THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG at the Public 1979

Just recently discovered this production. Did anyone see it? It featured Laurence Guittard and Dean Pitchford in the cast.

I think that's likely a stance held by many.

Wonder who else was in the cast.

I saw this show in San Francisco in 1980 - based on a poster - it was the same production, but presented by Los Angeles Civic Light Opera. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Umbrellas-Of-Cherbourg-Poster-San-Francisco-Civic-Light-Opera-Orpheum-Thtr-1980-/171745186580. However, wikipedia lists the primary cast as: Stuart Baker-Bergen, Mace Barrett, Donna Bullock, Shirley Chester, Louis Valenzi. I see only one of those names on the poster from Mr. Nowack.

I remember it as being a terrific production. Very emotional like the film. I distinctly remember the opening "garage" set with cars up on hydraulic lifts. But mostly I remember the music - melodious and soaring. A few years later, I was able to track down a VHS copy of the film, but it didn't have as much of an impact on me as the stage show.

This production was sort of required viewing for us -- Michael Yeargan and Jane Greenwood were our design teachers at Yale Drama School at the time. The show moved beautifully and was just lovely to look at (I distinctly remember the nostalgic effects Yeargan could get with this hazed plexi panels moving across a gorgeously rain-blurred drop of Mt Saint-Michele upstage.) And wasn't there a tall Esso sign that slid on to indicate the garage?

But the show and the score were pretty repetitive (which I also found true of the film), and all the imaginative effects in the world couldn't keep me engaged when they'd start in on one more reprise of "I Will Wait for you".

The team behind that great revival of Brief Interlude a few years ago mounted a surreal production of "Umbrellas" in the West End in maybe 2012 or 2013 which I took my parents to see. Great director, great cast, but again an insufferably repetitive libretto and score made all of us really eager for the thing to be over well before the folks onstage were done.

I don't think this story has ever been done non-musical.

RippedMan and Someone you're both thinking of the same production, from 2011. It used the same Harnick translations from the 1979 New York production.

Sweet, very slight.

I think the movie is kind of unbearable. I like musicals with actual songs, not sung dialogue. I much prefer The Young Girls of Rochefort.

I love this for fun film and Catherine Deneuve and Michel Legrand! Vive Le France!

I think the film is one of the best musicals ever written for the screen. The music is gorgeous and the use of color and camera movement is masterful.

The Public Theater production was lovely and well sung with a magical feel to it and a lot fluid movement.

What didn't work were Harnick's lyrics which I believe didn't rhyme and just sounded too prosaic compared to the original French.

The company who did Brief Encounter recently tried a stage version of this not long ago in the UK but it was not well received so it didn't make it over here. I was hoping St. Ann's Warehouse might transfer it.

My French comprehension skills are far from perfect, but the film lyrics do not sound like they are trying to be working-class French to my ear. For one thing, I can understand most of them--as opposed to Edith Piaf's Pigalle accent which is largely incomprehensible not only to me but to French teachers I have asked to translate her lyrics.

In fairness to Sheldon Harnick--who is, after all, the one who criticized Sondheim for the erudition of Maria in "I Feel Pretty"--perhaps the lyrics are intended to be as romantic and heightened as the cotton-candy look of the show. (Compare to INTO THE WOODS, to take but one example. A baker and his wife use more or less the same lexicon as Cinderella and her Prince. It's part of the magic of that world.)

*To be clear, in a previous post, I said I didn't understand French. That was in 1979. I've had quite a bit of schooling since then.

Updated On: 11/23/15 at 12:06 AM