http://scribblers.us/nhtj Stage news, previews & reviews from all over (but especially Connecticut) Sat, 21 Sep 2013 20:22:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6.1 http://scribblers.us/nhtj/?p=889&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=travelin-light http://scribblers.us/nhtj/?p=889#comments Sat, 06 Aug 2011 14:13:36 +0000 Christopher Arnott http://scribblers.us/nhtj/?p=889 Continue reading »]]>
A Guys and Dolls matchbook bought at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena. This is a hip independent bookshop, and the other matchbooks for sale were all lit-based rather than theatrical. The image on the matchbook cover is from the first edition of Damon Runyon’s short story collection Guys and Dolls (with an intro by Heywood Broun), published in 1931. The show is very loosely based on a couple of these tales and more accurately simply based on the book’s title and Runyon’s patois.
In any case, it was nice to find a matchbook with a play on it; remember when fancier matchbooks were a popular souvenir item at Broadway theater merch counters?
I just ran across a copy of Eric Bentley’s anthology From the American Drama. Bentley considered the book of Guys and Dolls impressive enough to rub shoulders in the volume with Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (a 1902 pop culture phenomenon by Clyde Fitch, later adapted for the Federal Theatre Project), The New York Idea (1906, Langdon Mitchell; this is the script recently updated by David Auburn), Wilder’s Pullman Car Hiawatha and Saroyan’s The Man With the Heart in the Highlands (originally a short story).
The musical’s book, of course, is by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows, with uncredited augmentations by the show’s original director, George S. Kaufman.
Well matched!

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I put together this facsimile paper theater (from Pollock’s Toy Theatres, published in 1972) with scissors and a gluestick. The only remaining thing is to figure out what to present in it.
For a paper theater, something flat, black & white and two-dimensional seems appropriate. But if I did a Wendy Wasserstein play, I’d have to pay royalties!
So many plays, from the Federal Theatre Project to Odets to Miller, used to be “ripped from today’s papers,” including the comics sections—L’il Abner, Annie… and whatever happened to that long-gestating Mickey Rooney musical of Bringing Up Father? Well, there’s a Betty Boop musical slated for 2012 on Broadway.

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