So how come nobody’s ever made Stormy Weather into a stage musical? No matter; here are ten stormy stage events for those in the path of the hurricane.
Sturm und Drang by Friedrich Maximilian Klinger. It’s the work that coined that phrase, in 1776. The play’s actually about the American Revolution.
Dynamo by Eugene O’Neill. Big splashy thunderstorm finale. One of O’Neill’s most underrated works. It underwhelmed the critics at its premiere, and the playwright blamed himself for not having gotten as involved in the production as he had been with previous ones.
Barefoot in the Park by Neil Simon. “I’m going to be shoveling snow in my own living room!”
Three Days of Rain by Richard Greenberg. We all know what that means.
The Tempest by William Shakespeare. “Here’s neither bush nor shrub, to bear off
any weather at all, and another storm brewing. I hear it sing i’ the wind: yond’ same black cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor.”
Porgy and Bess by Ira Gershwin, Dubose Heyward and George Gershwin. The hurricane that bombards Catfish Row at the end of Act 2 has just been bested by the furor arising from Porgy purists upset at some of the changes Diane Paulus and Suzan-Lori Parks have made for their revised version at the ART.
To Gleam It Around, To Show My Shine by Bonnie Lee Moss Rattner. A 1983 play based on Zora Neale Hurston’s Okeechobee Hurrican-struck story Their Eyes Were Watching God. It’s had productions at several college and regional theaters.
Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford. The 1921 movie version of this 1910 George M. Cohan play (based on short stories by George Randolph Chester) was showing at the Knickerbocker Theatre in Washington DC in January of 1922 when the building’s roof collapsed due to snowfall from a blizzard that had raged for over two days. Ninety-eight people died and over a hundred others were injured in the crash. The storm ended up being named after the theater: The Knickerbocker Storm.
The Storm by Ostrovsky. Turned into an opera by Janacek. It’s mostly metaphorical, about tempestuous relationships and personal revelations which resound like thunderbolts, but there is a weather-type storm in there somewhere too.
Irene. The musical comedy based on the James Montgomery play Irene O’Dare was, in its time, the longest running show in Broadway history. Songs from two decades-apart versions of this show—“You Made Me Love You” and “Alice Blue Gown” can be heard this November in the new musical Hello! My Baby at Goodspeed Musicals’ Norma Terris Theatre in Chester.
Another hit song from the show, which you could well be humming Sunday: “There’s Something in the Air.”