I LOVE MY WIFE

[Bway=happy]

Posted: 8/1/05 at 12:09am

If you don't know this show....your life will be changed as the character's were (in different ways I guess) in this show. A perfect capsule of the 70s not only in content and story plot, but in musical style. Everytime I introduce someone to the beautifulness that is "Love Revolution" that can't help but say that it has an awesome groove to it. The Act I Finale "Sexually Free" is the main theme of this show, showing that in the four main characters' pushing themselves they realize how much they really do love their own wives, instead of free love.

Enough for describing the show...just making a little advertisement for it for those that don't know it. For those that DO I need some help. I REALLY want to do this show at college but I seem to be having problems even finding where to license it from? Anyone have any clue? The way I was introduced to the show was in an equity production of it a few years ago, where they did have some extra ensemble members other than JUST the band (even some female characters!) Anyone think that this can successfully work since singing/acting male musicians are a general rarity. Thanks! Check out this one: you won't regret it!

[wildcat]

Posted: 8/1/05 at 1:03am

Cute show, with some nice bedroom farce gags in Act 2. I especially like Monica's Thanksgiving dinner meltdown, and "Hey There, Good Times" is one of the great show tunes. But the piece is very much of it's time. Don't see why it couldn't be down with a slightly bigger ensemble, although the small cast was in itself something of a gimmick, like DAMES AT SEA.

[miss pennywise]

Posted: 8/1/05 at 1:15am

I LOVED this show when it first came out in the late 70s. James Naughton, Joanna Gleason, LENNY BAKER (god rest his soul), Ilene Graff. It was fun, but I had forgotten about it for a long, long time. Then about a year ago it popped into my head, so I ordered the CD. I listened to it for the first time in say 20 years, and I decided that Cy Coleman was much too underappreciated and should be “rediscovered” and hailed. (And then he died shortly thereafter. How sad.)

I think if the show were clearly presented as a throwback to a time when the "wife-swapping" fad was a "hip thing to do in the suburbs," it could work today. But its anachronistic qualities would have to be exploited and poked fun at. If you just did it "as is," it may seem awkwardly out of touch with the current theatergoing generation.

Simply put: go for it! But make sure it's clear that it's about a "simpler, more innocent" time. Is this helping?

[Jason Robert Brown]

Posted: 8/1/05 at 1:16am

It's actually a great CD, with Cy himself playing the solo on "By Threes." I've never seen the show, but I constantly make fun of John Miller's singing when I see him. (I think he's among the singers in "Monica," though he says that wasn't his tune.)

Anyway, Samuel French licenses the show, and if you can find a costume shop that stocks leisure suits and bell bottoms, you should have a blast. See link below:

http://www.samuelfrench.com/store/product_info.php/cPath/30/products_id/2858?osCsid=f5b985eab1a9c9f66681f53c5cd76a9d

[frontrowcentre2]

Posted: 8/1/05 at 1:49pm

I saw this show on my first trip to NYC in November 1977 and it was great fun. Small cast (4) with 4 musicians. 2 sets in act one ("A Mover's Life" covers the set change) and all of Act II takes place in one set. It is perfect show for smaller theatres.

I purchased the script from Sam French years ago so I suspect they control the rights.

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 8/1/05 at 1:51pm

It's very dated. Love the score though.

[WOSQ]

Posted: 8/1/05 at 3:39pm

A production note from one who saw the original cast in NY twice.

Direction, direction, direction. Comic direction at that.

It is not for nix that Gene Saks won a Tony for directing this show over Annie's Martin Charnin which won just about everything else that season.

I can see this show falling flat without a comic spark.

[TheEnchantedHunter]

Posted: 8/1/05 at 4:40pm

"It is not for nix that Gene Saks won a Tony for directing this show over Annie's Martin Charnin which won just about everything else that season."

Absolutely true. Saks never went for a laugh unless it was rooted in truthful observation of character or human behavior. I watched him rehearse the national tour of ILMW and I'll never forget him addressing the cast and saying, "We never want the kind of laugh where the audience guffaws 'HA-HA-HA' on top of its lungs and then mutters under its breath, 'I hate it!'" In other words, laughing AT the stage antics rather than WITH them.

If it wasn't for the astute direction and comic playing of Lenny Baker, I wonder if this show would have made it. It was already considered passe when it appeared in the late 70's and became postively unacceptable at the height of the AIDS crisis. Even now, you need deft comic talents to pull off the rather creaky, second-rate material that is way out of synch with contemporary sensibilities. And given the minimum of "acting" required by the musicians, any good instrumentalist with a modicum of personality and experience before an audience can pull it off.