I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road | |
---|---|
Music | Nancy Ford |
Lyrics | Gretchen Cryer |
Book | Gretchen Cryer |
Productions | 1978 Off-Broadway 1981 West End Chicago 1979 Travelite Theatre 1980 Drury Lane Theater 1982 World Playhouse Los Angeles 1982 Aquarius Theater 1983 Earl Carrol Theater |
I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road is a musical with music by Nancy Ford and book and lyrics by Gretchen Cryer. The show premiered Off-Broadway in 1978.
The musical was produced by Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival at The Public Theater, opening on June 14, 1978 and closing on March 15, 1981 at the Circle-in-the-Square (Downtown)after 1165 performances. Directed by Word Baker, the musical featured Gretchen Cryer as Heather; Nancy Ford appeared later in the run as Heather, as did Betty Buckley, Virginia Vestoff, Carol Hall, Betty Aberlin and Phyllis Newman. [1]
The show also had a 1981 West End production.
The show was presented by Encores! Off-Center at New York City Center in a semi-staged production in July 2013. Directed by Kathleen Marshall, the cast featured Jennifer Sanchez, Christina Sajous and Renée Elise Goldsberry. [2]
Landi Oshinowo, a West End actress, played Heather in the production's limited run at the Off-West End Jermyn Street Theatre in July 2016. Matthew Gould served as the show's director. The show's first UK revival was with this production. [3]
The lead, Heather, is a 39-year-old divorcée attempting a comeback as a pop star. Generally considered a feminist vehicle, the plot centers on her displaying new material for her manager without relying on showbiz clichés. However, "The collaborators are emphatic that they never meant the musical to be a feminist declaration. 'We were writing about relationships between men and women, not about women’s roles in society as a whole,' explains Ford." [4]
Manager Joe Epstein returns from a trip and finds his star Heather Jones on stage at a nightclub, singing her own songs about the emancipation of women, together with the two singers Alice and Cheryl and the band. She tells Joe Epstein that this would be her new show. Joe, who has been Heather's friend for a long time, reacts angrily to Heather's change, but he is not able to persuade Heather to go back to her usual role. Almost 40 years old, she feels that the time has come for a change. Joe finds the songs she is singing now unpleasant, because they remind him of the way he treats his own wife. Heather is determined to support women's liberation; she splits up with her manager and goes on to perform her own show.
The play was parodied by Andrea Martin and Catherine O'Hara on Second City Television as "I'm Taking My Own Head, Screwing It On Right, and No Guy's Gonna Tell Me it Ain't" in 1981. [5]
Reviews were generally negative. In the New York Times, Richard Eder wrote “Self-celebration is the affliction of I'm Getting My Act. Its songs and skits spell out the conflicts—the little girl who has to smile for her daddy; the wife who has to pick up her husband's socks and talk baby talk to him; the liberated women who find that men don't much like them—with little individual perception, imagination or rigor. The lyrics, and the music, are effortless and not in the best sense of the word.” [7] Despite negative reviews, the play performed well with audiences and ran for almost three years.
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. Its official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where it was well received by both audiences and critics. Its London debut was on 3 April 1880, at the Opera Comique, where it ran for 363 performances.
Joseph Papp was an American theatrical producer and director. He established The Public Theater in what had been the Astor Library Building in Lower Manhattan. There Papp created a year-round producing home to focus on new plays and musicals. Among numerous examples of these were the works of David Rabe, Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Charles Gordone's No Place to Be Somebody, and Papp's production of Michael Bennett's Pulitzer Prize–winning musical A Chorus Line. Papp also founded Shakespeare in the Park, helped to develop other off-Broadway theatres and worked to preserve the historic Broadway Theatre District.
Sunset Boulevard is a sung-through musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, and lyrics and libretto by Don Black and Christopher Hampton. It is based on the 1950 film of the same title.
Louise Miriam "Dillie" Keane is an actress, singer and comedian. She has been a member of the comedy cabaret trio Fascinating Aïda since its 1983 inception, and has also pursued a solo career. In 1995, with Fascinating Aïda, she was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Entertainment.
Gretchen Cryer is an American playwright, lyricist, and actress. Along with Nancy Ford, she created several successful stage musicals, including Shelter, I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road, and The Last Sweet Days of Isaac.
