ROZA (with Georgia Brown) - MARY TESTA studio recording? Please! — Page 2

Wasnt ROZA a rare Hal Prince misfire?

I didn't know Sweet Georgia Brown was in this show!

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Ordered the Marcia Lewis CD

Poor Prince.

I saw the show twice...I only went back a second time to see if it had improved...unfortunately it hadn't. Act One took place in 1970 and Act Two in 1974. From the PlayBill: "The setting was a house in Belleville, an immigrant quarter of Paris, inhabited by many different ethnic groups. In the early seventies Belleville was still poor and relatively undiscovered by the French. Recently it has begun to be gentrified(inhabited by people of breeding) and may soon be the parisian upper West side." As for the show itself, Georgia Brown was perfectly cast as a crude aging whore who takes in a young boy long abandoned by his prostitute mother. Her ravaged voice was in keeping with the character. Roza was an understandibly hard edged character and her affection for the boy was restrained and for the most part undemonstrative. The rest of the characters in the show were flamboyant and eccentric denizens of the neighborhood who would pop in to visit her. The thing I liked best about the show was the set of her home/whorehouse which was highly raked on the stage and very busy. As for the music, I found it serviceable but overall unimpressive. I feel the problem with the show is like many other failed musicals, the public rarely wants to leave the theater feeling depressed unless it's those mega hit rarities like Les Mis and Miss Saigon. The fact that the young boy perfumes Roza's body after her death so he doesn't have to part with her is VERY depressing.

wow thanks! i didn't realize that Roza died at the end...

so lucky you were able to see this flop twice! i guess they didn't make many changes between previews and opening...

See, HAPPINESS is a good song:

"...Roza was something of a doomed show--it had been announced for London's Adelphi Theatre three years earlier with the same director and star (Georgia Brown), but the financing fell through, and Prince, against his better judgment, allowed the show to open on Broadway after regional runs in Baltimore and Los Angeles had made it clear to him that it was unlikely to succeed. It was greeted almost entirely with pans, although Brown's tour-de-force performance was acknowledged here and there. The Gilbert Becaud-Julian More score never lived up to Brown's opening number, "Happiness," and Roza is the only Hal Prince musical to open on Broadway and go unrecorded.

Roza was a flop, but one interesting enough for fans to collect. Two weeks later, a four-performance flop called Late Nite Comic set something of an all-time standard for amateurishness on Broadway, and made Roza look like My Fair Lady and A Chorus Line rolled into one..."

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/34620.html

It had a great poster!

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I'm listening to "Georgia Brown Sings George Gershwin & Kurt Weill"

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Unlike the Carrie poster, the Roza poster is still on sale for 22.00....if I had the money!

I heard of it. Bob Gunton was also in it

Got good reviews out of town - Came into NY & you know the rest

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Don't Make Me Laugh:

Madame Lola: Now I'm not a man...
Roza: Now I'm not a woman
Both: Don't make me laugh!

Roza: Say, say, if you look in that suitcase, you'll find photos of me when I was a beautiful girl in Poland with the man I loved...What was his name...Oh, my my, my my

Lola: Ravishing, you were absolutely ravishing!

ROZA: That's not me! That's that bitch Paula Eisenberg's horse!

Both laugh.



LOVE IT!

I hope my book of MAdame Rosa comes tomorrow!

Is there a cast recording of this show?