In any event, it meant that all four Best Musical nominees opened in the final three weeks of the season. Though freely adapted by playwright/critic Michael Feingold, to my mind, when a show opens and all its credited writers are dead, it's hard to think of it as new. In an odd decision, the Tony nominating committee declared Happy End eligible for what really was an unnecessary fourth slot for Best Musical and not Best Revival (which happened to be the first year that category was brought into existence).
It starred Meryl Streep, in her first musical role on the New York stage, and Christopher Lloyd.
Closing there on April 30th, it was rushed uptown to make the Tony deadline, opening at the Martin Beck Theatre (now the Al Hirschfeld) just seven days later. This Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht/Elisabeth Hauptmann musical, was first performed in Germany in 1929, and originated in Brooklyn at the Academy of Music. engagement, replaced by Paul Sorvino, which turned out to be the finish when Schwartz and book writer Joseph Stein (of Fiddler on the Roof fame), requested/begged that producer David Merrick not bring the show to Broadway.Īdding to this wealth of good fortune was a fourth musical, Happy End, that opened on May 7th (the Tony deadline was the next night). Topol (a pain in the ass if there ever was one) was sent packing at the end of its Washington, D.C. Despite a fine score, the show never coalesced during its grueling six months on the road that saw two directors, two choreographers and three leading ladies come and go (its last one a pre- Evita Patti LuPone, who continues to this day to sing Schwartz’s glorious “Meadowlark” at concerts). It was to star Topol (the forever Tevye due to his casting in the 1971 film of Fiddler on the Roof) and Carole Demas, who had originated the role of Sandy in Grease. Earlier in the season, there had been high hopes for The Baker’s Wife, composer Stephen Schwartz’s follow up to his first three hits Godspell, Pippin and The Magic Show. Music Is, yet another adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, had been panned by five of the six major newspapers and closed in a week about as likely a nominee for Best Musical in 1977 as The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical in 2020.
Charles brownell photograph goodspeed opera house series#
Due to a series of circumstances, only one eligible show had opened. As the 1976–77 Tony Award season drew to a close, the gossip on the Rialto was that it might mark the first year there would be no nominees for Best Musical.
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