Nick & Nora
| Nick & Nora | |
 |
|
| Original cast recording | |
|---|---|
| Music | Charles Strouse |
| Lyrics | Richard Maltby, Jr. |
| Book | Arthur Laurents |
| Based upon | Characters created by Dashiell Hammett in his novel The Thin Man |
| Productions | 1991 Broadway |
Nick & Nora is a musical with a book by Arthur Laurents, lyrics by Richard Maltby, Jr., and music by Charles Strouse.
At its core are witty and urbane high society couple Nick and Nora Charles, characters created by Dashiell Hammett in his novel The Thin Man, which inspired six films, a radio show, and a television series. In this incarnation, the two are attempting to solve the murder of a bookkeeper while dealing with their marital woes.
Citing high costs, the producers opted to replace out-of-town tryouts with a longer than usual nine-week gestation period of seventy-one previews in New York City, during which time the project underwent extensive script rewrites, multiple song replacements, and a major cast change. The Broadway production, directed by Laurents and choreographed by Tina Paul, finally opened on December 8, 1991 at the Marquis Theatre where, unable to overcome the bad publicity and brutal reviews, it ran for only nine performances. The cast included Barry Bostwick, Joanna Gleason, Christine Baranski, Debra Monk, Faith Prince, and Chris Sarandon.
In his review in Time, William A. Henry III called the production "a crashing bore - cranky and arbitrary as a love story, tedious and pointless as a murder mystery, ham-handed as comedy, clubfooted as dance, at best wanly pleasant as music." He added, "A few scenes work, some quite well. The final 10 minutes achieve a truth and simplicity underscoring the barren brittleness of what has gone before. But ultimately the show fails at its most basic task: making audiences care about, or for that matter simply believe in, the characters." [1]
The show was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Original Score. An original cast recording is available from That's Entertainment Records (TER).
In his memoir Original Story By, Laurents confessed he didn't realize until the show was in previews that the characters of Nick and Nora Charles were identified so closely with William Powell and Myrna Loy that the public would have difficulty accepting anyone else in the roles. He also felt the lengthy preview period, during which theatre gossips and newspaper columnists spread largely unfounded rumors about the show's mounting problems, helped destroy any chances of success it may have had. [2]
Song list
- Act I
- Is There Anything Better Than Dancing?
- Everybody Wants to Do a Musical
- Max's Story
- Swell
- As Long As You're Happy
- People Get Hurt
- Men
- May the Best Man Win
- Look Who's Alone Now
- Act II
- Class
- Let's Go Home
- Busy Night at Lorraine's
- Boom Chicka Boom
- Married Life
References
- ^ Time review
- ^ Laurents, Arthur, Original Story By. New York: Alfred A. Knopf 2000. ISBN 0-375-40055-9, pp. 417-18
External links
|
|||||
|
|||||||||||
stock | retire
Why are we here?
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
This page is cache of Wikipedia. History