| Romance in Hard Times | |
|---|---|
 Playbill of Romance in Hard Times | |
| Music | William Finn |
| Lyrics | William Finn |
| Book | William Finn |
| Productions | 1989 Off-Broadway 2014 Barrington Stage Company |
Romance in Hard Times is a musical by William Finn. It ran briefly Off-Broadway in 1989 at the Public Theater.
An earlier version of the same show, America Kicks Up Its Heels , received two staged readings from Playwrights Horizons, [1] along with a fully staged production running from March 3, 1983 to March 27, 1983. Directed by Mary Kyte and Ben Levit, and choreographed by Kyte, the cast featured Alix Korey, Dick Latessa, and Robert Dorfman. [2]
The musical was part of the 1989 and 1990 Public Theater New York Shakespeare Festival in New York City. Romance in Hard Times was presented in one of Joseph Papp's "musical laboratories" at the Public Theater's Anspacher Theater for three weeks in June 1989. Directed by David Warren, the cast featured Lillias White. It was open to the public but not for critics. [3]
The musical then opened Off-Broadway at The Public Theater on November 14, 1989 and closed on December 17, 1989. The musical was again directed by David Warren with musical direction by Ted Sperling and choreography by Marcia Milgrom Dodge. The cast featured Lillias White, Cleavant Derricks, Victor Trent Cook, Rufus Bonds, Jr., James Stovall, and Alix Korey. [4] White won the Obie Award, Performance, in 1990. [5] [6] [7]
The musical ran at Finn's Barrington Stage Company's Musical Theatre Lab from August 14, 2014 to August 31, 2014, with a new book by Finn's The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee collaborator Rachel Sheinkin. The show was directed by Joe Calarco. [8] The cast featured David Benoit, Lance Fletke, Alan H. Green, Demond Green, Anne Kanengeiser, Theresa Kloos, Alix Korey, Andrea Leach, Michael Mandell, Christina Acosta Robinson, and Aaron Serotsky. [8]
The musical takes place in a soup kitchen in New York City during the Depression. [9] Hennie, a pregnant woman who works in the soup kitchen, decides not to give birth until children have a better world. Eleanor Roosevelt provides messages of hope. [1]
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.
William Alan Finn is an American composer and lyricist. He is best known for his musicals, which include Falsettos, for which he won the 1992 Tony Awards for Best Score and Best Book, A New Brain (1998), and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (2005).
James Elliot Lapine is an American stage director, playwright, screenwriter, and librettist. He has won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical three times, for Into the Woods, Falsettos, and Passion. He has frequently collaborated with Stephen Sondheim and William Finn.
Annie Golden is an American actress and singer. She first came to prominence as the lead singer of the punk band The Shirts from 1975-1981 with whom she recorded three albums. She began her acting career as Mother in the 1977 Broadway revival of Hair; later taking on the role of Jeannie Ryan in the 1979 film version of the musical. Other notable film credits include Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Baby Boom (1987), Longtime Companion (1989), Strictly Business (1991), Prelude to a Kiss (1992), 12 Monkeys (1995), The American Astronaut (2001), It Runs in the Family (2003), Adventures of Power (2008), and I Love You Phillip Morris (2009).
Georgia Bright Engel was an American actress. She is best known for having played Georgette Franklin Baxter in the sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show from 1972 to 1977 and Pat MacDougall on Everybody Loves Raymond from 2003 to 2005. During her career, Engel received five Primetime Emmy Award nominations.
Jerome Herbert "Chip" Zien is an American actor. He is best known for playing the lead role of the Baker in the original Broadway production of Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim. He has appeared in all of the "Marvin Stories" musicals by William Finn: In Trousers, March of the Falsettos, Falsettoland and Falsettos. He played the role of Thénardier in the Broadway production of Les Misérables and Mark Rothenberg in the film United 93. He is also known for providing the voice of Howard in the film Howard the Duck.
Cleavant Derricks Jr. is an American actor and Tony Award winning singer-songwriter, who is best known for his role of Rembrandt Brown on Sliders.
John Guare is an American playwright. He is best known as the author of The House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a musical comedy with music and lyrics by William Finn, a book by Rachel Sheinkin, conceived by Rebecca Feldman with additional material by Jay Reiss. The show centers on a fictional spelling bee set in a geographically ambiguous Putnam Valley Middle School. Six quirky adolescents compete in the Bee, run by three equally quirky grown-ups.
Elegies is a song cycle by William Finn about the deaths of friends and family and is a response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Elegies premiered at Lincoln Center in 2003 and has been performed in many other venues.
Falsettos is a musical with a book by William Finn and James Lapine, and music and lyrics by Finn. The musical consists of March of the Falsettos (1981) and Falsettoland (1990), the last two installments in a trio of one-act musicals that premiered off-Broadway. The story centers on Marvin, who has left his wife to be with a male lover, Whizzer, and struggles to keep his family together. Much of the first act explores the impact his relationship with Whizzer has had on his family. The second act explores family dynamics that evolve as he and his wife plan his son's Bar Mitzvah. Central to the musical are the themes of Jewish identity, gender roles, and gay life in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Lillias White is an American actress and singer. She is particularly known for her performances in Broadway musicals. In 1989 she won an Obie Award for her performance in the Off-Broadway musical Romance in Hard Times. In 1997 she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical and Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical for portraying Sonja in Cy Coleman's The Life. She was nominated for a Tony Award again in 2010 for her work as Funmilayo in Fela Kuti's Fela!.
Laila Robins is an American stage, film and television actress. She has appeared in films including Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), Live Nude Girls (1995), True Crime (1999), She's Lost Control (2014), and Eye in the Sky (2015). Her television credits include regular roles on Gabriel's Fire, Homeland, and Murder in the First. More recently, she had a recurring role as Katarina Rostova in season 7 of The Blacklist.
Stephen Adly Guirgis is an American playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor. He is a member and a former co-artistic director of New York City's LAByrinth Theater Company. His plays have been produced both Off-Broadway and on Broadway as well as in the UK. His play Between Riverside and Crazy won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The Human Comedy is a musical with a book and lyrics by William Dumaresq and music by Galt MacDermot.
Julianne Boyd is an American theater director and Artistic Director of Barrington Stage Company, Pittsfield, MA.
Kim Crosby is an American singer and musical theatre actress. She was the original Cinderella in the Sondheim-Lapine musical Into the Woods.
Joseph Peter Philip Iconis is an American composer, lyricist, and playwright. He is best known for writing the music and lyrics to the Broadway musical Be More Chill.
Make Me a Song is a musical revue, with lyrics and music by William Finn, which was conceived by Rob Ruggiero in 2006.
The Royal Family of Broadway is a musical by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin based on the 1927 play The Royal Family by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. It premiered at the Barrington Stage Company in June 2018.