Hey Mr. Producer!(Review)

• Author: ROTHENBERG, ROBERT S.

Hey Mr. Producer! Columbia Tristar Home Video / 164 minutes / $24.95

This 1998 tribute to theatrical producer Cameron Mackintosh was somewhat immodestly billed as "The World's Greatest Concert of Musicals." After viewing the video of the evening's festivities, you might agree with the hyperbole. Taking the stage of London's Lyceum Theatre to salute Mackintosh's 30-year career were more than two dozen stars of the Broadway and London stage and over 200 singers, dancers, and musicians, many of them joyously reprising the roles that made them famous, others stepping seamlessly into numbers that they probably had rehearsed but a handful of times.

The name Cameron Mackintosh might not be all that familiar to non-theater buffs, but even they could hardly have failed to hear of the musicals he produced over three decades: "My Fair Lady," "Cats," "Les Miserables," "The Phantom of the Opera," "Miss Saigon," and "Oliver," as well as British productions of such American smash hits as "Oklahoma," "Carousel," and "Little Shop of Horrors." Equally distinguished is the roster of international stars performing numbers from those musicals: Bernadette Peters, Jonathan Pryce, Judi Dench, Ron Moody, Elaine Page, Lea Salonga, and Colm Wilkinson, as well as a host of other lesser-known, but highly talented...