Anastasia promises an unforgettable journey to the past.
In the new Broadway musical Anastasia written by the Tony Award–wining team that brought us Ragtime — playwright Terrence McNally, composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens — a young woman fearlessly sets out on a journey to unravel the mystery of her past.
The story is based on a persistent legend that the 17-year-old daughter of Tsar Nicholas II survived the upheaval of the Russian Revolution and lived through adulthood. One hundred years after the historical events, the romance and the adventure of her fate continue to spark excitement. The production, which begins previews at Broadway’s Broadhurst Theatre on March 23, is directed by Darko Tresnjak, Tony Award winner for A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder.
“There is something about this particular story that clearly captures the imagination,” says lyricist Ahrens. “We know that the real Anastasia did not live; our whole show is an imaginary version of what might have happened. It is much more interesting and exciting to think, What if she had lived?”
It is more than 20 years since Ahrens and Flaherty penned the songs for the Twentieth Century Fox animated musical based on the same legend. The duo received two Oscar nominations for their work on the movie — for the score as well as for the hit song “Journey to the Past.” Since then, the advent of a stage musical version of Anastasia has been long anticipated. “So many kids have been blogging and Facebooking for years about why this doesn’t come to the stage,” Ahrens reports.
The current project finally started to come together a few years ago when a producer approached the songwriting team to adapt their work for the stage. They had just one choice for bookwriter – their Ragtime collaborator McNally. “He has a sense of history, a sense of drama, and he has a great sense of fun,” says Ahrens. “I don’t think Terrence would have joined us if we just said, ‘Let’s take the animated movie and put it on stage,’” says composer Flaherty. “We wanted to go back to the original fable-like quality of the story. And we wanted the story to be more historically accurate.”
For the Broadway musical score, Ahrens and Flaherty wrote some 15 new musical numbers, while also retaining the well-loved songs from the 1997 animated movie — including “Journey to the Past”, “Once Upon a December” and “Paris Holds the Key (to Your Heart)” — which have been entirely rewritten and reconceived for the stage. “Even the way the songs function dramatically is very different,” notes composer Flaherty. The movie’s opening song, “Journey to the Past,” which is not only its best-known song, but also the cornerstone of the plot and themes in the musical, now provides a rousing, emotionally-charged close to the first act. “The stage musical sets a much longer journey for Anya —both physically and emotionally –so, now, by the time she sings “Journey” she has fully earned that moment,” Flaherty explains.
For Flaherty, returning to the same material two decades later gave him the opportunity to create a much richer musical experience than the movie allowed. “I was able to really explore Russian choral music and look at Russian ballet music,” he explains, adding that ever since he read the first version of the animated movie script he was struck by the story’s potential to be a great romantic mystery. “I actually thought it could be a Hitchcock film in a lot of ways.” He reports that Tresnjak’s production explores that psychological and mystery angle, and pays homage to the master of suspense’s Vertigo in one moment. “The music unlocks Anya’s identity and her memory,” Flaherty continues. “It is about mothers reuniting with daughters, lovers coming together again after being separated for years. The music becomes this current that just grabs the audience and pulls them through the story.”
The first act of McNally’s new libretto takes place in pre-and post-Revolutionary Russia, while the second act is set in Paris in 1927. “In Act One there are those deeper Russian colors and in Act Two, Paris is on the cusp of the Jazz Age so that’s when we bring the saxophones out,” says Flaherty. McNally himself has described the Paris of the second act as being “everything modern Soviet Russia was not: free, expressive, creative, no barriers.” Accordingly, the song “Paris Holds the Key (to Your Heart)” is now transformed into a paean to the uninhibited City of Light. “It was a wild time of intellectual ferment,” notes Ahrens.
Anastasia arrives on Broadway following its world premiere this summer at Hartford Stage, with many in the principal cast repeating their roles: Christy Altomare plays the adult Anya; Derek Klena plays Dmitry, the young con man who falls in love with her; John Bolton and Caroline O’Connor, play the comic duo Vlad Popov and the Countess Lily Malevsky-Malevitch; and Mary Beth Peil the Dowager Empress Maria Deodorovna, Anastasia’s grandmother. Joining the company for the Broadway production, Ramin Karimloo (seen most recently in Les Misérables) will play the Chekist policeman Gleb.
When the musical began previews at Hartford, Ahrens says she wasn’t quite prepared for the convergence of avid fans of the animated movie — or fanastasias as she fondly calls them. She says she began to panic when she noticed on the very first day several young women in the audience dressed as Anastasia, wearing tiaras and yellow dresses with blue sashes. She wondered how they would take the changes that had been made to their beloved movie and songs. But when she talked to one of them, a twenty-something year-old, after the show, the young woman told her that she had been totally swept away by the musical. “I have to tell you,” she told Ahrens, “I grew up with the animated movie, and now the musical has grown up for me.”
