Closer Than Ever
Encyclopedia
Closer Than Ever is a musical
revue
in two acts, with words by Richard Maltby, Jr.
and music by David Shire
. The revue contains no dialogue, and Maltby and Shire have described this show as a "bookless book musical". The show was originally conceived by Steven Scott Smith as a one act revue entitled "Next Time Now!", which was first given at the nightclub Eighty-Eights.
The success of "Next Time Now!" led to a much expanded production retitled Closer Than Ever that was co-directed by Maltby and Smith. This production began its life at the Williamstown Theatre Festival
in Massachusetts
during the Summer of 1989. It came to New York the following Fall, opening in previews on 17 October 1989, and officially opening on 6 November 1989 at the off-Broadway
Cherry Lane Theatre
, where it ran for 312 performances. The cast included Brent Barrett
, Sally Mayes
, Richard Muenz
, and Lynne Wintersteller
.
Closer Than Ever features self-contained songs which deal with such diverse topics as security, aging, mid-life crisis
, second marriages, working couples, and unrequited love. Maltby and Shire based many of the songs on real-life experiences of their friends, or stories told to them. The revue won the Outer Critics Circle Award
for Best Off-Broadway Musical and Maltby, Shire, and Wintersteller all garnered Drama Desk Award
nominations for their respective contributions. The original New York cast recorded an album of the revue for RCA Victor (RCA Victor 60399).
The revue has received a number of revivals at Regional theatres throughout the United States, including a production at the Westport Country Playhouse
in January 1991., an April 1996 production at the Fleetwood Stage in Mount Vernon
, New York, an August 2002 production at the MetroStage in Washington D.C., and a 2005 production at the Porchlight Music Theatre in Chicago
. In September 2006 the show had its London
stage debut at the Bridewell Theatre. The production celebrates its 20th anniversary with a run at Queens Theatre in the Park in April 2010. It will then head to the Bristol Riverside Theatre in Bristol, PA, for three weeks in May. The Shandaken Theatrical Society launched a production that ran from August 14-21 2010 directed by Ricarda O'Conner and starred Janna Cardia, Alex Agard, and Austin Ku, Amy Wallace, and Chuck Sokolowski, as well as musical director Eric Thomas Johnson.
. Maltby assembled other cut songs from earlier musicals such as The River, Love Match and The Sap of Life to go with this particular song. The "Urban File" also contained lyric fragments, musical ideas, song fragments, rhythmic ideas, philosophical observations, and biograpical details of friends and acquaintances as potential material for songs. During this time, Maltby was occupied with Song and Dance
, and Shire was busy composing film scores, so that the "Urban File" was not a primary project at the time.
In 1987, Lynne Meadow
, artistic director of the Manhattan Theatre Club
, approached Maltby and Shire to ask for a song for a topical revue on urban themes that director John Tillinger
was creating. Maltby showed them his "Urban File", which Tillinger and Meadow found appealing. Tillinger had initially planned on only a small amount of music, but after seeing the file, altered his original concept, with the final product being six songs by Maltby and Shire and one song by Edward Kleban
. The work was a critical success with both the public and critics. New songs for this production included "There's Nothing Like It", "Miss Byrd" and "One of the Good Guys". They also wrote "Three Friends" for the revue, but finally did not use it. The music was interspersed with dramatic sketches on urban themes by various playwrights, including Christopher Durang
, A. R. Gurney
, Terrence McNally
, Arthur Miller
, Shel Silverstein
, Ted Tally
,
and Wendy Wasserstein
. Titled Urban Blight, the revue premiered in May 1988 and ran for six weeks at the Manhattan Theatre Club. The cast included Larry Fishburne, John Rubinstein
, Oliver Platt
, Nancy Giles
, Faith Prince
, Rex Robbins and E. Katherine Kerr.