Judy Kuhn is an American actress, singer and activist, known for her work in musical theatre. A four-time Tony Award nominee, she has released four studio albums and sang the title role in the 1995 film Pocahontas, including her rendition of the song "Colors of the Wind", which won its composers the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
Broadway Melody of 1938 is a 1937 American musical film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and directed by Roy Del Ruth. The film is essentially a backstage musical revue, featuring high-budget sets and cinematography in the MGM musical tradition. The film stars Eleanor Powell and Robert Taylor and features Buddy Ebsen, George Murphy, Judy Garland, Sophie Tucker, Raymond Walburn, Robert Benchley and Binnie Barnes.
Dreamgirls is a Broadway musical, with music by Henry Krieger and lyrics and book by Tom Eyen. Based on the show business aspirations and successes of R&B acts such as The Shirelles, James Brown, Jackie Wilson, and others, but closely follows the story of The Supremes as the musical follows the story of a young Black female singing trio from Chicago, Illinois called "The Dreams", who become music superstars.
Betty Aberlin is an American actress, poet, and writer. She is best known for playing Lady Aberlin on the children's television series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, a role she played for the entirety of the show's 33-year run.
Evil Dead The Musical is a rock musical stage play based on the Evil Dead franchise. First performed on stage in 2003 at the Tranzac club in Toronto, Ontario, the show instantly became a hit and eventually moved on to an off-Broadway run in 2006 at the New World Stages. Many regional productions of the show have been performed all over the world. Critics praised the show and one critic for The New York Times even hailed the musical as "the next The Rocky Horror Show".
Miss Hook of Holland is an English musical comedy in two acts, with music and lyrics by Paul Rubens with a book by Austen Hurgon and Rubens. The show was produced by Frank Curzon and opened at the Prince of Wales Theatre on 31 January 1907, running for a very successful 462 performances. It starred Harry Grattan and Isabel Jay.
Rip Van Winkle is an operetta in three acts by Robert Planquette. The English language libretto by Henri Meilhac, Philippe Gille and Henry Brougham Farnie was based on the short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820) and "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) by Washington Irving after the play by Dion Boucicault and Joseph Jefferson.
Tom Eyen was an American playwright, lyricist, television writer and director. He received a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Dreamgirls in 1981.
The Morosco Theatre was a Broadway theatre near Times Square in New York City from 1917 to 1982. It housed many notable productions and its demolition, along with four adjacent theaters, was controversial.
Rose of Washington Square is a 1939 American musical drama film, featuring the already well-known popular song with the same title. Set in 1920s New York City, the film focuses on singer Rose Sargent and her turbulent relationship with con artist Barton DeWitt Clinton, whose criminal activities threaten her professional success in the Ziegfeld Follies.
More Fire! Productions was a women's theatre collective active in New York City from 1980 to 1988. It was founded by Robin Epstein and Dorothy Cantwell and based in the East Village section of Lower Manhattan, New York City. More Fire! Productions created and produced eight full-length plays between 1980 and 1988, becoming known as "one of the city's leading women's theatre groups" for its contributions to the downtown, experimental theatre, and women's and lesbian theatre scenes of the 1980s. Epstein and Cantwell co-wrote, produced, and performed in the company's first three plays: As the Burger Broils (1980), The Exorcism of Cheryl (1981), and Junk Love (1981), which had numerous runs and became a neighborhood cult classic, "the longest running show on Avenue A." Epstein then wrote and produced The Godmother (1983). Novelist and writer Sarah Schulman joined the company in 1983 and collaborated on the writing and performing of three later plays: Art Failures (1983), Whining and Dining (1984), and Epstein on the Beach (1985). The final play, Beyond Bedlam (1987), was written and produced by Epstein, who was the only person involved in all More Fire! plays.
The following is a list of episodes from the first season of the PBS series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, that was aired in 1968. Within the series history, this has produced the most episodes in one season.
The Last Sweet Days of Isaac is an American Off-Broadway rock musical by Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford, which premiered in 1970. It starred Austin Pendleton and Fredricka Weber, and later Alice Playten. It received positive reviews, and won three Obies, a Drama Desk Award, and an Outer Critics Circle Award. It opened at the Eastside Playhouse on January 26, 1970, and closed May 2, 1971.
"Chapter Thirty-One: A Night to Remember" is the eighteenth episode of the second season of the American television series Riverdale and the thirty-first episode of the series overall. The episode was directed by Jason Stone and written by Arabella Anderson and Tessa Leigh Williams and choreographed by Heather Laura Gray. It centered around the stage musical Carrie by Lawrence D. Cohen and Michael Gore, which is based on the 1974 book of the same name by Stephen King.
Bernard Gersten was an American theatrical producer. Beginning in the 1960s through the early 2000s, Gersten played a major role in shaping American drama and musical theatre.