Some musicals are hot. Some are cool. "Ballroom," which is receiving only its fourth professional production since its ill-fated 1978 debut on Broadway, is in the "cool" category.
It is a musical drama, not just a musical, about love found in middle age that sadly captures the essence of loneliness.
It deals with a Bronx widow well past her youth who, at a local dance pavilion called "The Stardust Ballroom," meets a mailman who good-naturedly claims to be a "man of letters," often quoting Shakespeare. She has spent years in mourning for her dead husband but finally becomes aware that only he has been buried - not her. The mailman becomes her regular dance partner and tender friend as she again begins to "dress" and come out into the world. Her family and friends are shocked (and perhaps jealous).
Then, she learns that he has not been completely honest in discussing his personal life.
The show's history is spotted. It is a musical version of the 1975 Emmy-winning TV-movie "Queen of the Stardust Ballroom," which starred Maureen Stapleton and Charles Durning. After a year of workshops, it opened on Broadway in 1978 under the creative force of Michael Bennett. It faced undue expectations because it was the first Bennett outing since his triumph with "A Chorus Line."
Some 30 years later, "Ballroom" faces no such expectations, yet it still is a brave choice for new production. Producer-director Jeff Meredith continues his most daring season yet in his Virginia Musical Theatre's second year at the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts.
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