UPDATED with Woody Allen response: The Goodspeed Opera House, the storied Connecticut nonprofit that launched Annie and has been a prominent showcase for musical theater talent for more than four decades, announced this afternoon it was canceling an upcoming production of Bullets Over Broadway in response to the resurgence of allegations that Woody Allen had inappropriate sexual contact with Mia Farrow’s daughter Dylan.
Allen has denied the allegations and insisted that they were retaliation by his former lover for his relationship with another of Farrow’s daughters, Soon-Yi Previn, to whom he has been married for more than two decades. The subject has divided family members, colleagues and fans of both Allen and Farrow in increasingly public allegations from both sides.
Bullets was Allen’s musical adaptation of his 1994 film comedy; staged by Susan Stroman, it ran just 156 performances on Broadway in the spring and summer of 2014.
“After careful consideration and conversations with community members, trustees, staff and artists, we have decided to cancel our production of Bullets Over Broadway,” explained Goodspeed Executive Director Michael Gennaro. “In light of the current dialogue on sexual harassment and misconduct, the author of Bullets Over Broadway, Woody Allen, has come under increasing scrutiny.
“Ongoing reports in the media have made this situation even more difficult and complicated and this led us to reconsider the appropriateness of producing the show,” Gennaro continued. “I believe this is the right decision for Goodspeed to make as an organization and we are pleased to be able to produce The Drowsy Chaperone as a welcome addition to our season.”
The Drowsy Chaperone will run September 21-November 25, 2018.
Woody Allen did not directly respond to the Goodspeed’s move. Leslee Dart, his longtime spokeswoman, instead reiterated his response to all of the new stories about his relationship with Dylan:
“When this claim was first made more than 25 years ago, it was thoroughly investigated by both the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of the Yale-New Haven Hospital and New York State Child Welfare. They both did so for many months and independently concluded that no molestation had ever taken place…But even though the Farrow family is cynically using the opportunity afforded by the Time’s Up movement to repeat this discredited allegation, that doesn’t make it any more true today than it was in the past. I never molested my daughter – as all investigations concluded a quarter of a century ago.”
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