Book by Hugh Wheeler and Joseph Stein
From an adaptation by Harry Rigby
Based on the Original play by James Montgomery
Music by Harry Tierney
Lyrics by Joseph McCathy
Additional lyrics and music by Charles Gaynor & Otis Clements
Original Producton Supervised by Gower Champion Produced for BVroadway by Harry Rigby, Albert W Selden & Jerome Minskoff.
Starring vetran Vancouver musical theatre performers
Pat Waldron as Mrs. Geraldine O'Dare &
Marcel LaRochelle as Madame Lucy
Music Directed by Mark Reid (Very Good Eddie, Do Re Mi)
Directed by Mandana Namazi
Concert schedule:
Wednesday February 18th 8pm - Preview
Thursday February 19th 8pm - Opening Night
Friday Feburary 20th 8pm
Saturday Feburary 21st 2pm
Saturday Feburary 21st 8pm - Closing Performance
All performances at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts (Burnaby). For tickets please contact the Shadbolt Box Office @ 604.205.3000
Irene O'Dare is a humble but ambitious, hard-working Irish girl from West Side Manhattan, who runs a little music store with her widowed mother. Irene is sent to tune a piano for young tycoon Donald Marshall III, a Long Island society gentleman, and they promptly fall in love, each captivated by how different the other is from their usual friends. Donald's ne'er-do-well cousin Ozzie wants help to jump start a fashion business to be run by his friend, "Madame Lucy", a flamboyant male artiste. So Irene and her pretty best friends, Helen McFudd and Jane Burke, are recruited to model Madame Lucy's gowns, and Donald provides financing. Irene's mother and Donald's mother do not see eye-to-eye at first but grow to be friends. Irene poses as a society girl who convinces everyone to shop at Madame Lucy's, but she becomes angry with Donald when he asks her to continue the ruse. He finally relents, her true identity is revealed, and he sings "You made me love you."
The original Broadway production, opened on November 18, 1919 at the Vanderbilt Theatre, where it ran for 675 performances, at the time the record for the longest-running show in Broadway history, one it maintained for nearly two decades. The show made a star of Day, who departed the cast after five months to recreate her role at London's Empire Theatre, where it ran for 399 performances. Irene enjoyed a brief Broadway revival in 1923. Eventually there were seventeen national touring companies, and it was filmed twice, first as a 1926 silent movie with Colleen Moore and again in 1940 with Anna Neagle.
In 1971, the revival of the 1925 musical No, No, Nanette with screen legend Ruby Keeler proved to be an enormous hit. Its producer, Harry Rigby, deciding to cash in on the nostalgia craze by reviving another vintage show with another glamorous movie star as its centerpiece, zeroed in on Irene with Debbie Reynolds making her Broadway debut in the title role. Rigby hired librettist Hugh Wheeler to rework the show, which retained only five of the original songs and added tunes written by McCarthy with other composers and original numbers by Charles Gaynor and Otis Clements, with additional material by Wally Harper and Jack Lloyd, written specifically for the revival.
The production was troubled from the start. Billy De Wolfe was forced to withdraw due to illness and was replaced by George S. Irving as Madame Lucy. Reviews in Toronto were mixed, and when Reynolds was stricken with a throat ailment, the producers, rather than cancel the sell-out performances, had her mime her dialogue and songs on stage to director John Gielgud's reading of them from the wings, much to the dismay of angry audiences. Philadelphia critics were brutal, and Gielgud, an odd choice for a lightweight musical comedy, was replaced by Gower Champion, who had helmed a Los Angeles revival of Annie Get Your Gun with Reynolds. Peter Gennaro was hired to restage the musical numbers, and Joseph Stein was brought in to doctor the book, which now had Irene posing as a countess in cahoots with couturier Madame Lucy (the former Liam O'Dougherty) in a scheme to promote his fashions.
Postponing the Broadway opening, the producers brought the work-in-progress to Washington, D.C., where it was seen by President Nixon and his family. Their declaration that Irene was a hit made headlines and spurred advance-ticket sales in New York City.
After thirteen previews, the show opened on March 13, 1973 as the inaugural production of the Minskoff Theatre, where it ran for 594 performances. In addition to Reynolds and Irving (who won the Tony Award for his performance), the cast included Patsy Kelly, Monte Markham as Donald, Ruth Warrick, Janie Sell, Meg Bussert, and Reynolds' daughter Carrie Fisher. While reviews were still mixed, the all-important Clive Barnes of the New York Times described it as "raucous, frequently cheerful, and the best 1919 musical in town."
(Show description and details courtesy of www.wikipedia.com) |
