“Damn Yankees,” the 1950 musical about a baseball fan who makes a Faustian bargain to support his beloved team, will return to Broadway this spring with Neil Patrick Harris as the Devil.
Harris will star alongside Julianne Hough as Lola, an immortal who works with the Devil (known on the show as Applegate), and Austin Scott as young Joe Hardy, the show’s protagonist.
The restoration was announced on Sunday afternoon at rain-soaked Yankee Stadium, where players fielded questions from reporters and social media in the press room.
The production was meant to make a statement, with Harris, wearing a smoky jacket, wearing a first-pitch swing; singing the national anthem of the Scots; and Hough gracefully delivering the dances of the fools to the caddy mound. But Mother Nature had other ideas, and the game was canceled after a rain delay of nearly three hours. So the actors for the clubs posed for stage pictures with the players, including Yankees superstar Aaron Judge, and put on a fun show during the news conference.
“I’ve done more things that were more, and I’ve never done a big Broadway musical, with a big audience and a big number of dancers, and I always wanted to,” says Harris, adding that “it’s always good to play someone devilish — it’s always fun to be offensive.”
The production has strong ties to the baseball industry: One of the lead producers of the show is Haley Swindal, the eldest son of George Steinbrenner, who not only owned the Yankees, but also produced himself on Broadway (Applause”, “Seesaw” and other shows. Thanks to Swindal’s agent, the baseball major was signed as a partner with the production arm, MLB Studios).
“Both of my worlds will collide,” Swindal said in the interview. “I love that there’s opera music that beats baseball.”
He said Major League Baseball has already consulted with the production team, helping to ensure that the visual representations of the game, including the uniforms, are authentic. The alliance is also expected to promote production.
The show plans to begin previews on March 24 and open on April 20 at the Marquis Theater, where the last revival of “Damn Yankees” opened in 1994. This new version had an initial year with another cast on the scene in Washington.
The musical, with songs by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, is a classic of Broadway’s golden age. The original production won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1956, and a film adaptation was released in 1956. The musical is based on the novel, “The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant,” by Douglass Wallop, who wrote the musical book with the original director, George Abbott.
Some of the show’s dialogue and lyrics haven’t aged well — sexism is baked into the libretto — and this update looks like a new adaptation from writers Will Power and Doug Wright (Pulczer Prize-winning author of “I Am My Wife”). Lynn Ahrens, the legendary lyricist of “Ragtime,” “Once Upon a Time on This Island” and other shows, gently updated the songs with the blessing of the heirs of the original writers.
Members of the recreation’s creative team said they hope this latest version, while still very similar to the original, will better reflect professional baseball as it is in the United States today. The show’s setting was relocated from mid-century Washington to Baltimore in 2000; Joe, a white Washington Senators fan in the original, is now Black and a Baltimore Orioles fan. (In both versions, the Yankees dominate the opponent, mentioned in the title).
Harris, who is best known for his television shows including “Doogie Howser, M.D.” and “How I Met Your Mother,” has won five Emmy Awards. He is a Tony winner for “Hedwige and the Angry Inch,” and most recently appeared on Broadway in last year’s revival of “The Art.”
Hough, who won an Emmy Award for “Chorus Stars,” will star in the 2022 Broadway play “Drink.”
Scott starred in three Broadway musicals, including “And Juliet” and “The Girl from the North Country.” He played the title role in “Hamilton” in 2019.
“Damn Yankees” will be directed and choreographed by Sergio Trujillo (“Nothing Too Proud”). The producing team is led by Lia Vollack (“MJ: The Music”); Julie Boardman, Founder of the Broadway Museum, and Swindal. The show is capitalized at $18.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, although the filing also says the budget could grow to more than $21.5 million.