Posted: 4/13/20 at 9:30pm
20 Years ago today The Wild Party opened on Broadway. If anyone would like to share any stories or memories of the show while it was on Broadway I'd love to hear them. It's one of my favorites, and I'm sad it hasn't gotten another life in New York yet.
Posted: 4/13/20 at 11:49pm
I just remember being young and that year being one of the first years I watched the Tony Awards and being scandalized by the Tony performance and later the cast album once I finally found it in a store that sold CDs! Remember those?
Posted: 4/14/20 at 12:58am
Justice for Toni Collette and her magnificent performance
Posted: 4/14/20 at 4:12am
I was sitting next to Fred Ebb. At the end he turned to me and said, "You're not going to record this, are you?" I assured him I was not. Just not my cup of tea, I'm afraid and I don't like the Lippa either.
Posted: 4/14/20 at 7:04am
bk said: "I was sitting next to Fred Ebb. At the end he turned to me and said, "You're not going to record this, are you?" I assured him I was not. Just not my cup of tea, I'm afraid and I don't like the Lippa either."
The eye emoji unfortunately doesn’t work on here.
Updated On: 4/14/20 at 07:04 AM
Posted: 4/14/20 at 9:52am
bk, I think you're great, but I have to disagree. La Chiusa's score, along with the production, were a major work of art. I could listen to it forever. And it made me fall in love AGAIN with Toni Colette!
I would love to see an immersive "Great Comet" style production.
Posted: 4/14/20 at 10:54am
I would love to see someone produce this and the Lippa version with the same cast and run them in rep. It was interesting enough to see the two different versions within days of each other with different casts, directors, designers, etc. But to see the same people show off two different composer's takes would be fascinating!
Posted: 4/14/20 at 12:19pm
devonian.t said: "bk, I think you're great, but I have to disagree. La Chiusa's score, along with the production, were a major work of art. I could listen to it forever. And it made me fall in love AGAIN with Toni Colette!
I would love to see an immersive "Great Comet" style production."
https://www.americantheatre.org/2018/01/17/wild-party-planners/
Posted: 4/14/20 at 1:13pm
I wish we could see a major revival of this in the future.
LaChiusa's nuanced score still makes Lippa's sound like pop drivel.
Posted: 4/14/20 at 1:24pm
Broadway Bob* said: "I would love to see someone produce this and the Lippa version with the same cast and run them in rep. It was interesting enough to see the two different versions within days of each other with different casts, directors, designers, etc. But to see the same people show off two different composer's takes would be fascinating!"
I’m pretty sure a college in Boston did that a few years ago. Boston Conservatory maybe? The school did Lippa’s for the main stage and then a director used the same cast for a student project of LaChiusa’s.
Posted: 4/14/20 at 1:28pm
NYU Tisch did a fabulous production a few years back. It actually featured a bunch of Broadway names now, including Jelani Alladin and Alex Gibson. I was able to find a few clips on youtube but there’s not much. That’s Jelani and Taylor Daniels, who is currently in Hamilton.
https://youtu.be/jhc9c02FM_o
Updated On: 4/14/20 at 01:28 PM
Posted: 4/14/20 at 1:41pm
devonian.t said: "bk, I think you're great, but I have to disagree. La Chiusa's score, along with the production, were a major work of art. I could listen to it forever. And it made me fall in love AGAIN with Toni Colette!
I would love to see an immersive "Great Comet" style production."
OMG, this would be so great!! Also count me in as someone who can listen to it forever.
Posted: 4/14/20 at 1:44pm
Wow, 20 years?! I never got to see it on Broadway but there were some fantastic songs on that cast recording. Could be because of the cast - Eartha Kitt makes anything work - but also songs like People Like Us were fantastic.
Posted: 4/14/20 at 2:48pm
I remember finding exactly half of the show thrilling as we were watching the OBC in the theater. Loved a lot of George C Wolfe's staging and was intrigued by the turntable set placed inside those conventional apartment walls. (Very experimental for grand old man Robin Wagner.) Virtually every other song made me sit up and take notice-- and "People Like Us" made the hair on my neck stand on end, it was that moving.
But the other songs really dragged down the night (including virtually every song Burs sang). The battle to keep the party afloat started to be lost halfway through the night when every... single... beat spelled calamity and ruin. It was a huge sigh of relief when the night came to an end.
A shame, because the best songs in the score are as great as anything written for Broadway that decade.
Updated On: 4/14/20 at 02:48 PM
Posted: 4/14/20 at 3:12pm
Wow, I can't believe it's been 20 years already. I think of it as a "recent" show. I saw it in previews having already seen and really liked the Lippa, and was excited because I loved the score to "Hello Again" but I had not enjoyed "Marie Christine" earlier in the season despite really wanting to.
