Cocktail Party Fact: Miss Saigon almost didn’t open on Broadway. When producer Cameron Mackintosh brought the two London stars to New York, Lea Salonga, (Kim) and Jonathan Pryce (the Engineer), the Amerasian acting community launched an angry protest against Pryce. They complained that Pryce was not Asian but was playing an Eurasian character, and that [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Although adapted from the play by Thornton Wilder, the original version of the plot goes back to an English play from 1835 called A Day Well Spent. Several years later a German adaptation in 1842 was written by Johannes Nestroy. This was Thorton Wilder’s model for his play, which was unsuccessful the [...]

Upcoming Events
Notice for 2009 — We are now updating all of our schedules for the 2009-2010 season. We have no event listings for this organization for one of two reasons: we have requested updates and they will be added as soon as we receive them, or the organization is currently not producing events. (Many [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: How to Succeed began life as a series of articles in Playboy magazine, was then turned into a book, then a musical, and finally, a movie musical.
Here’s the Plot: This savage musical satire traces the meteoric rise of J. Pierrepont Finch (”Ponty”) from window washer to Chairman of the Board of World [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: There’s a moment late in Act I when the mean, ugly old witch drinks a potion and turns into a beautiful young woman. On Broadway, this was accomplished by substituting a double for the witch just before the transformation, using pre-recorded dialogue. Then when the flashpot went off, the actress really playing [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: After its trial run, it took Jekyll & Hyde about 7 years to reach Broadway. And before its trial performance, RCA London put out a recording of the score’s first draft featuring Colm Wilkinson as Jekyll and Hyde.

Cocktail Party Fact: Andrew Lloyd Webber and Trevor Nunn (who had directed Cats) began working on an early version of Aspects of Love in the early 1980s. Lloyd Webber decided at some point that the material was not appropriate for the story, so he stopped and turned his attention to the Phantom of the Opera, [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Meredith Willson based the musical on his own experiences growing up in Mason City, Iowa. The patented patter type rythmic songs, which we think of as unique to this show were a staple on his radio program. He also actually did play piccolo in John Philip Sousa’s marching Band.

Cocktail Party Fact: Legend has it that the genesis of this musical was Saint Subber’s observing the legendary husband and wife acting team of Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne on tour. On a far more trivial note, Kiss Me, Kate was the first American Musical Comedy to be presented in Poland. Make of that what [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: This story started out as a French play, which was adapted into a 1979 French film. The 1983 musical was based on the original play. There were two sequels to the film. And finally, the first film was remade as The Bird Cage with Robin Williams and Nathan Lane. There has been [...]