“I think people who grew up with the film, enjoyed its lightness and the colorful quality, but now they are really gravitating towards the romance of the piece,” remarks Flaherty, assessing the responses from the Hartford run. “It sounds like a cliché, but there is something in it for everybody,” Ahrens concludes. “It is so palpable because you can see the older people crying at the right moments and others laughing hysterically at the right moments; you see the dates holding on to one another and you can see the little kids leaning forward with great delight. I think that is also why the myth or fairy tale, if you want to call it that, has existed for so many years. Because if you are a certain age, you want that girl to have lived; if you are older, you want that girl to have reconnected with her family and her grandmother again; and if you are a little kid, you want action and adventure. It’s all built into this story.”
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How We Use Your Personal Information
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Information Collected By/Shared With Third Parties
Other than as provided in this Privacy Policy, we do not share your personal information with third parties.
Advertising. We partner with advertising companies who may use information from cookies and the tracking tags they place on our website to provide you with targeted advertisements about goods and services that may be of interest to you based on your use of our website and to track the effectiveness of ads served to you. These advertising company partners may anonymously track your Internet usage across other websites in their networks beyond our website. Any information that these advertising companies collect via cookies and tracking tags is generally not personally identifiable (unless, for example, you provide personal information to them through an ad or email message). You are welcome to browse the site in private/incognito mode, which means cookies will not be activated and previous cookies will not be tracked. If you need help with this, contact us at [email protected]. If you would like more information about the use of cookies and tracking tags and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, see the Network Advertising Initiatives consumer Web site at http://www.networkadvertising.org/consumer/.
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When necessary. We may also release personal information when we believe, in good faith, that such release is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Ourselves, Our clients, Our users, or others. We may disclose personal information about you to law enforcement, other government officials, or other third parties, as We, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate, in connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringement, or other activity that is illegal or may expose Us to legal liability.
Public Forums
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Co-Branded Pages
We may enter into relationships with “powered by” partners, business partners, sponsors, and co-branded sites (referred to here as “co-branded pages”). These might include, for example, pages that share our name and that of another entity. There may be a specific privacy policy on any such co-branded page. Any personal information that you provide when signing up at any co-branded page may be collected by, or shared with, our third party partner. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, our third party partners’ use of your personal information. If you want to learn more about other entities’ privacy practices, please review the websites of those third parties.
Transactions With Third Party E-commerce Partners, Vendors and Advertisers
When you provide personal information to one of Our Site’s third party e-commerce partners, vendors or advertisers (i.e. Ticketmaster.com, Telecharge.com), this transaction will occur in connection with the site of the e-commerce partner, vendor or advertiser, not on the Site, and, as such, the personal information you provide is collected pursuant to and controlled by the privacy policy of such e-commerce partner, vendor or advertiser. Broadway Direct is not responsible for such parties’ privacy policies and We encourage you to familiarize yourself with the applicable privacy policy of the e-commerce site with which you transact business or to contact the operator of such site for more information.
Delivery of Advertising and Other Content
In addition to ads and content that We may serve you directly, We use third-party advertising companies and marketing services companies to serve ads and other content when you visit Broadway Direct and elsewhere on the internet and in other media. Both We and these companies may use information about your visits to Broadway Direct and elsewhere to serve ads and other content to you. In the course of doing so, a unique third-party cookie may be placed or recognized on your browser by such companies. In addition, We and these companies may use Web beacons to help manage Our online advertising and content. These Web beacons enable Us and the third-party companies to recognize a browser’s cookie when a browser visits this Site and to learn which banner ads bring users to our website and to serve you ads that you may find of interest elsewhere on the internet and in other media. Both Broadway Direct and these companies may use information obtained from your visits to Broadway Direct or other websites, and information received from you offline in order to provide advertisements about goods and services and other content of interest to you across the internet and in other media. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used in this manner by Our third party advertising companies, please visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/optout_nonppii.asp and/or www.aboutads.info/choices. European users may opt out of receiving targeted advertising by visiting http://www.youronlinechoices.eu/. In addition, we may provide PII and Anonymous Information to marketing services companies. This may include information we received from you offline or online. These companies may combine information we provide (including PII and Anonymous Information) with personal and anonymous information they may have about you, using cookies they place or that We place on their behalf, as described in the section regarding “Cookies and Tracking Tags”. We require these companies to delete the PII we provide them. These companies may use the resulting non-personal information and such cookies for their own marketing purposes, and they may provide the same to their customers for their customer’s marketing purposes. Some of Our emails may contain tags that allow Us and Our advertisers and other partners to determine the types of content that may be of interest to you. Those tags may contain PII and may be shared with others to the same extent indicated in the section regarding “Cookies and Tracking Tags”. Those tags may not be deleted but you can opt out of receiving the emails.
Use of This Site by Children
The Site is not directed to individuals under the age of thirteen (13), and We request that such individuals do not provide personal information through the Site. If a parent or guardian becomes aware that his or her child has provided Us with PII without the parent or guardian’s consent by, for example, misrepresenting his or her age, that parent or guardian should contact us at [email protected]. If Broadway Direct determines that it has collected personal information of children under the age of 13, Broadway Direct will immediately delete such information and any accounts believed to be held by children under 13. In addition, we may not collect or process information from a citizen of an EU member state under the age of sixteen (16) without such person’s parental consent. If you are a citizen of an EU member state under the age of 16, please tell your parents that you are using the Site and have your parents email Us at [email protected] so that We may delete any information We may have collected about you.
