Breaking News: DOCTOR ZHIVAGO Will Arrive at the Broadway Theatre This Spring!

As BroadwayWorld first reported, the new Broadway musical DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, based on Boris Pasternak's Nobel Prize-winning 20th-century epic Russian masterpiece, will begin performances on Friday, March 27, 2015, and open on Tuesday, April 21, 2015 at the Broadway Theatre (1681 Broadway). This sweeping musical romance, which revolves around five intertwined lovers set against a panoramic portrait of a nation in upheaval, is directed by two-time Tony Award winner Des McAnuff (Jersey Boys), with a book by Academy Award nominee Michael Weller (Ragtime), music by Grammy Award winner and Tony Award nominee Lucy Simon (The Secret Garden), lyrics by Tony Award nominee Michael Korie (Grey Gardens) and Emmy Award nominee Amy Powers (Ella Enchanted), and choreography by Tony Award nominee Kelly Devine (Rocky). DOCTOR ZHIVAGO will be produced on Broadway by Anita Waxman, Tom Dokton, Latitude Link, Ted Hartley/RKO Stage and Chunsoo Shin, with Joe Corcoran, J. Todd Harris, The Pelican Group and John Frost. Junkyard Dog Productions is the executive producer of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. Casting to be announced soon.

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO will feature scenic design by Michael Scott-Mitchell (Wagner's Ring Cycle), costume design by five-time Tony Award nominee Paul Tazewell (Memphis), lighting design by Tony Award winner Howell Binkley (Jersey Boys), sound design by Tony Award winner Steve Canyon Kennedy (700 Sundays), projection design by Sean Nieuwenhuis (Jesus Christ Superstar), with orchestrations by Danny Troob, music arrangements by Eric Stern and musical supervision by Ron Melrose.

The first block of tickets for DOCTOR ZHIVAGO go on sale Monday, November 10, 2014, and will be available for performances from Friday, March 27, 2015, through March 6, 2016.

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO is an epic romance set during the final days of Czarist Russia, the First World War and the chaos of the Russian revolution. Raised as an aristocrat, Zhivago is a political idealist, physician and poet whose life is tossed by the tides of history as he is torn between a life with his devoted wife, Tonia Gromeko and the passionate and mysterious Lara Guishar. Zhivago is not alone in his yearnings for Lara, competing for her affections with the young revolutionary Pasha Antipov, and the aristocrat Viktor Komarovsky. DOCTOR ZHIVAGO celebrates the strength of love and art, in the face of political oppression, war and revolution.

"DOCTOR ZHIVAGO has a profound and exquisite intimacy" said director Des McAnuff, "The story is about five people - three men in love with one woman and two women in love with one man. While they are so close to us that we can reach out and touch them, they also live out their lives over a vast stretch of Russian history from the streets of Moscow to the icy slopes of the Ural Mountains. The heart of our story is the discovery that love through art can survive even the most unimaginably violent and turbulent times. Working on this has given us all on the team the kind of emotional inspiration that we hope to pass on to New York audiences. The story of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO is just as pertinent today as it was fifty years ago. It continues to advance on the edge of time."

"I have always had a very personal feeling about Boris Pasternak's novel and a tremendous respect for the David Lean film. Before I even started thinking it might be possible to write a musical based on this work, I reread the novel three times. Only after I grasped the significance of the last chapter, "The Poems of Yurii Zhivago," did I see a way forward," said composer Lucy Simon, "After completing the prose novel, Pasternak wrote 25 poems - poems that Zhivago had been in the process of creating throughout the novel. If read by themselves, the poems capture the novel and retell it in a different form. That concept of being able to reduce the size of the novel by translating into another language - music - was my thrilling challenge. Also igniting my interest was the discovery that DOCTOR ZHIVAGO is more than a story about love and revolution. It is a novel about the irreducible force of creation rising from the ashes of revolution - a creation that continues and informs the future."

"I have always felt that DOCTOR ZHIVAGO is the most passionate, emotional and romantic love story ever told," said producer Anita Waxman. "When I first heard Lucy Simon's soaring score I felt emotionally connected in a way I've never felt before to a piece of musical theatre. Following the great success of the Australian production, Des and the team continue to refine their work in preparation for ZHIVAGO's Broadway bow. We are thrilled to be offered the Broadway Theatre to bring Lucy's gorgeous score, Michael Korie and Amy Powers' exquisite lyrics and Michael Weller's rich adaptation of this compelling story to New York audiences."

In 1955 Boris Pasternak finished writing DOCTOR ZHIVAGO and after many months of silence and rejection from publishers in the Soviet Union, a manuscript of the novel was smuggled into Italy where it was first published in 1957. In 1958 Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature which infuriated the Soviet Union's Communist Party as they felt the spirit of his most successful novel, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, was offensive in its depiction of the October Revolution and the aftermath as a chaotic disaster. With the aid of The United States, copies of the novel were smuggled into the USSR so the country's citizens could read Pasternak's epic masterpiece about their homeland during the dawning of the 20th Century. In 1965 David Lean's critically-acclaimed film adaption of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO won five Academy Awards and starred Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Geraldine Chaplin and Tom Courtenay. Adjusted for inflation, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO is the 8th highest grossing film of all time.

The musical received its world premiere, directed by Des McAnuff with a creative team that included Michael Weller, Lucy Simon, Michael Korie and Amy Powers, in California at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2006. In 2011, a revised DOCTOR ZHIVAGO opened to critical acclaim at the Lyric Theatre in Sydney.