Get your Sweet Charity tickets for the 2010 production at the West End at the Theatre Royal. Mark Umbers, Josefina Gabrielle, and Tiffany Graves star in the revival. We have cheap tickets for great seats for this revival and other productions.
Meet Charity Hope Valentine. She's a true original, an eternal optimist...and the unluckiest romantic in New York City. Emmy Award winner Christina Applegate stars in a dazzling new Broadway production of this smash hit musical. Directed by Walter Bobbie (a Tony Award winner for Broadway's runaway hit Chicago) and choreographed by Wayne Cilento (Wicked, Aida), Sweet Charity has a hilarious book by none other than Neil Simon. And the classic score (by Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields) features such hits as 'Hey, Big Spender' and 'If My Friends Could See Me Now.' Swing on by the Fandango ballroom...and let Charity dance her way into your heart!
The last time Sweet Charity played Broadway, it was in a twentieth-anniversary revival that adhered closely to the 1966 original. With original stager Bob Fosse still in charge, the superb choreography was scrupulously recreated. Also back were Robert Randolph's stylized, abstract settings. Neil Simon's book revisions amounted to no more than modest trims. As in the original production, the title role was taken by an experienced musical woman who was also a top-notch dancer.
Christina Applegate has recovered enough from her famously broken foot to step into her Broadway debut with moderate dancing ease and massive likability. Gone is any trace of Charlotte D'Amboise, the veteran standby and thoroughbred Broadway workhorse who received star-is-finally-born coverage when she replaced Applegate during tryouts. She entered the annals of theatrical martyrdom when the producers decided not to come to New York, and then, after Applegate persuaded them to cancel the cancellation, they kept her on for the first week of previews.
All of that fidelity produced sparkling results. But in the hard-working but seriously underpowered new production of Sweet Charity at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, just about everything is different from the original. Unlike the two previous productions of the show, this one was not conceived for an accomplished Broadway dancer-comedienne. Instead, it marks the Broadway debut (and apparent musical-theater debut) of film and television actress Christina Applegate. While Wayne Cilento's choreography offers occasional homages to Fosse's original, the musical staging is new. Simon has done a thorough rewrite of his book, with perhaps a quarter of the dialogue altered.
