Shelter?

[myshikobit]

Posted: 5/24/10 at 9:16pm

Hi,

Just obtained a recording of "Shelter"... I only knew it existed (and was subsequently interested) because it's mentioned in "Monkeys and Playbills" :). But I can't find any info on it, and I don't remember reading about it in "Not Since Carrie". Anyone know it?

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 5/24/10 at 9:53pm

It played the Golden. I saw it & it was better suited for Off Broadway.

Columbia recorded the cast album but never released it.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 5/24/10 at 9:55pm

I saw the show and have the Playbill, however I don't remember a damned thing about it.

[myshikobit]

Posted: 5/25/10 at 7:22am

Haha does anyone remember what it was about? The recording quality sucks, but there's some nice lyrics and thoughts in there. I'd love to see the actual material. Thanks so much :)

[twinbelters]

Posted: 5/25/10 at 11:35am

Shelter was also recorded by the York theater in 1997. I'm sure that would point the way towards finding out what this show was about.. I can't recall myself.

http://cgi.ebay.com/SCRIPT-Cult-Flop-Bway-SHELTER-Nancy-Ford-Gretchen-Cryer-/260607869637 Someone's selling the script on ebay.

Here's Mandelbaum's review from 1997 of the Shelter studio cast:

SHELTER (Original Cast Records)
The team of Gretchen Cryer (words) and Nancy Ford (music) are principally remembered for four small-scale musicals seen in New York between 1967 and 1978. First came Now Is The Time For All Good Men at the Theatre de Lys in 1967, very much a product of its unsettled time, and featuring in the leading roles Cryer herself (under the name Sally Niven) opposite then-husband David Cryer (they are the parents of Jon Cryer). Their next piece, two one-acts under the title The Last Sweet Days of Isaac, got much better reviews and a longer off-Broadway run beginning in 1970. Cryer and Ford became the first women in post-war history to be the sole authors of a Broadway musical when Shelter, out of place at the Golden Theatre, flopped in 1973. They were back off-Broadway five years later with their biggest hit, the long-running New York Shakespeare Festival musical I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It On The Road, in which Cryer created the leading role and was succeeded by Virginia Vestoff, Betty Buckley, Carol Hall, Phyllis Newman, and Ford.

In terms of cast albums, Now Is The Time was recorded by Columbia, and Isaac by RCA, but neither has made it to CD. Columbia Special Products preserved the New York Getting My Act Together (not yet on CD), and TER/JAY has a London cast recording starring Diane Langton (and available on CD). But Shelter has the oddest recording history of all: Columbia recorded the Broadway production, with Marcia Rodd, Terry Kiser, and Susan Browning in the leads, but while a 45-single of a couple of songs sneaked out, the full recording was never released, although a tape of it has been in circulation for years. In March of this year, Manhattan's York Theatre offered a revised version of Shelter that integrated material from the first (and superior) act of Isaac as a prologue; the York production was entitled The Last Sweet Days, but Original Cast Records' recording of it reverts quite sensibly to the name Shelter, as there's always a chance RCA will get around to reissuing the 1979 Isaac recording.

Cryer and Ford's gift was not an earth-shaking one, but their work was appealing, if distinctly '70s Off-Broadway in feel; they veered from the realistic Now Is The Time to the neurotic whimsy of Isaac and Shelter and the more conceptual, free-form Act, but their scores always offered a nice mixture of soft-pop, folk, and theatre music, intimate and sweet. Their wittiest show is the first act of Isaac, while Act is probably the most accessible and useful for future production. Shelter was overloaded and pretentious, but on its new disc the songs are attractive (strengthened by the inclusion of four from Isaac), and they're well-performed, mostly by Ellen Foley and Willy Falk. Foley, who has mixed a career in rock music with TV and appearances on Broadway in Me and My Girl and Into The Woods (she was the original Witch at the Old Globe and the last one in the Broadway production), has one of those interesting, sometimes erratic, but appealingly gritty voices. Falk, Miss Saigon's first Broadway Chris, is an even better singer. Together, they're more effective vocalists than Rodd and Kiser, and they're joined in the York production by Romain Fruge as the singing computer (it's that kind of show) and Ellen Sowney as the other woman. If Shelter is a journey back to a kind of musical that probably died with the '70s, we can at least be glad that the show's second cast recording got released.


Shelter (1997) on Amazon

[myshikobit]

Posted: 5/25/10 at 12:44pm

I love you :) hahahaha. I really do like the score more and more as I go on... I might just buy the script. Thank you so much... and here's what it's about:

It's mainly the story of a woman who has 2 encounters with a man who, while he comes across as optimistic and uplifting on the surface, is really a self-destructive personality with problems of his own.


Thank you, Shelter enthusiast on Amazon :)

[twinbelters]

Posted: 5/25/10 at 2:05pm

Oh, der, I didn't even think to look at the Amazon review that closely.

I love the score to The Last Sweet Days of Isaac, but I can't recall the Shelter score all that well. Will have to listen to it when I have a chance.

Glad to help! You know I'm a research junkie!