book and lyrics by Tom Jones, music by Harvey Schmidt
seen at the Jerry Orbach Theater, New York, on 29 May 2016
This musical, famously performed continuously off-Broadway for 42 years from 1960, has recently been revived, directed by the author Tom Jones with Shavey Brown as the Narrator (El Gallo), Andrew Polec as the Boy (Matt), Madison Claire Parks as the Girl (Luisa), Peter Cormican as the Boy's Father (Huckabee), Dale Hensley as the Girl's Father (Bellomy), MacIntyre Dixon as the Old Actor (Henry), Michael Nostrand as the Man who Dies (Mortimer) and Drew Seigla as the Mute.
It is a very self-conscious play, with the Narrator introducing the characters, setting the scene, and periodically commenting on the action. The characters are to some extent stereotypes - hence their personal names appear in brackets in the programme and are only casually used by the Narrator. The situation appears to be a blend of Romeo and Juliet (quarrelling families against young love) and Pyramus and Thisbe (there is a wall between the families' adjoining gardens). There are many other Shakespearean allusions in the spoken text, including a running joke that the Old Actor cannot remember the second line of Mark Antony's famous funeral oration in Julius Caesar, and some truly atrocious puns.
