Three Sisters: A Restoration

I am thrilled to announce (and scoup all the news agencies!) that 42nd Street Moon, Artistic Director Greg MacKellan, and Musical Director Dave Dobrusky have received a 2010 NEA Grant for $25,000.

The grant is being awarded to restore the script and score of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's lost work Three Sisters. In 1995, Moon put together a concert reading of Three Sisters. Although it was minimally staged, and the script was a skeletal narrative of the show, Variety acknowledged the glory of Kern’s score, “But the prize here is Kern’s extant music. This material was ideal for his way with a wistful ballad, and several are gorgeous…” Of the script, Variety noted, “This drama-with-songs seems more in line with the fabled team’s earlier Show Boat than their more frivolous ‘30’s vehicles.”


Artistic Director Greg MacKellan intends to go back to the original source material and re-store and construct a working production script. The basis of our 1995 score consisted of several songs with published sheet music, some piano selections published in England, and some transcriptions from a cast recording. Musical Director Dave Dobrusky will finish the score restoration and create a new, readable piano-vocal score as well as new chamber orchestrations for piano, woodwinds, and strings to present the score.

From our original concert press release:

Not based on Chekhov's work, this Three Sisters follows three very different siblings through their romantic adventures during the first two decades of the century. The three girls hold different marital aspirations, with the eldest sister, a great galumphing girl named Tiny, in love with a sturdy constable; Dorrie, the middle child dreaming of marriage to a wealthy man; and the youngest, Mary, smitten by a young busker named Gypsy Hood. Marriages, mistaken identities and World War I ensue, with the girls' hapless photographer father trying to manage it all.


Premiering April 9, 1934 at the Drury Lane Theater in London, Three Sisters was mounted with the intention of bringing it to the states after a successful London run, but mixed reviews closed the show after two months -- at the time, the shortest run in the history of the Drury Lane Theater. Kern had worked previously in London with great success. Shows such as Cabaret Girl, Beauty Prize and Blue Eyes, written with British lyricists and book writers such as P.G. Wodehouse, had been very well received by London critics and audiences alike. "Three Sisters was Kern's first production in London that was written with another American, Oscar Hammerstein, who wrote the lyrics and book," says 42nd St. Moon producer Greg MacKellan. According to MacKellan, "New York critics who traveled to London to see the show adored it, but London critics were less enthusiastic -- perhaps offended that two Americans would dare to write a musical with British characters and a British story." While David Fairweather of the U.S. magazine Theatre World wrote, "It is difficult to account for the failure of Three Sisters, for it is a charming, original production with by far the best music of any light opera within recent history," British critic W.A. Darlington sniffed "the music...is pleasant and cleverly handled, but not original."

I know I speak for everyone here when I say Congratulations to Greg and Dave and how excited we are to see the American Premiere production of a Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein show!

Three Sisters will be part of Moon's 2011-2012 season. To subscribe for next season click here.

Moon for the Misforgotten

I have something to say... I'm a musical theatre fan.

I feel no personal shame or guilt about this…

In fact, I love it!

I love everything about it. I love the shows. I love the cast recordings. I love the playbills. Most of all, I love the stories; I love the history.

That’s why I’m growing to love this company more and more every day.

I might be a little biased, but over the past few weeks I’ve learned a lot about 42ND Street Moon.

First—I have to admit—as I started my affair with musical theatre, programs like City Center’s Encores! and Reprise in Los Angeles were much more… known to me. And I do love them too!

With their “star power,” a number of CD's, and more than a few transfers to Broadway, I thought these were the “original” preservation companies.

Boy was I wrong.

This is my “Did you know” section… bear with me:

Did you know…

• Moon—inspired by the long-gone New Amsterdam Company in New York—is the oldest Musical Revival Company currently producing in the United States?

• Moon has been awarded two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts for preservation efforts?
• that most seasons, Moon presents more shows than both Encores! and Reprise COMBINED!?
• most of Moon’s shows are from the 20’s-40’s, unlike other Companies which typically gravitate toward more recent decades?


• Moon has produced the American Premiere of three shows: Cabaret Girl (Kern/Wodehouse), The Good Companions (Previn/Mercer), and Three Sisters (Kern/Wodehouse)?


• Moon has produced the first revivals since the original productions of Darling of the Day Styne/Harburg), Face the Music (Berlin), Peggy-Ann (Rodgers/Hammerstein II), America’s Sweetheart (Rodgers/Hart)


• brought Cole Porter’s Leave It To Me to the world with the first recording of the complete score?

I was amazed when I found all this out. Can you imagine? Our little family did all that?

I’m proud to be a Moonie!

Of course, it brings up an interesting difference between Moon and other revival companies.

Encores! produces a mix of shows, restorations of rarely-seen classics as well as more standard fare like The Pajama Game and Bye, Bye, Birdie. However, to be able to hear them once again, with their full orchestra and Broadway casts is thrilling. “Encores! is the gold standard,” says our Artistic Director Greg MacKellan.

Then you have us, 42nd Street Moon. Our approach is a bit different, since it's part of our mission to preserve the American Musical; to restore scripts and scores; to present works, with not only glorious music, superbly written books, but also shows with personal stories, with history.

Who should be taking a page from whose book...if at all? Is Moon on the right course by trying to bring uncommon, sometimes literally lost, musicals to San Francisco? What do you think of the Reprise and Encores! model? Would you prefer a hybrid? How many shows a season can be old favorites, not lost gems? Bring it on! Let's hear it!

______________________________________


Trivia question this week:

I mentioned that Moon's recording of Leave It to Me was the first complete recording of Porter's score. There was an earlier recording. Where did it come from and in what language was it recorded?