Hartford Stage to celebrate 10th anniversary of ‘Anastasia’ with special concert
Hartford is honoring one its musical theater legacies with a gala concert marking the 10th anniversary of the musical “Anastasia.”
Two of the stars of the musical’s pre-Broadway run at Hartford Stage in 2016 will be appearing at the March 10 concert: Christy Altomare, who played Anya (aka Anastasia) and John Bolton, who played the con artist Vlad who tries to pass off Anya as the surviving member of the Russian royal family. Jake Levy, who was not part of the Hartford production but played Anya’s love interest Dmitry on the musical’s first national tour, will also be at the concert, as well as the show’s director, Darko Tresnjak, who was artistic director of Hartford Stage when “Anastasia” was produced there.
The concert is a fundraiser for Hartford Stage’s artistic and educational programs. Besides performances of songs from the show and anecdotes about the beginnings of “Anastasia” in Hartford, the evening features a dessert and champagne reception in the theater lobby.
The “Anastasia” musical was an adaptation of two Hollywood properties based on the (largely debunked) legend of a Russian princess who survived the revolution in which the entire royal family was slain. The stage show’s primary source was the animated film “Anastasia” from 1997, which is often mistaken for a Disney film but was in fact directed by independent animator Don Bluth and produced by 20th Century Fox. (Adding to the confusion, this “Anastasia” now streams on the Disney Plus channel.) Some elements were also lifted from a 1956 movie that starred Ingrid Bergman and Yul Brynner.
Most of the songs, including the Oscar-nominated “Journey to the Past,” came from the animated movie, but songwriters Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens — the team behind the Broadway shows “Once on This Island,” “Seussical the Musical” and “Ragtime” — also wrote new material for the stage show. Playwright Terrence McNally, who also worked on “Ragtime” and whose many hit stage plays included “Love! Valour! Compassion!” and “Master Class,” thoroughly revamped the story, jettisoning key characters from the movies such as the villain Rasputin and a cartoon bat.
McNally died in 2020, and “Anastasia” was the final musical he completed. Among the other musicals McNally wrote the books for were “Kiss of the Spiderwoman,” “The Fully Monty” and “Catch Me If You Can.”
Hartford Stage got to develop “Anastasia” for Broadway for a number of reasons. Among them was that Tresnjak, the theater’s artistic director at the time, had been hired to direct the musical. Tresnjak’s breakthrough hit, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” had also been worked on at Hartford Stage prior to its Broadway success. Hartford Stage had a long history of sending shows to Broadway, though before Tresnjak’s tenure very few of them were musicals. Tresnjak left Hartford Stage in 2018.
The Hartford Stage run of the show was a genuine pre-Broadway tryout of the sort Connecticut was famous for in the 1940s and ‘50s. During the Hartford run, new songs were tested, the order of songs were changed, songs and scenes were cut or trimmed and whole numbers were rethought and restaged. Other changes were evident when the show opened on Broadway a year after the Hartford Stage run. Most notably, the song “Paris Holds the Key (To Your Heart),” which was staged in Hartford to mimic the scene in the animated film, was completely redone in a sparser, sharper manner just days before the Broadway opening. The closing songs for both acts were also different on Broadway than they were in Hartford, and there were numerous smaller changes. Many more changes were made when “Anastasia” went on tour, including a significant shortening of the show’s length and a revised version of the turntable, which sped up the scene transitions on Broadway.
“Anastasia” ran for a solid two years on Broadway but it’s the show’s post-Broadway life that’s truly impressive. It toured in various forms for years. In Connecticut alone, the show visited The Bushnell, the Shubert Theatre, the Waterbury Palace and Foxwoods Resort Casino. There were either standing companies or lengthy tours in Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Denmark, Italy and Australia, many of them happening in the last three or four years.
There are many shows that ran longer on Broadway or had more name recognition than “Anastasia” that have not had the same staying power.
Rights to perform the show have now trickled down to community theaters. One of the largest community theater operations in the state, Curtain Call in Stamford, has a production of “Anastasia” running from March 27 through April 18. The Opera House Players in Enfield did their own production last May. An hour-long “Youth Version” of the show, for schools to perform, is also available.
“‘Anastasia’ 10th Anniversary Concert: A Fundraiser for Hartford Stage” will take place on March 10 at 7:30 p.m. at Hartford Stage, 50 Church St., Hartford. $100-$250. hartfordstage.org.
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