Breath Mints

The Pikes Peak Center and Broadway Across America hosted a little schmoozefest on Wednesday at McCabe’s. It wasn’t an arm-twisting affair, consisting mostly of video of talking heads praising the shows.

The coming season looks good, considering what’s touring these days: “Mamma Mia,” Ted Neeley’s farewell tour of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Aida,” and “The Producers,” which was on last season’s schedule but got postponed because the tour was shut down when the movie went into production. (The season opener, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” — a show I fervently hope never to have to see again — has already come and gone.)

It will be interesting to see how elaborate “Aida” and “The Producers” are — the versions that appeared at the Denver Center were among the most opulent roadshows I’ve ever seen.

There was also a small goodie bag, containing such trinkets as a “Producers” calculator and a few songs from “Mamma Mia.” My favorite was a package of “Aida” breath mints. In both Verdi’s opera and Disney’s musical, the fate of Aida and Radames is to be sealed alive in an airtight crypt. There's something perversely amusing about the juxtaposition of hideous death by suffocation and breath mints.