Mary Testa Working On MOST HAPPY FELLA With Daniel Fish

[Jordan Catalano]

Mary Testa Working On MOST HAPPY FELLA With Daniel Fish#1

Posted: 1/19/20 at 8:56pm

I spoke to Mary Testa this week and she told me shes working with Fish on his Most Happy Fella revival. She said they have no idea what its going to be yet and when I asked what that meant she said theyre using the score but none of the book and just trying to figure out now what kind of show it will be.

I have no clue what any of that means but it sure sounds...interesting.

[CATSNYrevival]

Mary Testa Working On MOST HAPPY FELLA With Daniel Fish#2

Posted: 1/19/20 at 9:11pm

Can we at least assume she's playing Tony?

[hveasey]

Mary Testa Working On MOST HAPPY FELLA With Daniel Fish#3

Posted: 1/19/20 at 11:56pm

Very interesting, thanks for the bit of news.

[Almira]

Mary Testa Working On MOST HAPPY FELLA With Daniel Fish#4

Posted: 1/20/20 at 3:48am

Hmmm...

I wonder if they are going incorporate more of “They Knew What They Wanted,” which is a more political piece than Happy Fella.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. - Eleanor Roosevelt

[AC126748]

Mary Testa Working On MOST HAPPY FELLA With Daniel Fish#5

Posted: 1/20/20 at 7:12am

CATSNYrevival said: "Can we at least assume she's playing Tony?"

No, because if they’re throwing out the libretto (as Jordan’s post implies) there’s no guarantees at all about what the end result is going to look like, including whether it will have traditional character breakdowns. 

"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe." -John Guare, Landscape of the Body

[VintageSnarker]

Mary Testa Working On MOST HAPPY FELLA With Daniel Fish#6

Posted: 1/20/20 at 4:01pm

CATSNYrevival said: "Can we at least assume she's playing Tony?"

Interesting you went there first. I didn't even consider the gender flip. My first thought was... I guess she'd have to play Cleo?

I have mixed feelings about throwing out the libretto. On the one hand, I love it as it is. On the other hand, it feels like it would be much easier to bend the piece without breaking it by just abandoning everything but the songs. I'm definitely more interested in a radical new interpretation if it has a new or dramatically altered libretto.

[Bettyboy72]

Mary Testa Working On MOST HAPPY FELLA With Daniel Fish#7

Posted: 1/20/20 at 6:37pm

VintageSnarker said: "CATSNYrevival said: "Can we at least assume she's playing Tony?"

Interesting you went there first. I didn't even consider the gender flip. My first thought was... I guess she'd have to play Cleo?

I have mixed feelings about throwing out the libretto. On the one hand, I love it as it is. On the other hand, it feels like it would be much easier to bend the piece without breaking it by just abandoning everything but the songs. I'm definitely more interested in a radical new interpretation if it has a new or dramatically altered libretto."

I agree. If you’re tossing the libretto then it’s not very imaginative. That’s an easy cheat. 

"The sexual energy between the mother and son really concerns me!"-random woman behind me at Next to Normal "I want to meet him after and bang him!"-random woman who exposed her breasts at Rock of Ages, referring to James Carpinello

[GavestonPS]

Mary Testa Working On MOST HAPPY FELLA With Daniel Fish#8

Posted: 1/20/20 at 10:12pm

I've seen several productions over the years and I honestly don't remember there being a lot of spoken dialogue. "Throwing out the book" can mean discarding the plot, not just tossing the spoken lines, but what is the point?

MHF is practically through-sung as it is, which is why both recordings are 2-disc sets.

It's like "discarding the book" of SUNSET BOULEVARD. Either it means you're changing everything or changing nothing.

This is one of my favorite shows and it isn't so much a part of our culture that we can assume it will survive deconstruction. I'm trying to keep an open mind, but...