How do you pack up a Broadway musical and take it on the road?
You get a really, really big suitcase.
The first national tour of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! officially opens tonight at the Hippodrome Theatre (after two preview performances), when a cast of two-dozen performers shuffles across the stage in red, pointy-toed Who shoes.
Putting together the $4 million national tour in Charm City requires nine semi-trailer trucks, a stage-floor-to-ceiling tree with star hung askew, a realistic rendition of Mount Crumpet with a sleigh full of presents teetering at the top, and catwalks full of confetti "snow."
"Most of us remember the very first time someone took us to the theater," says Jack O'Brien, who conceived of the production, which has the blessing of Seuss' widow, Audrey Geisel.
"I thought that if I could give a child his or her first viable theatrical experience, and load into it every kind of craft we know how to do, the child will never forget that night. So, the show has puppets and snow, and smoke, and people flying through the air.
"Once we knew what we wanted, we just had to figure out how to make it light, packable and move effortlessly."
Oh, is that all?
O'Brien initially created Grinch in 1998 for the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, where he was artistic director. (If his name sounds familiar, it's because he later oversaw the Broadway debut of another stage musical dear to the hearts of Baltimoreans - Hairspray.)
"The Old Globe was looking for a holiday show," O'Brien says. "Most troupes do A Christmas Carol. But Dickens was British. A Christmas Carol is wonderful, but it's not American. The Grinch is our Christmas story."
The musical is based on the beloved 1957 children's book about the green meanie with the heart "two sizes too small" who hatches a diabolical plot to spoil the Whos' holiday. Though the musical includes two songs from the 1966 animated television program (including the classic, "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,") the creative team wanted to make the stage version resemble the storybook as much as possible.
So, the show curtain that will sweep back from the Hippodrome stage has the same pattern as the endpapers in the book. The costumes - in the original color palette of black, white, pink and red - have dark "outlines" designed to make three-dimensional bodies appear two-dimensional - just like the original drawings.
