| Twigs | |
|---|---|
 Original Broadway poster | |
| Date premiered | 1971 |
| Place premiered | Broadway |
| Original language | English |
Twigs is a play by George Furth, which premiered on Broadway in 1971.
| Twigs | |
|---|---|
| Original Broadway poster | |
| Date premiered | 1971 |
| Place premiered | Broadway |
| Original language | English |
Twigs is a play by George Furth, which premiered on Broadway in 1971.
The play consists of four sections involving three sisters and their mother, each focusing on one of the women as she confronts various issues with the man in her life. Emily is a recent widow, relocating to a new apartment, who finds herself attracted to the owner of the moving company. Celia is the wife of a bigoted ex-Army sergeant, whose reunion with an old pal leaves her out in the cold. Dorothy and her spouse discreetly try to learn if each has been faithful to the other as they celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. Last of all is Ma, the stubborn Irish matriarch, who rises from her deathbed to have a priest sanctify her common-law marriage to a Dutchman.
Furth wrote his play intending it to be a tour de force for a single actress playing all four roles. The title is derived from the quote, "Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined", written by Alexander Pope in his Moral Essays in 1773.
The play premiered on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre on November 14, 1971 (previews from November 9), and transferred to the Plymouth Theatre on January 5, 1972, closing on July 23, 1972, after 289 performances and seven previews. Directed by Michael Bennett, the cast included Sada Thompson, Conrad Bain, and Simon Oakland; Bob Avian was production assistant. Thompson won both the Tony and the Drama Desk Award for her performance. [1]
Stephen Sondheim provided incidental music, including a song for Celia titled "Hollywood and Vine". [1] [2] [3] Sondheim wrote: "George [Furth] asked me to write a song for Celia, who mid-scene is reminiscing about a number she had sung in her movie days." [4]
Some of the plays used in Twigs originally were written for the musical Company . [5]
The Los Angeles Times, in Sada Thompson's obituary, quoted Walter Kerr: she "does not simply give a stunning performance. She gives four of them." [6] According to Furth's obituary in The New York Times, the play received mixed reviews, but Walter Kerr "called its four interconnected pieces 'funny and touching and freshly conceived.' " [7]
Furth adapted his play for a 1975 television film co-directed by Alan Arkin and Clark Jones. The cast included Carol Burnett, Ed Asner, Liam Dunn, Pat Hingle, Gary Burghoff, and Bain reprising his Broadway role. [8] The film was telecast on CBS on March 6, 1975. [3] [9]
A second telefilm was made in 1982, starring Cloris Leachman. [10] The film was telecast on November 7, 1982 on the Entertainment Channel. [11]
Follies is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman.
Stephen Joshua Sondheim was an American composer and lyricist. One of the most important figures in twentieth-century musical theater, Sondheim is credited for having "reinvented the American musical" with shows that tackle "unexpected themes that range far beyond the [genre's] traditional subjects" with "music and lyrics of unprecedented complexity and sophistication." His shows address "darker, more harrowing elements of the human experience," with songs often tinged with "ambivalence" about various aspects of life. He was known for his frequent collaborations with Hal Prince and James Lapine on the Broadway stage.
Company is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by George Furth. The original 1970 production was nominated for a record-setting 14 Tony Awards, winning six. Company was written in a style without a chronological linear path. Its story depicts the internal observations of its lead character, Robert. Company is a concept musical composed of short vignettes linked by Robert's 35th birthday.
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George Furth was an American librettist, playwright, and actor.
Barbara Cook was an American actress and singer who first came to prominence in the 1950s as the lead in the original Broadway musicals Plain and Fancy (1955), Candide (1956) and The Music Man (1957) among others, winning a Tony Award for the last. She continued performing mostly in theatre until the mid-1970s, when she began a second career as a cabaret and concert singer. She also made numerous recordings.
Elaine Stritch was an American actress, known for her work on Broadway and later, television. She made her professional stage debut in 1944 and appeared in numerous stage plays, musicals, feature films and television series. Stritch was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1995.
Michael Bennett was an American musical theatre director, writer, choreographer, and dancer. He won seven Tony Awards for his choreography and direction of Broadway shows and was nominated for an additional eleven.
Priscilla Lopez is an American singer, dancer, and actress. She is perhaps best known for creating the role of Diana Morales in A Chorus Line. She has had the distinction of appearing in two Broadway landmarks: one of its greatest hits, the highly acclaimed, long-running A Chorus Line, and, as a teenager, in one of its biggest flops, the infamous musical version of Breakfast at Tiffany's, which closed before opening night.
Walter Francis Kerr was an American writer and Broadway theatre critic. He also was the writer, lyricist, and/or director of several Broadway plays and musicals as well as the author of several books, generally on the subject of theater and cinema.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a musical play with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Hugh Wheeler. It is based on the 1973 play of the same name by Christopher Bond. The character of Sweeney Todd first appeared in a Victorian penny dreadful titled The String of Pearls (1846-7).
Sada Carolyn Thompson was an American stage, film, and television actress. She was known to television audiences as Kate Lawrence in Family (1976-1980).
Merrily We Roll Along is a 1981 American musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by George Furth. It is based on the 1934 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.
Lonny Price is an American director, actor, and writer, primarily in theatre. He is perhaps best known for his creation of the role of Charley Kringas in the Broadway musical Merrily We Roll Along and for his New York directing work including Sunset Boulevard, Sweeney Todd, Company, and Sondheim! The Birthday Concert.
Erin Davie is an American actress and singer, best known for her performance as the young Edith Bouvier Beale in the Broadway production of the musical Grey Gardens, taking the part on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre in 2006, after its initial run Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons.
"Being Alive" is a song from the musical Company by George Furth with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The song appears at the end of act two and is sung by the main character, Robert, a 35-year-old bachelor who at the show's end "...realizes being a lone wolf isn't all it's cracked up to be ... he declares that he wants to take the chance, be afraid, get his heart broken - or whatever happens when you decide to love and be loved."
Teresa Jo Ann Bernadette "Terry" Finn is an American actress best known for creating the role of Gussie Carnegie in the original Broadway cast of the Stephen Sondheim/Hal Prince/George Furth musical comedy Merrily We Roll Along and its Original Cast Album.
Painting Churches is a play written by Tina Howe, first produced Off-Broadway in 1983. It was a finalist for the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play concerns the relationship between an artist daughter and her aging parents.
Ann Morrison is an American actress, best known for her Broadway debut as Mary Flynn in the Stephen Sondheim/George Furth musical, Merrily We Roll Along directed by Harold Prince for which she won the 1982 Theatre World Award. Off-Broadway she played Lizzie in the highly acclaimed Polly Pen/Peggy Harmon musical Goblin Market which garnered her a 1986 Drama Desk Award Nomination as Best Actress in a Musical and a Best Plays Theatrical Yearbook Citation as Best Actress in a Musical.
Getting Away with Murder is a play written by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, which ran for 17 performances on Broadway in 1996.