| re: First Broadway show you ever saw this is not a poll | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 01:40 am EDT 08/02/24 | |
| In reply to: re: First Broadway show you ever saw this is not a poll - merle57 08:45 pm EDT 08/01/24 | |
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| Thanks so much for the memories and details, merle57. What you say about "When I Went Home" aligns with what I remember Kathleen Nolan saying in the book Peter Pan On Stage and Screen, which unfortunately I don't have a copy of. If my memory is correct, she said that the audience would cry at every performance when Martin sang it, but Martin wanted it cut and replaced by another song — which ended up being "Distant Melody," written for Wendy, and losing it did not make Nolan happy — because she didn't get a big hand for it. Interestingly, the unfavorable Variety review of the San Francisco run stated that "The second act socko number is a plaintive refrain, 'When I Went Home.'" There was a followup Variety review of a performance at the end of the San Francisco run, not much more favorable than the first, in which the Comden-Green-Styne "Neverland" is mentioned as a song that had been added. A San Francisco program lists a song titled "Happy Is the Boy," for the Boys, Wendy and Peter, where "Wendy" would later be. I would wonder if there ever was a song by that title but the fact that there was a second-act reprise back at the Darling's, sung by the Darling Family and the Boys, makes me think that there probably was a song by that title. In case my comment about wondering if no such song ever existed seems cryptic, I will mention that I know of at least two examples of tryout playbills listing titles of songs that were never written. The authors — Back and Harnick in one case, Sondheim in the other — of the two shows in which I know of this happening thought that there should be a song in a particular spot (or had been asked to write one for the spot), and had some idea of what it might be about, and so they came up with provisional titles to be put in the playbills that needed to be printed in advance, but then they never wrote the songs, although Sondheim did eventually write a song for that spot. A Los Angeles Peter Pan program lists a song titled "Be Our Mother" for the Boys, Wendy and Peter in the spot where "Wendy" eventually was. Perhaps that was the song you heard as it likely would have been added during the San Francisco run. I envy you having seen this Peter Pan onstage, even if it wasn't yet in finished form. |
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| Previous: | re: First Broadway show you ever saw this is not a poll - merle57 08:45 pm EDT 08/01/24 |
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