The Pursuit of Persephone is a musical with music and lyrics by Peter Mills and book by Cara Reichel. [1] The show details F. Scott Fitzgerald's time at Princeton University, and his love for Ginevra King. [2] Elements of the plot are loosely adapted from This Side of Paradise (Fitzgerald's own fictionalized account of his time at Princeton).
The show premiered at the Connelly Theatre in New York City in 2005, featuring Chris Fuller as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jessica Grové as Ginevra King. [2] [3]
In 2006 much of the original cast returned for a concert reading of the show at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. [4] That same year, a production of the show was staged at the University of Michigan, starring Justin Paul as F. Scott Fitzgerald. [5]
In 2014 the show was reworked and presented by the Prospect Theater Company under the name "The Underclassman". [6] [7]
2005 Off-Broadway [8] | 2006 Concert Reading [4] | 2014 Prospect Theater [7] | |
---|---|---|---|
F. Scott Fitzgerald | Chris Fuller | Matt Dengler | |
Ginevra King | Jessica Grové | ||
Marie Hersey | Piper Goodeve | ||
Edmund Wilson | David Abeles | ||
John Peale Bishop | Benjamin Sands | Marrick Smith | |
Trip Everett | Jordan Bondurant | ||
"Ham" Samuels | Jeremy Morse | ||
Clive Bagby | Jason Edward Cook |
The show received some praise for its music, costuming, and casting, but often received criticism for its book. [9] [8]
The 2014 production similarly was praised for its music, while critics felt the underlying story was not interesting enough to captivate audiences. [6] [7]
Award | Category | |
---|---|---|
2006 Drama Desk Awards [10] | Best Music | Nominated |
Best Orchestrations | Nominated |
This Side of Paradise is the debut novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1920. It examines the lives and morality of carefree American youth at the dawn of the Jazz Age. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive middle-class student at Princeton University who dabbles in literature and engages in a series of romances with flappers. The novel explores the theme of love warped by greed and status-seeking, and takes its title from a line of Rupert Brooke's poem Tiare Tahiti.
John Patrick Shanley is an American playwright, screenwriter, and director. He won the 1988 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film Moonstruck. His play, Doubt: A Parable, won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2005 Tony Award for Best Play; he wrote and directed the film adaptation and earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Susan P. Stroman is an American theatre director, choreographer, film director and performer. Her notable theater productions include The Producers, Crazy for You, Contact, and The Scottsboro Boys. She is a five-time Tony Award winner, four for Best Choreography and one as Best Director of a Musical for The Producers. In addition, she is a recipient of two Laurence Olivier Awards, five Drama Desk Awards, eight Outer Critics Circle Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, and the George Abbott Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater. She is a 2014 inductee in the American Theater Hall of Fame in New York City.
Lucille Lortel was an American actress, artistic director, and theatrical producer. In the course of her career Lortel produced or co-produced nearly 500 plays, five of which were nominated for Tony Awards: As Is by William M. Hoffman, Angels Fall by Lanford Wilson, Blood Knot by Athol Fugard, Mbongeni Ngema's Sarafina!, and A Walk in the Woods by Lee Blessing. She also produced Marc Blitzstein's adaptation of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera, a production which ran for seven years and according to The New York Times "caused such a sensation that it...put Off-Broadway on the map."
"Winter Dreams" is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald that was first published in Metropolitan magazine in December 1922 and later collected in All the Sad Young Men in 1926. The plot concerns the attempts by a young man to win the affections of an upper-class woman. The story, frequently anthologized, is regarded as one of Fitzgerald's finest works "for poignantly portraying the loss of youthful illusions."
TheatreWorksUSA is a professional, not-for-profit theatre for young and family audiences founded in 1961. The company is based out of New York City, but has touring productions that run through forty-nine states as well as parts of Canada. Plays and musicals produced by Theatreworks have reached over 90 million children, teachers and families since the company's founding.
Francis Jue is an American actor and singer. Jue is known for his performances on Broadway, in national tours, Off-Broadway and in regional theatre, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area and at The Muny in St. Louis. His roles in plays and musicals range from Shakespeare to Rodgers and Hammerstein to David Henry Hwang. He is also known for his recurring role on the TV series Madam Secretary (2014–2019).
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The Lucille Lortel Theatre is an off-Broadway playhouse at 121 Christopher Street in Manhattan's West Village. It was built in 1926 as a 590-seat movie theater called the New Hudson, later known as Hudson Playhouse. The interior is largely unchanged to this day.
The Lucille Lortel Awards recognize excellence in New York Off-Broadway theatre. The Awards are named for Lucille Lortel, an actress and theater producer, and have been awarded since 1986. They are produced by the League of Off-Broadway Theatres and Producers by special arrangement with the Lucille Lortel Foundation, with additional support from the Theatre Development Fund.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularized. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Francis Cugat, also known as Francisco Coradal-Cougat, was a painter and graphic designer whose most famous work was the original 1925 dust jacket for The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. From the mid-1940s he was a Technicolor consultant on more than 60 Hollywood films.
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Ginevra King Pirie was an American socialite and heiress. As one of Chicago's "Big Four" debutantes during World War I, she inspired many characters in the novels and stories of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald; in particular, the character of Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. A 16-year-old King met an 18-year-old Fitzgerald at a sledding party in St. Paul, Minnesota, and they shared a passionate romance from 1915 to 1917.
Alex Timbers is an American writer and director and the recipient of Tony, Golden Globe, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and London Evening Standard Awards, as well as two OBIE and Lucile Lortel Awards. He also received the 2019 Drama League Founder's Award for Excellence in Directing and the 2016 Jerome Robbins Award for Directing. He was nominated for a 2020 Grammy Award. For his work on Moulin Rouge! The Musical, Timbers won a 2021 Tony Award for Best Director of a Musical.
Matt McGrath is an American actor.
Peter Friedman is an American stage, film, and television actor.
Katherine Baldwin is an American singer and actress known for her work in musical theater. She received a Tony Award nomination for her work in the 2009 Broadway revival of Finian's Rainbow. She also co-starred opposite Bette Midler, David Hyde Pierce, and Gavin Creel in the Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly!, for which she received Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle award nominations for her work as the saucy millineress Irene Molloy. Baldwin continued with the production until it closed in August 2018.
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