California Visitors
California Civil Code § 1798.83 permits California residents to request information about whether we have disclosed personal information to any third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes. California residents have the right to request in writing: (a) a list of the categories of Personal Information, such as name, email address and mailing address and the type of services provided to the customer that a business has disclosed to third parties (including affiliates that are separate legal entities) during the immediately preceding calendar year for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes and (b) the names and addresses of all such third parties. To make a request, please contact Us at the following email address: [email protected].
EU Visitors
If you are located within the European Union, you should be aware that your personal information will be transferred to the United States, the laws of which may be deemed by the European Union to have inadequate data protection. If you are located in a country outside the United States and voluntarily submit personal information to Us, you thereby consent to the general use of such information as provided in this privacy policy and to the transfer of that information to, and/or storage of that information in, the United States. We transfer Personal Information from the European Economic Area and Switzerland to the USA and other countries, some of which have not been determined by the European Commission to have an adequate level of data protection. Personal Information of EU residents will be transferred in compliance with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”).
Rights of EU Data Subjects
If you are a resident of the European Union, under the GDPR, European Union residents, as data subjects, have the following rights:
Right to access – This right allows individuals to obtain confirmation as to whether or not personal information concerning him or her is being processed and provide access to such personal information. It also allows individuals to request details of the processing of his or her personal information, including, without limitation, categories of recipients to whom the personal information have been or will be disclosed and purposes of processing.
Right to rectify – This right allows individuals to rectify any inaccurate personal information about him or her.
Right to restrict processing – This right allows individuals to block or suppress processing of personal data under certain circumstances.
Right to be forgotten – This right is also known as the “right to erasure”. It is an individual’s right to have personal data erased or to prevent processing in specific circumstances.
Right of data portability – This right allows individuals to move, copy or transfer personal data from one place to another in a secure manner without interrupting the integrity and usability of the information.
Right to object to processing – This right allows individuals to object to certain types of processing, including direct marketing, profiling and providing for purposes of scientific or historical research and statistics.
An EU resident has the right to access his or her personal data that We hold and to ask that their personal data be corrected or erased and to port their data. An EU resident may also have the right to object to, or request that We restrict certain processing or to withdraw consent previously provided. If you would like to exercise your rights under the GDPR, please contact us at [email protected]. If you are an EU resident and have a concern about our processing of your personal data that we are not able to resolve, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Authority where you reside. For contact details of your relevant local Data Protection Authority, please see http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/item-detail.cfm?item_id=612080
Security of Your Personal Information
Broadway Direct employs reasonable security measures consistent with standard industry practice, for personal information collected through this Site, including physical, electronic and operational measures to maintain security and prevent unauthorized access. While Broadway Direct takes all appropriate steps to safeguard personal information under Our control, unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet or method of storing data can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As such, We cannot guarantee that personal information supplied by users will not be accessed on Our servers, or intercepted while being transmitted to Us over the Internet. We assume no liability for any damages you may suffer as a result of interception, alteration or misuse of information during such transfers.
Retention
We will retain your information for as long as your account or inquiry is active and for a reasonable time thereafter in accordance with Our standard procedures or as necessary to comply with Our legal obligations, to resolve disputes, and to enforce Our agreements. Even if We delete some or all of your Personal Information, We may continue to retain and use aggregate or anonymous data previously collected and/or anonymize or aggregate your Personal Information. Please note that We will not be liable for disclosures of your data due to errors or unauthorized acts of third parties.
Choice/Opt Out
This Site provides users the opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications from Us, at any time, by email at [email protected], or by clicking the unsubscribe link in any email communication. The Site gives users the following options for removing their information from our database, to not receive future communications or to no longer receive our service, at any time.
Users can send mail to the following postal address: Broadway Direct 1501 Broadway 14th floor New York, NY 10036
Users can call the following telephone number: (800) 223-6715.
Users can opt-out of receiving future newsletter emails from Us by selecting the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of our email. However, We are not responsible for removing your information from the lists of any third party who has previously been provided with your information or is collecting your information through their cookies. You have the right to withdraw your consent for Our processing for your personal information by contacting us at [email protected].
Correct/Update
This website gives users the following options for changing and modifying information previously provided, at any time.
Users can send mail to the following postal address: Broadway Direct 1501 Broadway 14th floor New York, NY 10036
Users can call the following telephone number: (800) 223-6715
Successors
In the event that We are, or any component of our operations is, merged with, or is acquired by, another entity, then any such successor or acquiring entity may become the successor to Our obligations with respect to the personal information that you have provided to Us, which would be necessary for the entity to effectively continue our business. By using this website, you consent to any transfer and use of such personal information by an entity assuming control of Our operations as a result of a merger, purchase of assets, or liquidation in bankruptcy or insolvency.
Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, the practices of this website, or your dealings with this website, you can send an email to [email protected]. Our data protection officer can also be contacted at [email protected].