| 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]
A Little Night Music is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler. Inspired by the 1955 Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, it involves the romantic lives of several couples. Its title is a literal English translation of the German name for Mozart's Serenade No. 13, K. 525, Eine kleine Nachtmusik. The musical includes the popular song "Send In the Clowns", written for Glynis Johns.
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. Regarded as one of the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater, he is credited with reinventing the American musical. With his frequent collaborators Harold Prince and James Lapine, Sondheim's Broadway musicals tackled unexpected themes that ranged beyond the genre's traditional subjects, while addressing darker elements of the human experience. His music and lyrics are tinged with complexity, sophistication, and ambivalence about various aspects of life.
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 among the first book musicals to deal with contemporary dating, marriage, and divorce, and is a notable example of a concept musical lacking a linear plot. In a series of vignettes, Company follows bachelor Bobby interacting with his married friends, who throw a party for his 35th birthday.
Do I Hear a Waltz? is a musical with a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Richard Rodgers, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. It was adapted from Laurents' 1952 play The Time of the Cuckoo, which was the basis for the 1955 film Summertime starring Katharine Hepburn.
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.
George Furth was an American librettist, playwright, and actor.
Linda Lavin is an American actress and singer. She is known for playing the title character in the sitcom Alice and for her stage performances, both on and off-Broadway.
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.
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.
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.
Hot Spot is a musical with the book by Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert, lyrics by Martin Charnin, music by Mary Rodgers, and additional lyrics and music by Stephen Sondheim. It had a brief run on Broadway in 1963. The musical is a political satire.
Tracie Bennett is an English singer and stage and television actress. She trained at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts in Clapham, London. She played the role of Sharon Gaskell in Coronation Street from 1982 to 1984, returning to the role in 1999 and again in 2021.
Sada Carolyn Thompson was an American stage, film, and television actress. Though best known to television audiences as Kate Lawrence in Family (1976–1980), for which she won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 1978, Thompson originally won acclaim as a theater actress on Broadway winning a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Twigs in 1972.
Merrily We Roll Along is a 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 best known for his New York directing work, including Sunset Boulevard, Sweeney Todd, Company, and Sondheim! The Birthday Concert. As an actor, he is perhaps best known for his creation of the role of Charley Kringas in the Broadway musical Merrily We Roll Along, Neil Kellerman in Dirty Dancing, and Ronnie Crawford in The Muppets Take Manhattan.
Erin Davie is an American actress and singer, best known for her performance as the young Edith Bouvier Beale in 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.
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.
Marianne Phoebe Elliott is a British theatre director and producer who works on the West End and Broadway. She has received numerous accolades including two Laurence Olivier Awards and four Tony Awards.
Getting Away with Murder is a play written by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, which ran for 17 performances on Broadway in 1996.