Broadway’s Smash Temptations Musical ‘Ain’t Too Proud’ Sets 2020 National Tour Launch
Ain’t Too Proud – The Life and Times of The Temptations, one of this Broadway season’s unqualified hits, will launch a national tour next year of more than 50 cities and 100 touring weeks, producers Ira Pittelman and Tom Hulce announced today.
The coast-to-coast tour of Ain’t Too Proud will kick off at the Providence Performing Arts Center in Providence, Rhode Island, in July 2020, and will include a “homecoming” stop in Detroit, and a return to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
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In a statement, Pittelman and Hulce said, “We have been so blown away by the reception for Ain’t Too Proud – not only on Broadway, but also from our pre-Broadway engagements – that we can’t wait to bring the show back to audiences across America. Feedback from cities we have already been to has been extraordinary.”
One of those pre-Broadway runs was at the Kennedy Center, but in the complex’s smaller Eisenhower Theater. When Ain’t Too Proud returns for Christmas 2021, it will play the Kennedy’s largest venue, the Opera House.
The jukebox musical includes not only Temptations hits but a selection of other Motown classics, including a Supremes medley. The Broadway production is up for 12 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Performance by a Leading Actor/musical (Derrick Baskin), two nominations for Best Performance by a Featured Actor/musical (Jeremy Pope & Ephraim Sykes), and Best Direction/musical (Des McAnuff).
The musical began previews at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre on Feb. 28, opened on March 21, and quickly became a smash. With hits like “My Girl,” “Just My Imagination” and “Papa Was A Rolling Stone,” the crowd-pleaser routinely grosses more than $1M a week. The most recent figures, provided by the Broadway League, for the week ending May 31 saw the usual sell-out house, with a gross of $1.6M.
Casting for the touring production was not announced.
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