The Day Before Spring

The Day Before Spring
Music Frederick Loewe
Lyrics Alan Jay Lerner
Book Alan Jay Lerner
Productions 1945 Broadway

The Day Before Spring is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe.

Productions

The 1945 touring production closed in Chicago after three days due to a crippling coal strike.[1] The show then opened at the Shubert Theatre, Boston, Massachusetts on October 30, 1945, with the Billboard Magazine critic writing "Lerner and Loewe look like potential supermen."[2]

The musical opened on Broadway on November 22, 1945 at the National Theatre, and closed on April 13, 1946 after 167 performances. Directed by Edward Padula and choreographed by Antony Tudor, the cast included Lucille Benson, John Archer, Bert Freed, Irene Manning, and William Johnson.

The show was performed in July 2007 by the York Theatre Company in New York City as part of their Mufti Theatre series. The York staged concert starred Hunter Bell, Amanda Watkins, Richard Todd Adams, Edward Watts and Tia Speros.[3] The restoration of the show was undertaken by musical supervisors Aaron Gandy, Mark York and director David Glenn Armstrong and included material that had been missing since the show closed on Broadway in 1946. A treasure trove of material was bought by the Library of Congress in 1999 which filled the missing holes in the score. [4]

In 2010 the Lost Musicals project (The Lost Musicals Charitable Trust 1069268) presented The Day Before Spring in Sadler's Wells, London. Ian Marshall Fisher, director, Chris Walker, Music Director. Cast included: Madeline Worrall, David Habin, Harry Landis, Kaisa Hammarlund, Henry Luxemburg. This was the UK premier featuring all of the songs as found in the recent discovery of the original piano conductor score.[5][6]

Plot overview

The plot concerns a married woman who, at a college reunion, meets the man with whom she almost eloped ten years before. Romantically stirred by a novel he has written about her, she considers leaving her husband and reuniting with her former flame.

Song list

Act I
  • "The Day Before Spring" - Katherine
  • The invitation - Bill
  • "God's Green World"
  • "You Haven't Changed at All" - Katherine and Alex
  • "My Love Is a Married Man" - Christopher
  • "The Day Before Spring" - Katherine and Alex
  • Ballet of the book according to Alex
  • Katherine receives advice - Freud, Plato, Voltaire
  • Finale - Katherine and ensemble
Act II
  • "Friends to the End" - Bill, Joe, Harry, Gerald, and alumni
  • "A Jug of Wine" - Christopher
  • The Book
  • "Where's My Wife?" - Peter and ensemble
  • "This is My Holiday" - Katherine
  • Ballet of the book according to Gerald
  • Finale - Principals and company

References

  1. ↑ Pullen, Doug. "Wayne Lamb: still hoofing after all these years," Arts and Entertainment, Kalamazoo Gazette, August 11, 1985
  2. ↑ Pearson, Barbara. "Out-of-Town Openings:'The Day Before Spring'" Billboard Magazine, November 10, 1945, p. 38
  3. ↑ Gans, Andrew. "Mufti’s 'Day Before Spring', with Watkins, Adams and Bell, Begins York Run July 27" playbill.com, July 2007
  4. ↑ Robertson, Campbell. "Like Brigadoon, the Music Had Vanished" The New York Times, July 27, 2007
  5. ↑ Shenton, Mark. "London's Lost Musicals Returns for 20th Year; Lerner and Loewe's 'The Day Before Spring' Planned" Playbill, February 25, 2010
  6. ↑ Darvell, Michael. "Lost Musicals: Lerner & Loewe’s 'The Day Before Spring'" classicalsource.com, June 20, 2010
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/29/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.