Cocktail Party Fact: Stephen Schwartz wrote a musical in college called Pippin Pippin. He was shopping it around to New York producers when he was hired instead to write a score for the already running Godspell. It wasn’t until a couple years later that Pippin Pippin was produced — with a whole new script (by someone else), a mostly new score, and half its title cut. Pippin helped director Bob Fosse win his legendary trifecta: Winning a Tony for Pippin, an Oscar for Cabaret, and an Emmy for Liza With A Z, all in one year. MORE…

Cocktail Party Fact: The musical Passion is based on the 1981 Italian film Passione d’Amore, which is based on the 1869 novel Fosca by Iginio Ugo Tarchetti (the English translation was retitled Passion). Passion was first intended to be a one-act musical, to be paired with another one-act musical about the body-building business (to be called Muscle), two shows about different kinds of obsession. But Passion kept getting bigger and bigger and finally became a full-length musical on its own, though still without an intermission. Another interesting tidbit — the original novel was highly autobiographical — almost everything that happens to Giorgio Bachetti, the central character, actually happened to the author Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, who died before finishing the book. MORE…

Cocktail Party Fact: In 1944, the young Leonard Bernstein collaborated with an unknown dancer and choreographer named Jerome Robbins on a ballet about three sailors on shore leave called Fancy Free. It was such a critical success, they turned to two friends who had never written anything but smart revue songs and sketches to create a musical from the ballet. The two friends, Betty Comden and Adolph Green went on to write the screenplay for Singin’ In The Rain among other classic MGM musicals, and a dozen Broadway musicals which are marked with their trademark blend of wisecracks and sentiment. MORE…

Cocktail Party Fact: When Oliver! opened, New York was in the midst of a protracted newspaper strike, so no one would have had the opportunity to read the rave notices had the seven New York newspapers allowed the publication of FIRSTNITE, which printed reviews by their drama critics. Another fun fact is that the Artful Dodger was played in the original company by child actor David Jones who became somewhat better known as Davey Jones of the Monkees. Barry Humphries, also in the original cast, has achieved a different kind of fame, as Dame Edna Everidge, his regal Australian drag creation who has convulsed the United Kingdom for years. MORE…

Cocktail Party Fact: The original title was Away We Go and there are many stories about how just about everyone in the theater thought this was a flop out of town. The Variety review is still famous to this day. Faced with the homespun nature of the material, and used to seeing a bevy of chorus girls coming out in the first number instead of a lone cowboy, he wrote: “No Girls — No Legs — No chance.” Oscar Hammerstein, who had nothing but failure before the show for almost ten years, responded to the acclaim in a wonderfully cynical way; he took out an ad in Variety which listed his last eleven shows before Oklahoma! which were all flops. Underneath the list he wrote “I’ve Done It Before And I Can Do It Again!” MORE…

Cocktail Party Fact: Before approaching Lerner and Loewe to write the score, the producers had offered it to practically every other writer of musicals - including Noel Coward, Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hammerstein. All turned them down. Hammerstein’s reason was that he felt that the original play, Shaw’s Pygmalion wasn’t a love story. My Fair Lady wasn’t the original title: It was My Lady Liza. My Fair Lady had already been used by the Gershwins for the working title of a 1925 musical which became Tell Me More when it came to New York. MORE…

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 the role should go to an Asian actor. Mackintosh would not be bullied, so he announced he would not open the show in New York and would refund the advance ticket sales. The protesters backed down and Pryce was allowed to open the show. MORE…

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 first time around. The second adaptation, The Matchmaker was a huge success, both in London and on Broadway. It was subsequently made into a film. Like many hits, Dolly was in trouble on the road. It has been suggested that a few of the numbers such as “Ribbons Down My Back” and “Elegance,” were the work of other hands, and the names Harnick and Bock and Bob Merrill often mentioned. MORE…

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 organizations operate only seasonally.) Please check back in the future, as our calendar is updated daily and new events are posted as soon as they are received. Thank you. MORE…

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 Wide Wickets. Ponty has a book called How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which offers a simple step-by-step process for moving up the corporate ladder without any genuine effort or talent. The show draws a corporate world so complicated, corrupt, and large that it’s possible to lie and cheat your way to the top without ever getting caught. It’s this detail that makes the story of How to Succeed possible. Finch learns from the book that his greatest advantage is the knowledge of what a lumbering giant the modern corporation is. Everyone at World Wide Wickets is a monster, an incompetent, or both, all trying to get what they want no matter how much they step on others in the process. Finch is in many ways just as big a monster as the executives he tramples, but because those he dupes are unprincipled jerks, we enjoy seei ng them get what we think they deserve. Finch is amoral and unethical, but we still love watching his triumphs as he methodically makes his way to the top. MORE…