70, Girls, 70

Here's a thread with a few impressions of last year's Encores production of the show:

https://forum.broadwayworld.com/readmessage.cfm?boardname=bway&thread=892081

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The show is based on a play called A Breath of Spring which was made into a marvelous movie called Make Mine Mink. That movie, by the way, is showing on April 19 on TCM. Check for times. The Encores production was absolutely terrific, and I have convinced a local community theatre to produce it next season.

They need it in their playbill: their audience base is senior citizens and the show is right up their alley. Furthermore, we need to produce more shows for older actors. Enough of these constant revivals of the warhorses. Here in the Twin Cities we have sometimes had multiple productions of the same show in one year. One year, we had 7 Josephs, including the tour starring Donny Osmond and a production at the Chanhassen Dinner Theatre. It's not unusual to have 5 or 6 Fiddlers, Annies or The Sound of Musics in a single year.

It's exciting to have a production of 70 Girls 70 coming up!

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A great score and a wonderful cast album that I listen to often.

I love this show, and would LOVE to see it live. I actually discovered it thanks to "Liza with a Z!" (And I wish her arrangement was available). Didn't one of the cast members die out of town onstage? Or am I thinking of something else?

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70 Girls 70 has a terrific score. I have seen two productions of the show. The cast album is a favorite of mine. But the book is beyond horrendous and lacking in logic. The story just stumbles along and the audience goes "Huh?"

I saw the original production with Mildred Natwick and company and thanks to the wonderful numbers by Onna White had some excitement. Unfortunately the book --that clunky clunky book has got to be the most insipid thing ever written.

Goldie Shaw, Lillian Heyman, Hans Conreid (who replaced David Burns) Mildred Natwick worked their heart out.Tommy Breslin was a stand out too. But you can't save a sinking book. I do remember thinking (in my 15 year old mind) that one actress in the original cast looked like she was going to keel over any minute. I was very concerned for some of those actors. Meanwhile Follies, the other nostalgic old timers musical, openned a week before and was playing around the block!

I also remember thinking the opening number " If you want to see old folks.. you're in the wrong place tonite" as cute as it was worked against itself because the performers did indeed look old. The direction, by Stanley Prager was equally insipid. But those songs were fabulous.

About 5 years ago, they revived it in a staged reading in Los Angeles with Jane Kean, Marnie Nixon , Robert Marsdan and Charlotte Raye. The book fell flat once again and the only stand out performance was given by Jane Kean (who used to do those Honeymooner Musicals on the Jackie Gleason show as Trixis as well as a lead in Ankels Away)

The show, in spite of some great numbers, just does not work and will never work. The book is appallingly bad.

I've never read the revised version they mounted in, I think, the 90s in London (?), which I believe had a new book, but I've read the libretto for the original Broadway production and it's a mess. There are some terrific moments, the bit qolbinau mentioned where they "play old" is great (I also love the reveal of the upgraded hotel) but a lot of other scenes are just half-hearted slapstick and meandering vaudeville routines. I think part of that was meant to play into the concept of the show being a production put on by a bunch of old folks who've taken over the theatre, which is cute, but that's a tough conceit to pull off, and since they don't it's narratively disastrous.

IMHO it's a nearly flawless score and it's a wonderful showcase of Kander and Ebb in their prime, so the fact that it's not a complete piece is a tragedy.

The Martha Swope collection has a bunch of pictures of the original production, if you want to refresh your memory!

Updated On: 8/13/20 at 04:10 PM

I think it is unlikely that when theatre comes back, audiences will be clamouring to see a show about older white people that flopped in the 70's right away, but maybe in time it'll feel right.