In the Fall of 1988, the playwright and director and pianist Steven Scott Smith, an assistant to Maltby, approached Maltby and Shire for permission to use the "Urban File", with some other unused songs of theirs, to assemble a cabaret evening consisting entirely of their music. Maltby and Shire approved this, and Smith began to assemble a review titled Next Time, Now! with director Patrick Scott Brady and choreographer Arthur Faria. One of the songs added into this show was "Life Story". The one hour cabaret show opened in January 1989 at Eighty-Eight's, a nightclub in Greenwich Village
, with Brent Barrett, Michael Brian and Lynne Wintersteller as the show's performers. The work was a critical success with both the public and critics, and Maltby and Shire decided to expand this product into a full evening-length show.
Maltby and Shire received support to expand the show when producers Janet Brenner, Michael Gill, and Daryl Roth came on board. They wanted to turn the production into a two act evening, which required new songs and additional material from the "Urban File". The show also added one more actress, Sally Mayes, to the cast. New songs written for the expansion include the opening number, "Doors", "You Want To Be My Friend?", "Fandango", "If I Sing", "The March of Time", "Back On Base", and the finale, "Closer Than Ever". "Another Wedding Song", written by Shire and his wife Didi Conn
for their wedding, was also added into the show at this time. The full-scale version of the show went through a trial run at the Williamstown Theatre Festival
in Massachusetts
during the summer of 1989. Marcia Milgrom Dodge
was hired to choreograph the expanded show and Maltby became Smith's co-director. Well received by audiences, the show headed for New York City.
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
revue
Revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...
in two acts, with words by Richard Maltby, Jr.
Richard Maltby, Jr.
Richard Eldridge Maltby, Jr. is an American theatre director and producer, lyricist, and screenwriter. He is also well known as a constructor of cryptic crossword puzzles. He has done this for Harper's Magazine, sometimes in collaboration with E. R...
and music by David Shire
David Shire
David Lee Shire is an American songwriter and the composer of stage musicals, film and television scores. The soundtrack to the movie The Taking of Pelham 123 and parts of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack such as Night on Disco Mountain, an adaptation of Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald...
. The revue contains no dialogue, and Maltby and Shire have described this show as a "bookless book musical". The show was originally conceived by Steven Scott Smith as a one act revue entitled "Next Time Now!", which was first given at the nightclub Eighty-Eights.
The success of "Next Time Now!" led to a much expanded production retitled Closer Than Ever that was co-directed by Maltby and Smith. This production began its life at the Williamstown Theatre Festival
Williamstown Theatre Festival
The Williamstown Theatre Festival is a regional summer stock theatre on the campus of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, founded in 1954 by Williams College news director, Ralph Renzi, and drama program chairman, David C. Bryant. The theatre was conceived as a way to use the Adams...
in Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
during the Summer of 1989. It came to New York the following Fall, opening in previews on 17 October 1989, and officially opening on 6 November 1989 at the off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...
Cherry Lane Theatre
Cherry Lane Theatre
The Cherry Lane Theatre , located at 38 Commerce Street in the borough of Manhattan, was New York City's oldest, continuously running off-Broadway theater...
, where it ran for 312 performances. The cast included Brent Barrett
Brent Barrett
Brent Barrett is an American actor and tenor who is mostly known for his work within American theatre. Barrett has performed in musicals and in concerts with theatres, symphony orchestras, opera houses, and concert halls internationally...
, Sally Mayes
Sally Mayes
-Biography:Born in Livingston, Texas, Mayes began her career as a rock and jazz singer in Houston. She made her Broadway debut in April 1989 as Winona Shook in Cy Coleman's Welcome to the Club. For her performance she won a Theatre World Award. This was followed by her appearance in the original...
, Richard Muenz
Richard Muenz
Richard Muenz is an American actor and baritone who is mostly known for his work within American theatre. Muenz has frequently performed in musicals and in concerts. He has also periodically acted on television.-Biography:...
