Blame it on Broadway

This was the year that Elton John and Anne Rice's musical Lestat bit the big one and High Fidelity was a sound no one wanted to hear.Those of us who saw Lestat in its pre-Brodway run at San Francisco's Curran Theatre knew the show had a stake through its heart from the get go. And as for High Fidelity (right), the sample songs on the show's Web site were so boring it was hard to muster enthusiasm enough to dislike them. Another show with a boringly bland pop score, The Wedding Singer, made a respectable go of it but never reached hit status.Bay Area folks should not be holding their breaths for a tour of Twyla Tharp's take on Bob Dylan songs, The Times They Are A Changing. Our Theatre Dogs spies spotted a dog, and they were right. The circus-themed show is history.Disney launched two new Broadway shows, and though Tarzan is still swinging, it failed to generate much in the way of buzz or critical accolades. Mary Poppins, on the other hand, generated big buzz and a full spectrum of reviews. To me, the most interesting Disney show didn't open on Broadway. Finding Nemo: The Musical, began performances in Walt Disney World. This marks the first time Disney has taken a non-musical movie and turned it into a stage musical. This is a mini-theme park musical, but if all goes well (so far, buzz is good), we can expect to see Nemo, Marlin, Dory and friends swimming along Broadway.Bay Area audiences can't be surprised that A Chorus Line is proving to be a solid hit on Broadway. We saw the out-of-town preview, so we got a taste of what the new cast had to offer in this lively carbon copy version of the 1975 hit. With any luck, our next big pre-Broadway show, Legally Blonde, will be equally as exciting. We were also the first to see Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, and though the show that ended up on Broadway was pretty different than what we saw, it should be no surprise that the always charming Short found his audience. Though the show is closing in early January, it had a respectable run.When I head to New York, the shows I most want to see are the musicals Grey Gardens and Spring Awakening and Tom Stoppard's play cycle The Coast of Utopia at Lincoln Center. Can't imagine any of those will head for the Bay Area in 2007, but we can dream, can't we? Really wish I could have seen Meryl Streep in Mother Courage in Central Park.So what Broadway hits might actually be making their way toward the Bay Area? There's no confirmation of anything, but we might expect the musical The Color Purple to wend our way.Looking ahead, there are a couple shows blinking brightly off in the distance. One is a legitimate source of excitement. Angela Lansbury returns to Broadway in Terrence McNally's Deuce alongside Marian Seldes. The other is a warning sign pointing toward the May Broadway debut of Xanadu: The Musical, which features songs from the flop 1980 Olivia Newton-John movie of the same name. Rumors have Jane Krakowski, Cheyenne Jackson and Ben Vereen reprising roles they performed in workshops of the new musical.