Everything Old is New Again.

Annie Get Your Gun. Kiss Me, Kate. Little Me. You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown. On the Town. Peter Pan. Sound familiar? These are among the "new" musicals that have opened or are slated to open on Broadway later this year. In a season that's relying more heavily than usual on the tried, if not the true, we are also seeing Fosse: A Celebration in Song and Dance, featuring the cream of the late choreographer's work, and two musicals based on movies: MGM's 1948 Easter Parade, penciled in for the fall, and 1984's Footloose, which stubbed its toe with the critics when it opened in October. A. C. Ciulla, a newcomer whose choreography was big on energy but short on invention, came in for particularly harsh criticism. Despite hard work from Jeremy Kushnier as a smart-aleck teenage outsider in a mid-western town that has banished dancing, Footloose looked as phony as the Burger Blast where much of the action takes place.

If you have to stage a revival, get Rob Marshall. The good--no, great--news this season is that following his success with Cabaret [see Dance theater, March 1998, page 102], Marshall has outdone himself as choreographer and director of Little Me. From leads Martin Short, who must play at least eight different roles, and Faith Prince to the hardworking ensemble of dancer-singers, the show is one of the funniest of its type to reach Broadway since the 1996 revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, also choreographed by Marshall.

There's a wonderfully fresh and witty spin to every one of the fast-paced scenes, some of them mere vaudeville sketches (the show was originally tailored for TV's Sid Caesar). If Marshall doesn't get a Tony for this show I'll give up my chance to see it again. More seriously, it forcefully brings out the fact that to succeed on Broadway these days, you have to excel equally well at dancing, singing, and acting. The demand for triple-threat talent is upon us, upping the ante for that prized Broadway contract.

Cynthia Onrubia is a remarkable example of the multitalented. In the Little Me program she's listed as "Ensemble, Associate Director/Choreographer," a terse job description for someone who appears in almost every scene, singing, dancing, and playing a variety of characters (as do the other twelve ensemble members). A showbiz kid from the age of four, when she started her career in TV commercials, Onrubia has worked in musicals on Broadway and elsewhere much of her life. Although she's actually in her midthirties, she looks about, twelve years old, costumed as one of the Rich Kids who are mean to Short (in short pants) in the opening number. With her experience of coming up the hard way, she may one day earn her own choreography assignment.

The importance of a Broadway background was underscored by the troubles of choreographer Keith Young, who had had no Broadway experience. He was tapped by George C. Wolfe of the Public Theater for his revival of the Comden-Green-Bernstein musical On the Town, a production that has had more than its share of troubled choreographers. Eliot Feld had supplied the dances when the show was seen at the Delacorte Theater in the summer of 1997; his work deserved a better reception than it got, but he bowed out. The revival kept getting sidetracked because none of the string of choreographers considered for the Broadway transfer had worked out.

Still determined, Wolfe then hired Young, who had studied with Merce Cunningham and danced with Twyla Tharp and whose most recent work had been in commercials and MTV, to replace the original Jerome Robbins's choreography. Then, with the opening looming, Wolfe canceled some preview performances and announced that Joey McKneely, a former Tony nominee for The Life, had been called in to "assist" Young, which is where matters stood at press time.

Taking on Annie Get Your Gun should be no problem for Graciela Daniele, recipient of the 1998 Mr. Abbott Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Director-Choreographer. (Ragtime is her latest triumph.) Bernadette Peters plays the original Ethel Merman role in this revival of the 1946 show, set to open on Broadway in early March. Although the show seems to be constantly with us as a summer stock and high school favorite, it has only been revived on Broadway once before, in 1966. Peter Stone's updated book may make a difference, but you don't always get a hit with a rewrite.

The most exciting revival news is about Oklahoma!, heading this way from a triumphant London run at the National's Olivier Theatre and the Lyceum, where it's opening again this month. It's a turning point for Susan Stroman, who, despite extraordinary success with Crazy for You and Show Boat, hit a dip with Big and Steel Pier (to be fair, her dances were praised). When first offered Oklahoma! by director Trevor Nunn, Stroman took the job with the understanding that she would replace Agnes de Mille's sacrosanct choreography, which helped change the style of musicals. "I couldn't have done the show if I'd been handed an old orchestration and asked to choreograph new dances to it," says Stroman. "The Rodgers and Hammerstein estate permitted me to change the music for more dancing, and David Krane, the dance music arranger, composed to the design I'd asked for." The British press highly praised Stroman's inventiveness and director Nunn's darker take on the story. The talented cast includes Josefina Gabrielle, a one-time soloist with National Ballet of Portugal, as Laurey. Yet another example of a triple threat, Gabrielle rises to the challenge of singing and acting as well as dancing in the fifteen-minute dream ballet, convincingly performed by the actors instead of by dancers substituting for them. Already being taped for TV, this Oklahoma!, produced by Sir Cameron Mackintosh, was expected to reach Broadway by the year's end.

Hilary Ostlere is a senior editor of Dance Magazine.