'Paddington' stage musical to pack its marmalade sandwiches and travel to Broadway

NEW YORK (AP) — The marmalade-loving, Peruvian emigree bear Paddington is on the move again. Next stop, Broadway. "Paddington The Musical" will play the Al Hirschfeld Theatre starting in March after wowing critics in London and winning seven Olivier Awards earlier this year, including best new musical. "The excitement around the show and the sort of joy that it seems to be bringing people has put wind in our sails and marmalade in our suitcases," says director Luke Sheppard. The move is not entirely unexpected. During the Tony Awards' opening number, a Paddington stuffie was brought out by Neil Patrick Harris, to which host Pink responded, "Maybe next season." "Spoilers!" Harris said. Based on Michael Bond's children stories, "Paddington The Musical" was written by playwright Jessica Swale and songwriter and author Tom Fletcher of the band McFly. Paddington has been having a revival thanks to three successful movies and an onscreen appearance with Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, just weeks before her death. The bear recently graced the cover of Rolling Stone in the U.K. "The films I think have looked after him brilliantly and allowed him to find an identity that lives in this moment and speaks to new audiences," says Sheppard. "We're very proud to be the sort of the next custodian of him." The musical's plot is about this orphaned bear who goes to London and is taken in by a kind family. He learns how to handle his neighbors and new city but they also learn about his big heart. "Kindness is never complicated" is one of the show's lyrics. "If we're doing something it's trying to spread kindness and that is such a simple thing that sometimes can feel quite difficult," says Fletcher, adds there's a message of welcoming immigrants and strangers also baked into the musical. "What's really special about Paddington is that coming from Peru to London looking for a home, looking for family, that's a very real story for a lot of people," he says. Fletcher has leaned on his musical influences — everything from the Beatles and Queen to the Sherman Brothers and Alan Menken — for a score that reflects modern London's varied and diverse sounds. Paddington — like his precious marmalade — is a national treasure in England but both are less well known in the United States, so the creative team will "get back under the hood" and see what tweaks they may need for a New York run. "We're going to take this opportunity not to fundamentally change anything but to consider this a chance to fine-tune and hone and upgrade," Swale says. Its Olivier wins included a joint best actor in a musical award for James Hameed and Arti Shah, who together play the title role. Hameed provides the voice and remote puppetry, while Shah — the first woman to win a best actor Olivier — inhabits the bear costume onstage. The New York Post called it "a mesmerizing fur de force" while The Guardian said "This is the new 'Mary Poppins:' a well-known story imaginatively staged, immaculately performed and utterly winning." It's creators were pleased to find out that 40% of the audience for "Paddington The Musical" in London was first-time theatergoers and hopes to replicate that on Broadway, perhaps turning on a generation to live theater. "Most stories are about a little girl or an old man or a very specific type of human and so an audience will naturally gravitate to someone who looks like them," says Sheppard. "And yet we've got a bear who somehow becomes an Everyman and so his story really has something for everybody."