My Favorite Year (musical)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My Favorite Year is a 1992 Broadway musical based on the film of the same name, with a book by Joseph Dougherty, music by Stephen Flaherty, and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens.

Set in the 1950s, the plot centers on Benjy Stone, a sketch writer for a television variety show starring Sid Caesar-like King Kaiser. Signed for a guest appearance is Errol Flynn-like Alan Swann, a one-time movie idol whose career was disrupted by his addiction to alcohol and loose women. The task of keeping him sober and celibate until airtime falls to Benjy, who soon finds himself involved in a sequence of shenanigans unlike any he ever experienced before.

After 45 previews, during which the creative team constantly reworked the troubled production, the show, directed by Ron Lagomarsino and choreographed by Thommie Walsh, opened on December 10, 1992 at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre. The opening night cast included Evan Pappas, Tim Curry, Katie Finneran, Andrea Martin, Josh Mostel, and Lainie Kazan, who, as Benjy's mother, reprised the role she had played in the film.

My Favorite Year received mixed-to-negative reviews. The New York Times's Frank Rich called the musical "a missed opportunity, a bustling but too frequently flat musical that suffers from another vogue of the 1950's, an identity crisis,"^[1] and disapproved of the melodramatic turn taken in the show's second act, while Time magazine condemned it as a "barren Broadway musical."^[2] The show ran for exactly one month, closing after 36 performances.

Despite the show's failure, several of its stars garnered attention during awards season, and an original cast recording was released on the RCA Victor label. In March 2007, The Chicago Sun-Times revealed that Flaherty and Ahrens were "reworking the show with an eye on a new Broadway production."^[3] Flaherty said that, "In hindsight, I think our decision to paint the musical in somewhat darker colors was a mistake." Among the revisions made to the show are two new songs, which were incorporated into a March 2007 repertory production of the show.

1 Song list
2 Awards and nominations
3 References
4 External link

[edit] Song list

"Twenty Million People"
"Larger Than Life"
"The Musketeer Sketch"
"Rookie In The Ring"
"Manhattan"
"Naked In Bethesda Fountain"
"The Gospel According To King"
"Funny/The Duck Joke"
"Welcome To Brooklyn"
"If The World Were Like The Movies"
"Exits"
"Shut Up And Dance"
"Professional Showbizness Comedy"
"The King Kaiser Comedy Calvacade" theme
"The Lights Come Up"
"Maxford House"
"My Favorite Year"

[edit] Awards and nominations

Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical (Curry, nominee)
Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical (Martin, winner and Kazan, nominee)
Theatre World Award (Martin, winner)
Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical (Mostel, nominee)
Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical (Martin, winner)
Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Orchestrations (nominee)