list an opening date yet, I did find one on the Web site of director Francesca Zambello. Her calendar lists Little House from Aug. 15. I'm not sure whether that's the date of the first performance, but it's entirely possible. The show is scheduled to be staged at the Guthrie's McGuire Proscenium, and there's nothing else on tap for that venue after July 11.

Here's how the project is described on the site of lyricist Donna di Novelli: "Set on the vast plains of the American West, Little House on the Prairie is the story of one girl’s struggle with the wildness in her soul. Both girl and land fight against the forces that seek to tame them in this epic story of Western migration." I love epics stories, so it sounds promising.

In addition to Zambello and di Novelli, other members of the Little House creative team include Rachel Portman, an Oscar winner for Emma, who is composing the music, and Rachel Sheinkin, Tony winner for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, who's writing the book.

Portman is British, and Zambello is an American who grew up in Europe. I don't know where di Novelli and Sheinkin are from, but from their biographies, they seem very much Ivy League-educated New York-centric artists.

When Joe Dowling announced the musical, he said, "The work of Laura Ingalls Wilder has a deep and powerful connection to the people of the Midwest. This musical fits perfectly within the Guthrie's goal to develop new work that speaks directly to this community."

Maybe I shouldn't worry about this, but I am a little concerned that none of the four seems to have a "deep and powerful connection" to the region where the story takes place. On the other hand, writers write, actors act and composers compose movingly all the time about people, places and events that don't seem connected to their lives.

Of the four, Sheinkin is the only one whose work I know. I saw Spelling Bee on tour last fall, and I loved it. It's a sweet musical that treats the joy and pain of growing up with humor and sensitivity. Sheinkin did a wonderful job developing the characters of the elementary school spellers, so I'm really interested to see what she'll do with a group of 19th-century adolescents.

The Wild(er) West

I can't say I've ever spent a lot of time in the Midwest. I once spent a weekend in the suburbs of Detroit, and I was in Columbus, Ohio, for a day on a job interview. I'm not even sure if those two count. (And I was at the airport in Chicago once, but hey, I know airports don't count!)

Still, I've always had an interest in the region - and the pioneers who settled the frontier in the 19th century. As a kid, I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the Prairie" and its sequels that portrayed life in Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.

Even though it was a setting far removed from my 20th century East Coast urban childhood, I found something appealing in the stories of a family's harsh life on the frontier in the 19th century. I'm not sure what the attraction was. I've always been a big American history buff. And part of it, I'm sure, was that kids like to read books about kids their own age having experiences that they could never imagine. (And I've often felt that some of the best books I've ever read are the ones I read growing up).

So I was excited to read that next summer, the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis will stage the world premiere of a musical based on the series. Guthrie director Joe Dowling says that Wilder's work has a "deep and powerful connection to the people of the Midwest."

Rachel Sheinkin, who won a Tony award for "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," is writing the book for the musical. Coincidentally, I'm seeing "Putnam County" on tour this weekend, so I'll get a firsthand taste of Ms. Sheinkin's talents.

Also coincidentally, Jonathan Yardley, a book critic for The Washington Post, has penned a very interesting essay this week on rereading the Little House books.

Yardley discusses the extent to which Rose Wilder Lane, Wilder's daughter, helped her write the books. The conventional view is that the stories are Wilder's, but that Lane helped her mother by polishing the work into a publishable form.

He praises Wilder for portraying "vividly and accurately" the hardships of frontier life. "She was uncommonly observant; nothing seems to have escaped her." He adds that the books also do a good job of demonstrating the vital role women played in settling the West. The female characters "are thoroughly feminine, but they also know how to load guns and do chores in and out of the house. Indeed, the chief trouble with the Laura Ingalls Wilder industry as it now exists is that it idealizes the girls of the frontier far more than Wilder did."

(And make no mistake about it, there is a Wilder industry. In addition to the books, there are Wilder museums and historic sites in Minnesota, Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota, and places I'm probably leaving off. The long-running television series starring Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert debuted in 1974 and ran until 1983, and there was a 2005 miniseries.)

Francesca Zambello, who will direct the latest incarnation of the Wilder stories, says that "Reading of the exuberance of these characters as they encountered the immense power and force of the Prairie speaks to our history as a country and a people. It did in the 1880s and it does now. Our musical focuses on the independent spirit of the teenager, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and her struggles to become an adult; along side the story of the land — as it becomes the American West."

It sounds promising. I'm just hoping that the musical won't settle for sweet sentimentality but will portray the harder-edged reality of life as Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family really experienced it while trying to settle a harsh, often unforgiving land.