Lost Brilliant Productions

The Shakespeare in the Park production of, A Midsummer's Night Dream staring Will Hurt as Oberon. I was mesmerized by this production and will never forget his entrance: rising out of the dirt.

And, another production of Midsummer that I saw at Vassar in their black box, Powerhouse Theater. This one had us sitting on rugs on the floor as the actors climbed all over the physical space. Much of the fairies was played directly overhead on a floor of cyclone fencing that after a few moments sort of just disappeared giving the breathtaking illusion of the fairies flying.

More to come...

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Updated On: 4/22/14 at 11:58 AM

Given the ephemeral nature of theatre, the idea of certain performances or productions being "lost" to those who weren't fortunate enough to see them is just part of the territory.

That said, I wish everyone could have had the chance to see Lauren Ward in VIOLET.

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Two of my very favorite plays--coincidentally both are plays with music--had very successful runs in LA, but closed quickly in New York.

Joshua Sobol's GHETTO, an Israeli play, won an award for Best Play in London and had a very successful production at the Mark Taper Forum in LA. It only ran four or five weeks in New York. It's about a Yiddish theatrical troupe confined in the Vilna ghetto during WWII and uses songs actually performed in that place and time. But what is so brilliant about it, among Holocaust plays, is that it ultimately isn't about how the Holocaust was terrible (almost all theatergoers agree it was), but about the issue of collaboration with evil.

Another LA play that died quickly in New York is Luis Valdez' ZOOT SUIT. It isn't exactly "lost"--there's a film version starring Edward James Olmos and Tyne Daly which is very faithful to the play. In its day it was the longest running original play in Los Angeles, but I don't think it has ever quite received its due because it was poorly received in New York. For that failure I blame the marketing, which announced it as a "musical". ZOOT SUIT does have music, but only in a very Brechtian way. Playgoers expecting WEST SIDE STORY were bound to be disappointed.

Also pretty sure some of these were filmed for the TOFT collection at Lincoln Center.

Wasn't the William Hurt "Midsummer" televised on PBS? I seem to remember my local library having a video of this. It took place on what looked like real grass and trees.

Showtime televised Something's Afoot in the mid 80s--in what I *assume* was essentially the Broadway staging, although not cast. It seems to be an example of a show that did very well regionally (I think Goodspeed?) but for whatever reason didn't catch on in New York--as have a few other shows mentioned here. The Andy Gibb (!) version for television was done in Canada, the way for money reasons a number of productions were filmed in the early 80s. I am surprised the show doesn't come up more often in amateur and small scale regional groups (or at least not that I've noticed.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aamLDs_0ik

There's a decent "recording" but there of Big Deal. Of course that's not a fair way to judge, but it seems like a very flawed show with some killer numbers and performances. A gloomy stage set, and if they were going to use non-original songs, they could have done more with them, IMHO (the recent Fosse bio revealed that ten years earlier Fosse asked Sondheim to do an adaptation of the same Italian film, Big Deal on Madonna Street but back then he was wanting to re-set it in Mexico, for some reason, and not Chicago. Sondheim liked the idea of adapting the film but apparently hated Mariachi music--or so the bio indirectly quotes him saying--so said he couldn't do it.) Of course the tony performance of Beat Me Daddy is brilliant--it was originally going to be in Fosse and apparently always got a huge audience reaction but was cut partly because in many ways it was similar to Dancin's Sing Sing Sing which they wanted to use as the encore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hddHviVLjCo

EricMontreal22, thank you so much for your post and links. Something Afoot, didn't find an audience partly due to a newspaper strike that was going on at the time. The show opened to great reviews, but they weren't printed. Nobody knew the show was even here. I totally stumbled into it one afternoon having a few hours to kill and it being up on the TKTS board.

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It always amazed me with the amazing score that "Side Show" couldn't find an audience but I'm glad it's coming back in another form. I hope this revised production does well.

Ditto for Sideshow & Amour.

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In April of 1980, or close to that, the Public did a fully staged workshop of a play by Israel Horowitz called Sunday Runners in the Rain. A terrific ensemble piece, I remember Peter Riegert, Maureen Anderman, William Hickey, and Neil Vipond, among the cast. It was beautifully written and had an incredible flow about it, but Joe Papp apparently was not interested in giving it a full run for the Public Subcribers. Sad, because it was of the best things I saw during that era.

I absolutely loved Marie Christine which should have scored a Tony for Audra. I get why it wasn't a commercial success, but I thought it was a rather monumental work. One of the most powerful and arresting finales I've ever seen. I was utterly fascinated from start to finish and Audra delivered a tour de force performance. I'm so glad I had the chance to see it.

And shows I saw in London that never made it to Broadway:

Cloudstreet
Lord of the Rings
Zorro

I loved Zorro, but I know it probably would never make it on Broadway unless in a smaller house. Lord of the Rings should have taken the Foxwoods back when it had a chance. I think it would have done extremely well. And I never understood why LCT didn't pick up Cloudstreet. A beautiful production that would have been PERFECT for the Beaumont exactly as it was staged at the National. One of those two-part epic plays where you could catch both parts in one Saturday (7.5 hours with intermissions). I saw it all in one day and could have easily done it again.

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I was hoping someone reading this thread would remember, New Jerusalem at The Public. For some reason I haven't forgotten this production despite it being many years ago. It is a fascinating play about a journalist reporting on an island penal colony. The genre was play noir. I also remember Dale Soules (spelling?) was in it.

The set was magnificent particularly two breathtaking moments: The island city being created on a darkened stage by stagehands, draped in black, carrying on lit, miniature models of the building. There were many buildings, so it took some time to complete the effect, but it was stunning; and a downstage miniature half height wall that rose up and had miniature street lamps and two action figure sized men who were on conveyor belts. Again, the stage went dark except for the miniature street lights and the two dolls crossed each other. The main actor, in play noir style, did his monologue as a voice over.

There were many other spectacular images, but those two stand out. The whole design really felt like a film noir with the designs creating the effect of close ups, mid-length and long-shots. Stunning. Anyone remember this?

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Updated On: 4/23/14 at 04:50 PM