Alas I didn't care for it. I thought the orchestrations were gorgeous and I knew I was seeing a phenomenal cast but it didn't grab me. My favorite moment was "Tabu" when Black and Queenie dance for the first time, partly because it's 180° away from the wild raucous moment it is in the Lippa version and it was neat to see it treated so differently yet equally effectively. But by the end I was bored. I think Eartha Kitt actually had an extra song when I saw it that was later cut - it was a setting of the "Some love is fire, some love is rust/But the [something] kind of love is lust" section of the poem. Maybe it stayed but wasn't on the album?
Mostly I just remember really wishing there'd been an intermission so I could use the men's room, especially since there's such an obvious button to end Act One and a perfect Act Two opening but it played straight through because, as George Wolfe said in an interview, "Parties don't have intermissions." Which - yes they do! You can go to the bathroom, you can step out for a smoke/break - parties absolutely have intermissions! They don't have audiences either but he didn't seem to mind.
Anyway - as time has gone by I've grown to like the score more than I did but I've never sought out a production. I saw a college production of the Lippa which indicated that without the original cast it doesn't land quite as well and makes me think LaChiusa might be the better material after all. Nevertheless it was an interesting moment in musical theatre to have both productions happening at the same time and I'm glad I got to experience them.
Posted: 4/14/20 at 3:35pm
ColorTheHours048 said: "devonian.t said: "bk, I think you're great, but I have to disagree. La Chiusa's score, along with the production, were a major work of art. I could listen to it forever. And it made me fall in love AGAIN with Toni Colette!
I would love to see an immersive "Great Comet" style production."
https://www.americantheatre.org/2018/01/17/wild-party-planners/"
Thank you for that link- fascinating!
Posted: 4/14/20 at 11:04pm
Posted: 4/15/20 at 1:32am
It really wasn't rumors, things were incredibly tense backstage with Collette on the verge of leaving the show several times due to Mandy Patinkin's "method" acting. Charges were filed with Equity and she stated several times that her experience on the show was what kept her off the Broadway stage for so long despite being courted for several productions between that and The Realistic Joneses in 2014.
Posted: 4/15/20 at 2:40am
Posted: 4/15/20 at 8:50pm
jakebloke said: "20 years ago. Wow. It was right before I moved to NYC.....a lifetime ago when I actually stagedoored. Toni Collette was absolutely lovely... Eartha Kitt was a total bitch. She was so nasty to people waiting. While It was a phenomenal cast, it was rumored to have its drama backstage supposedly. "
What exactly did Eartha do? I've got to meet her twice and she was very nice and Grand, but I've heard tell she could be quite the diva.
Posted: 4/15/20 at 9:26pm
I saw both and thought they were both boring. I'm not sure if it was a walk-on ovation or an ovation at the end of her song but Eartha I vaguely remember at the press preview the audience went freaking crazy for her.
Posted: 4/17/20 at 9:01am
everythingtaboo said: "Wow, 20 years?! I never got to see it on Broadway but there were some fantastic songs on that cast recording. walmartone Could be because of the cast - Eartha Kitt makes anything work - but also songs like People Like Us were fantastic."
Yeah Its absolutely true. Awesome.
Updated On: 4/18/20 at 09:01 AM
Posted: 4/17/20 at 9:30am
darreyl102 said: "jakebloke said: "20 years ago. Wow. It was right before I moved to NYC.....a lifetime ago when I actually stagedoored. Toni Collette was absolutely lovely... Eartha Kitt was a total bitch. She was so nasty to people waiting. While It was a phenomenal cast, it was rumored to have its drama backstage supposedly. "
What exactly did Eartha do? I've got to meet her twice and she was very nice and Grand, but I've heard tell she could be quite the diva."
I worked with her and she wasn't a bitch at all. She was professional. She had clear boundaries which she stated. She had earned respect and she expected it- which was quite fair enough. I was very young, but she was always interesting and interested.
I don't believe she was the source of the problems on The Wild Party.
Posted: 4/18/20 at 12:27pm
Besides LaChiusa's gorgeous score, I was most impressed by Eartha Kitt who I had never seen live. The power of this woman's voice, especially at her age, was amazing. You couldn't take your eyes off her whenever she was on stage. I was in the second row and from the moment the curtain went up you saw Toni Collette naked from the waist up, bruises and black and blue marks on her legs. It was a jolting beginning for a show that had me enthralled from beginning to end. The reason I so much enjoy this version is because LaChiusa was masterful in creating the sound of the period the poem/play was set in. I loved the way his chords and harmonies bombarded the listener taking them to a whole new level of experiencing his gift of melody. His music could be both dissonant yet beautiful at the same time. This was one of my all-time favorite shows that I'm so grateful I got to see.
