Postwar ‘Paris’
Ballet veterans command lead roles in updated dance musical set in 1945
With balletic movements, Gershwin melodies and complex characters, “An American in Paris” celebrates and updates the romantic dance musical.
The touring production of the Broadway hit will open Tuesday at the Ohio Theatre.
Playwright Craig Lucas adapted “An American in Paris” from the 1951 Oscar-winning film starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron.
“Everyone has such respect for the movie — set in the 1950s, when most audiences wanted a
Technicolor, feel-good, glossed-over take — but we felt the movie was a little outdated,” associate directorchoreographer Dontee Kiehn said.
“Lucas takes a more natural and realistic view of what these people would have been going through,” she said.
William K. Lanman was the president of Columbus Bolt Works, once one of Columbus’ biggest manufacturers.
The company originated in the 19th century as a supplier of parts for wagons and, in the 20th century, shifted to cars and airplanes.
In the 1950s, the Bolt Works (by then called Columbus Bolt and Forging) employed 1,300 people and spanned 15 acres near the old Ohio Penitentiary.
Lanman’s son, William Jr., was a decorated World War II aviator who was later commissioned a colonel. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery and is remembered at Yale University, his alma mater, as a generous benefactor.
That’s just a little of the history represented by 2015 W. 5th Avenue, the endangered Marble Cliff mansion built in 1908 for the Lanman family.
Here’s more: The structure was designed by Frank Packard, surely the most influential architect throughout Columbus’ history.
He or his firm, Yost & Packard, designed Orton Hall, home of the chimes at Ohio State University. The architects also designed the pagoda-shaped Toledo & Ohio Central Railroad Station on W. Broad Street and the Old Governor’s Mansion on E. Broad Street.
They also get credit for the Sells “Circus House” in Victorian Village, the Seneca Hotel Downtown and Franklin County Memorial Hall (the former Downtown home of COSI Columbus).
Eliminating a Frank Packard building wouldn’t be the most egregious demolition in Columbus history. The home of Lucas Sullivant, the city’s founding father, was razed to make way for a car dealership, for heaven’s sake.
But tearing down the mansion would certainly belong