Spellbound

The Witches of Eastwick, by composer Dana Rowe and author-lyricist John Dempsey, is the next London West End show by Cameron Mackintosh, the British producer known for a string of world-straddling hits, most notably Cats, Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera and Miss Saigon.

Mackintosh has hailed Rowe and Dempsey as "the most talented young composer-lyricist team in America" in interviews with Variety, the U.S. trade weekly for the entertainment industry.

And Mackintosh is putting his (and other backers') money where his mouth is. At a projected cost of $7 million, Witches will be the most expensive London production of Mackintosh's three-decade career.

"When someone invests that much money in a project, you feel responsible," Rowe said recently from London.

"But I have to be honest. We haven't let that be a part of this process. If you think about that sort of thing, you aren't addressing the task at hand: to write a good show. A piece like this has its own life force, and Witches has evolved tremendously since we started writing it a couple of years ago in my New York apartment."

Set in the tiny New England community of Eastwick, Witches focuses on three modern-day witches who innocently plot and conjure over a heady brew of weak martinis and peanut-butter brownies. When a devilish stranger arrives in town, their fantasies are made flesh.

Rowe and Dempsey, who conceived the show three years ago, say they based their musical comedy in equal parts on the John Updike novel, the 1987 Warner Bros. film and their own imagination.

Jack Nicholson, Susan Sarandon, Michele Pfeiffer and Cher starred in the film. In the London musical production, Ian McShane (Lovejoy) plays the devilish visitor, with Lucie Arnaz and two award-winning British actresses (Maria Friedman and Joanna Riding) as the witches.

"To have one dazzling leading man, three wonderful leading ladies, and so many subcharacters was very attractive to put into musical form," Rowe said.

He and Dempsey moved to England in April to polish the score and be available for last-minute changes during rehearsals.

As an American musical comedy, Witches represents a change of pace for Mackintosh. Although he has produced several dozen London and Broadway hits -- from revivals of Oliver! and Oklahoma! to Carol Burnett's recent Broadway stint in Stephen Sondheim's Putting It Together -- he is best-known for spectacle-filled musical dramas by English or French composer-lyricists.

Whether The Witches of Eastwick will become a blockbuster on the rarefied scale of a Cats, a Les Miz or a Phantom won't be known until after the musical opens Tuesday. Preview performances, which began June 24, reportedly are going well.

The musical has so many elaborate sets and special effects that it could fit only into the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, the largest theater in London's West End. Original productions of Oklahoma!, The King and I, A Chorus Line and other classics ran for years there. Mackintosh closed Miss Saigon there last fall after 10 years to allow time for renovations before Witches moved in.

Although Witches reportedly includes elaborate flying and magic tricks, Mackintosh has not used any flying helicopters (Miss Saigon) or rotating barricades (Les Miz).

"He gave warning that it was not going to be one of his normal shows," Dempsey said. "Cameron thinks our forte is show-biz, razzmatazz stuff, and he encouraged us to veer as far away as we could from what he's normally associated with.

"You can take huge risks with a new show, but when Cameron's name is on it, you have to make sure that people know what they're getting. Witches is not Miss Saigon on Rhode Island, but something light, funny and frothy. That's why we punched up the opening number, Eastwick Knows, with as many jokes as we can."

Witches will be Rowe and Dempsey's fourth musical to reach the stage, following Players Youth Theatre Columbus' 1989 production of The Reluctant Dragon, a 1993 Florida production of Zombie Prom (which reached off-Broadway in 1996) and The Fix, which had an acclaimed U.S. premiere in 1998 at Virginia's Signature Theatre after its 1997 debut, which was nominated for an Olivier award (the British equivalent of the Tony), at London's Donmar Warehouse.

"The Fix was more rock-oriented, but Witches has wonderful, passionate songs with real book scenes," Rowe said.

Mackintosh produced The Fix and Witches after being impressed by Rowe and Dempsey's eclectic score for Zombie Prom.

During the past decade, Rowe and Dempsey have learned to trust their daily writing process. Dempsey usually presents the lyrics first in an outline to Rowe, who then sets the lyrics to music.

"Then he makes changes, then I make changes," Rowe said.

"Now that we have developed a second language between us, we work pretty hand-in-glove. It's nice that John knows what I'm thinking before I say it and vice versa. There has to be the chemistry."

Seventeen have made it into Witches previews, but others have been cut or rewritten. The men say they won't hesitate to make more changes as needed.

"We've learned to cut our little darlings, as they say," Rowe said.

Dempsey has learned an even more important lesson.

"You can't control whether people like your show or not," he said.

"The No. 1 rule is to be true to your vision. As a writer, I can try to emulate lyricists I adore, such as Stephen Sondheim or Howard Ashman (Disney's Beauty and the Beast). Ultimately, though, I can be a weak imitation of them or a good version of me."