International Theater Blazes New Trail

Variety: From two adjoining townhouses on London’s Bedford Square, theater mega-producer Cameron Mackintosh is fitting 10 musicals into a globe-spanning, seven-year plan that will land “Les Misérables” in Tokyo and “Mary Poppins” in Dubai. Over on Charing Cross Road, Ambassador Theater Group is gearing up to open the newest addition to its portfolio of venues, the Hudson Theatre on Broadway, in an expansion of a network that stretches across 38 houses in Britain, seven in the U.S., and one in Sydney. And in a warren of offices above the West End’s Duke of York’s Theatre, Sonia Friedman, one half of the transatlantic producing team behind “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” finds herself at the helm of a play that seems as likely to run in Shanghai as it does on Broadway.