Goddamn Google. In the age of digital memory and cached web pages,
the internet is usually a better source than people—it doesn’t
keep secrets, and never asks to talk off the record. So why do the
search terms “Intiman,” “Disney,” and “musical” yield such
frustrating results?
On the initial Google results page, one excerpt from The Hunchback
of Notre Dame Fan Club says something about a “mysterious new Disney
musical” and Intiman artistic director Bartlett Sher. Then, once you
click the “cache” button, the resulting site is a bunch of soft-pitch
polls about the 1996 animated Disney Hunchback (“Did you cry
when you watched it? TIED!“) and nothing about this rumored Intiman
musical. As if someone pulled the original post. As if there were a
conspiracy.
The facts: Two weeks ago, Sher won a Tony Award for directing
South Pacific. (The production itself won six more awards,
becoming this year’s most-Tonied show.) In a pre-Tony interview with
KUOW, Sher said something about working on a musical adaptation of
The Hunchback of Notre Dame. In a post-Tony interview with the
Seattle Times, Sher let something slip about a new Disney
musical at Intiman in 2009.
Which, frankly, sounds insane. In the abstract, a nonprofit theater
lending its resources and credibility to a corporation that took in
$35.5 billion in 2007 seems a violation of the public trust. Did
donors—public and private—give money to Intiman in order to
bolster Disney’s brand? Is this the theater version of the infamous
Armani show at the Guggenheim Museum?
On the other hand: Intiman has suffered from serious debt in recent
years (though most of it was eliminated by 2007 fundraising). As
Chekhov wrote: “Credit leads into a desert with invisible boundaries.”
Maybe this deal with the Disney is an attempt to pay off the
last of its debt and bulk up its endowment fund. Which would be good
for everyone—providing it’s a financial success. There is even
the chance that it could be (perish the thought!) an artistic
success.
If anybody could figure out what it will be. Sher and Intiman are
mum.
My best guess, and pure speculation: The musical version of
Hunchback composed by Stephen Schwartz (Pippin,
Wicked) and Alan Menken (um, Sister Act the
Musical), with book by James Lapine (Sunday in the Park with
George, Into the Woods), which closed, after a three-year
run at Musical Theater Berlin, in 2002. Some Disney-gossip
blogs, like Jim Hill Media, report that “several small regional
theaters have already asked Disney Theatrical for the rights to produce
this James Lapine show stateside.”
Who better, in the Mouse’s mind, to direct the U.S. debut of
Hunchback than the newly minted Tony magnet, Bart Sher? Let’s
just hope this thing makes money. It would be a shame if Intiman
prostituted itself, and then had to pay for it. 
