African Continuum Loses New Artistic Director

Ambush said he hopes African Continuum "can recover from the current situation and I hope they'll be around for a long time, and I wish them well."

'Tollbooth' Stop

Famed Broadway lyricist Sheldon Harnick is in town to tweak the stage adaptation of "The Phantom Tollbooth," Norton Juster's 1961 kid-lit classic. In the mid-1990s, Harnick collaborated with Juster on adapting the fable, and the late composer and violinist Arnold Black wrote the music. Harnick and Juster have been polishing it ever since.

"I hope that this gets done and people get to know Arnie's music," he says during a rehearsal at the Kennedy Center, where the world premiere of the show, using seven actors, runs in the Family Theater Friday through Dec. 16.

The award-winning wordsmith ("Fiddler on the Roof," "She Loves Me," "Fiorello) speaks fondly of the "quirkiness" of his friend's "Tollbooth" score. "There's incidental music that is unusual for a musical. It is whimsical, but sometimes odd," Harnick says.

Black, a onetime assistant concertmaster of the Baltimore Symphony and the National Symphony Orchestra, liked to add witty annotations, such as "stealthando," recalls Harnick, smiling.

The piece began as an opera for kids, but Harnick says the co-creators decided it would work better as a musical. He set about simplifying lyrics and cutting out recitative (sung dialogue). After Black's death in 2000, Harnick got permission from the composer's widow to pare the score and narrow the vocal ranges for music theater styles.

"If there is an American equivalent to 'Alice in Wonderland,' 'The Phantom Tollbooth' is it," Harnick says. In Juster's fantasy, a little boy, Milo, shakes off the doldrums when he rides his toy car through a magical tollbooth in his bedroom and travels to cities full of folk who are mad for math or wowed by words. Milo must escape demons and rescue the princesses Rhyme and Reason.

Writing lyrics for a children's piece requires a "more slender" vocabulary, Harnick says, but not one devoid of unusual words or ideas. When Milo encounters the lazy "Lethargarians," they sing, "From 4 to 6 we dawdle and delay, and put off 'til tomorrow what we could do today. At 6 we loaf, at 8 we dine, then it's off to bed at 9. Another vigorous, rigorous, rich full day in the dol-- , in the dol-- , in the doldrums!"

Says Harnick, "Kids are sharp; anything that's overwritten or unnecessary bores them."

Follow Spots

¿ Shakespeare Theatre Company Managing Director Nicholas T. Goldsborough announced he will step down next month to start a consulting firm. Goldsborough guided the capital campaign that led to the recent opening of the $89 million Sidney Harman Hall. Before coming to the Shakespeare in 2002, Goldsborough was CEO of the Music Center in Los Angeles and managed projects at Carnegie Hall, New York City Opera and Lincoln Center Theatre.

¿ The Helen Hayes Awards organization is seeking "well-versed and knowledgeable" volunteers to serve three-year terms as judges. The application deadline is Monday. Visit http://www.helenhayes.org or e-mail William Spates at wspates@helenhayes.org.

¿ The deadline for writers to submit 10-minute plays to be considered for the Source Festival (June 21-July 13, 2008) has been extended to Dec. 7. Submission fees have been waived, with new underwriting from the Kennedy Center's National Playwriting Program. Fees already received will be refunded. The plays selected will be announced April 7. Visit http://www.sourcedc.org.