Take Flight
Simon Saltzman
May 24, 2010: Whee! Here's a breezy if not exactly breath-taking new musical that puts us right (or is it Wright?) up in the air with Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart and you guessed it the Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville. The long-in-gestation (13 years according to some insider sources) cum work-in-progress project of long-time musical theater collaborators David Shire (music) and Richard Maltby, Jr., (lyrics) and their Take Flight book writer John Weidman can now be welcomed officially to the USA. It had its arguably pre-mature birth at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London in 2007 (review) . The significant thing is that Take Flight, has remained, for better or worse, under the direction of Sam Buntrock. It is at the very least an addition to what is an increasingly rare genre: The truly original musical play, one that integrates a brand new, never heard before score with a brand new never seen on screen or read in print before musical book.
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