CSC 2025-2026 Season

[chrishuyen]

Posted: 6/12/25 at 11:23am

Just got this email from Classic Stage Company:

Our season begins in October with the first major New York production of The Baker’s Wife, featuring music & lyrics by Oscar, Grammy, and Tony Award® winner Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, The Queen of Versailles), a book by Tony Award winner Joseph Stein (Fiddler on the Roof), based on the film La Femme du Boulanger by Marcel Pagnol and Jean Gionoand, and direction by Gordon Greenberg (The Heart of Rock and Roll).

Next up, in February we'll present the World Premiere of Marcel on the Train, co-written by Tony Award nominee Ethan Slater (Spongebob Squarepants, Wicked) & Marshall Pailet (Who’s Your Baghdaddy, Private Jones), directed by Pailet, and starring Slater as the iconic Marcel Marceau.

We'll conclude the season with the New York Premiere of master American dramatist Thornton Wilder’s long-lost final play, The Emporium, adapted and completed by Kirk Lynn (Lipstick Traces) and directed by Rob Melrose (Born with Teeth). It offers the rare opportunity to be one of the first to witness a new work by a legend.

[chrishuyen]

Posted: 6/12/25 at 11:29am

Overall a pretty good season imo, Baker's Wife is pretty exciting to me, and I'm sure they'll be able to get a fantastic cast; I really liked the concept album for Edge of the World that Ethan Slater wrote with Nick Blaemire, so I'm curious to see what his other work might be like; and I'm not familiar with The Emporium but it sounds interesting (it looks like it's been done in Houston already), so I'm intrigued to see how that will play out.

[slow_the_rain]

Posted: 6/12/25 at 12:04pm

CSC presented The Emporium as a part of their reading series two years ago and it was not in good shape. It’s Wilder-lite, and the playwright who completed the work has inserted a self-aggrandized version of himself into the narrative.

Most of the attendees were senior citizen types who were confused by the work, and opted in when they asked us to vote if we wanted an explanation of what was going on before they launched into Act II. It ended up being an irritating couple of hours with very little to offer in the way of pay off.

The couple reviews I could find from the Houston run in 2024 were not good. This will be a tough sell, and is not likely to build word of mouth.

Updated On: 6/12/25 at 12:04 PM

[inception]

Posted: 6/12/25 at 12:11pm

Wow, seeing Swartz's The Bakers Wife during the same trip seeing his new show Queen of Versailles is a pretty exciting option.

[Tenor8674]

Posted: 6/12/25 at 12:12pm

Always thought CSC or the Roundabout would be perfect to produce The Baker's Wife. I liked it a lot when the Papermill did it years ago. However,  I am disappointed that Endless Delights has been excised from the licensed show.

[OhHiii]

Posted: 6/12/25 at 1:30pm

Tenor8674 said: "Always thought CSC or the Roundabout would be perfect to produce The Baker's Wife. I liked it a lot when the Papermill did it years ago. However, I am disappointed that Endless Delights has been excised from the licensed show."

Same director for CSC as was at Papermill and the Chocolate Factory. It's been a different production each time, so curious how this one will be done. The CSC space is pretty unique.

[FolliesCabaret]

Posted: 6/12/25 at 3:04pm

I know it's perhaps not the first thought, but I actually think Amber Gray would be an inspired Genevieve.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 6/12/25 at 6:35pm

Tenor8674 said: "Always thought CSC or the Roundabout would be perfect to produce The Baker's Wife. I liked it a lot when the Papermill did it years ago. However, I am disappointed that Endless Delights has been excised from the licensed show."

Quite a few years back, when Stephen Schwartz was answering messages on his website, someone asked about Endless Delights and he said it would NEVER EVER be back in (I think this was shortly after the Paper Mill which cut it...)

Which I think is too bad.  I love the song.  And besides just liking the song as a song I think it serves a few important functions.  One being that it shows that at first Genevieve IS getting some pleasure from this affair and it's not just a bad experience from her (apparently some audiences could never get past this--it's bad enough she runs off on her husband, but now we have to see her enjoying sex with the guy?!)  Also, Genevieve is barely on stage in Act II!  This song at least keeps her as present on stage.

I LOVE the score of Baker's Wife so much, but while the thinking in revisions has been that, like the original film, they should focus more on the characters of the townspeople, I don't think that works for the musical.  It doesn't help that if the material given to the three leads is A grade material from Schwartz (as is Chanson,) the songs for the townspeople are just not as strong (having the first recording of the score just focus on those leads did a lot for the score.)

I also think there's a hard to get past flaw in the shape of the musical.  Meadowlark is such a key sequence, and such a long sequence, that it sets the audience up to thinking "OK, so Genevieve is the heart of this show and we're now gonna follow her on her journey, right?"  Except... that turns out not to be true.

But I do love the show.