Back in October of last year, NBC announced that their next live musical production after Hairspray would be Bye Bye Birdie starring Jennifer Lopez. No specific airdate has been announced yet, though it will be sometime this December like the previous four musicals NBC has done. Today, it was announced that two-time Tony winner Jerry Mitchell will direct & choreograph the production and two-time Emmy winner Alex Rudzinski will offer live television direction (in other words, he’ll be in control of the camerawork you’ll see on TV).
I sort of had a feeling that Mitchell was going to be involved from having seen him with producers Craig Zadan, Neil Meron, and Jennifer Lopez on social media. Though with that being said, he’s still a great choice. After having previously choreographed Hairspray last year, Jerry Mitchell will not only be back for Birdie this year, but will also be directing this time. As for Rudzinski, he clearly has gotten bit by the bug for live television musicals lately after having already done some great work on both Grease and Hairspray.
When I previously reported the news that NBC was going to be doing Bye Bye Birdie, I mentioned that I had never seen any incarnation of the show at all. I may still have never seen the show on stage, but I had since seen the 1963 film adaptation, which I overall didn’t mind. It definitely had some weird aspects in it such as having it start and end with the character of Kim MacAfee singing the title song (written just for the film) against a blue backdrop, having ‘Put On a Happy Face’ presented as a Sesame Street-style number, having a conductor drink some fluid that made him go crazy, etc. I am very well aware of the fact that the film deviated a lot from the Broadway show. It was all mainly because after (newcomer at the time) Ann-Margret was cast as Kim MacAfee, the filmmakers shifted the focus onto that character in order to showcase her talents as much as possible. Several members of the original Broadway cast (including Dick Van Dyke, who made his motion picture debut in the film reprising his role as Albert Peterson) admitted how unhappy they were with the adaptation because of that character shift.
I had then also seen the 1995 TV movie adaptation, which was a much more faithful adaptation to the Broadway show. As someone who has never seen Birdie onstage, I thought the TV version was much more enjoyable. I thought it had a great cast led by Jason Alexander (who had actually performed in a few musicals on Broadway before he was introduced to the world as George Costanza on Seinfeld, even winning a Tony Award for his work in a revue titled Jerome Robbins’ Broadway) and Vanessa Williams. It was also lots of fun. In fact, the actor who played Conrad Birdie in that version was future three-time Tony nominee Marc Kudisch. He previously played that role in a national touring production starring Tommy Tune and Ann Reinking from 1991-92. He was recently on Broadway.com’s Live at Five where he gave a very interesting idea for how the character should be played on NBC’s upcoming production (go to 18:50 right here).
So hopefully sometime within the next few months, I can offer you some more updates on Bye Bye Birdie Live!. Stay tuned!
I sort of had a feeling that Mitchell was going to be involved from having seen him with producers Craig Zadan, Neil Meron, and Jennifer Lopez on social media. Though with that being said, he’s still a great choice. After having previously choreographed Hairspray last year, Jerry Mitchell will not only be back for Birdie this year, but will also be directing this time. As for Rudzinski, he clearly has gotten bit by the bug for live television musicals lately after having already done some great work on both Grease and Hairspray.
When I previously reported the news that NBC was going to be doing Bye Bye Birdie, I mentioned that I had never seen any incarnation of the show at all. I may still have never seen the show on stage, but I had since seen the 1963 film adaptation, which I overall didn’t mind. It definitely had some weird aspects in it such as having it start and end with the character of Kim MacAfee singing the title song (written just for the film) against a blue backdrop, having ‘Put On a Happy Face’ presented as a Sesame Street-style number, having a conductor drink some fluid that made him go crazy, etc. I am very well aware of the fact that the film deviated a lot from the Broadway show. It was all mainly because after (newcomer at the time) Ann-Margret was cast as Kim MacAfee, the filmmakers shifted the focus onto that character in order to showcase her talents as much as possible. Several members of the original Broadway cast (including Dick Van Dyke, who made his motion picture debut in the film reprising his role as Albert Peterson) admitted how unhappy they were with the adaptation because of that character shift.
I had then also seen the 1995 TV movie adaptation, which was a much more faithful adaptation to the Broadway show. As someone who has never seen Birdie onstage, I thought the TV version was much more enjoyable. I thought it had a great cast led by Jason Alexander (who had actually performed in a few musicals on Broadway before he was introduced to the world as George Costanza on Seinfeld, even winning a Tony Award for his work in a revue titled Jerome Robbins’ Broadway) and Vanessa Williams. It was also lots of fun. In fact, the actor who played Conrad Birdie in that version was future three-time Tony nominee Marc Kudisch. He previously played that role in a national touring production starring Tommy Tune and Ann Reinking from 1991-92. He was recently on Broadway.com’s Live at Five where he gave a very interesting idea for how the character should be played on NBC’s upcoming production (go to 18:50 right here).
So hopefully sometime within the next few months, I can offer you some more updates on Bye Bye Birdie Live!. Stay tuned!