, and Lynne Wintersteller
Lynne Wintersteller
Lynne Wintersteller is an American actress best known for her work in the theatre. A gifted soprano, she has appeared in several musicals including starring in the original production of Maltby and Shire's hit Off-Broadway musical Closer Than Ever in 1989 at the Cherry Lane Theatre...
.
Closer Than Ever features self-contained songs which deal with such diverse topics as security, aging, mid-life crisis
Mid-life crisis
Midlife crisis is a term coined in 1965 by Elliott Jaques and used in Western societies to describe a period of dramatic self-doubt that is felt by some individuals in the "middle years" or middle age of life, as a result of sensing the passing of their own youth and the imminence of their old age...
, second marriages, working couples, and unrequited love. Maltby and Shire based many of the songs on real-life experiences of their friends, or stories told to them. The revue won the Outer Critics Circle Award
Outer Critics Circle Award
The Outer Critics Circle Awards are presented annually for theatrical achievements both on and Off-Broadway and were begun during the 1949-1950 theater season. The awards are decided upon by theater critics who review for out-of-town newspapers, national publications, and other media outlets...
for Best Off-Broadway Musical and Maltby, Shire, and Wintersteller all garnered Drama Desk Award
Drama Desk Award
The Drama Desk Awards, which are given annually in a number of categories, are the only major New York theater honors for which productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway compete against each other in the same category...
nominations for their respective contributions. The original New York cast recorded an album of the revue for RCA Victor (RCA Victor 60399).
The revue has received a number of revivals at Regional theatres throughout the United States, including a production at the Westport Country Playhouse
Westport Country Playhouse
Westport Country Playhouse, is a not-for-profit theater in Westport, Connecticut. Under the artistic direction of Mark Lamos the Playhouse produces new and classic plays for the public....
in January 1991., an April 1996 production at the Fleetwood Stage in Mount Vernon
Mount Vernon
The name Mount Vernon is a dedication to the English Vice-Admiral Edward Vernon. It was first applied to Mount Vernon, the Virginia estate of George Washington, the first President of the United States...
, New York, an August 2002 production at the MetroStage in Washington D.C., and a 2005 production at the Porchlight Music Theatre in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. In September 2006 the show had its London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
stage debut at the Bridewell Theatre. The production celebrates its 20th anniversary with a run at Queens Theatre in the Park in April 2010. It will then head to the Bristol Riverside Theatre in Bristol, PA, for three weeks in May. The Shandaken Theatrical Society launched a production that ran from August 14-21 2010 directed by Ricarda O'Conner and starred Janna Cardia, Alex Agard, and Austin Ku, Amy Wallace, and Chuck Sokolowski, as well as musical director Eric Thomas Johnson.
Composition history
In 1984, Maltby began compiling a series of older songs and new song ideas to form an evening of musical short stories, which he labeled the "Urban File". In particular, he wanted to make use of one of his favorite songs, "The Bear, The Tiger, The Hamster, and The Mole", which had been cut from Maltby and Shire's 1983 musical BabyBaby (musical)
Baby is a musical with a book by Sybille Pearson, based on a story developed with Susan Yankowitz, music by David Shire, and lyrics by Richard Maltby, Jr.. It concerns the reactions of three couples each expecting a child. The musical first ran on Broadway from 1983 to 1984.-Synopsis:Three...
. Maltby assembled other cut songs from earlier musicals such as The River, Love Match and The Sap of Life to go with this particular song. The "Urban File" also contained lyric fragments, musical ideas, song fragments, rhythmic ideas, philosophical observations, and biograpical details of friends and acquaintances as potential material for songs. During this time, Maltby was occupied with Song and Dance
Song and Dance
Song and Dance is a musical comprising two acts, one told entirely in "Song" and one entirely in "Dance", tied together by a love story.The first part is Tell Me On A Sunday, with lyrics by Don Black and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, about a young British woman's romantic misadventures in New York...
, and Shire was busy composing film scores, so that the "Urban File" was not a primary project at the time.
In 1987, Lynne Meadow
Lynne Meadow
Lynne Meadow is an American theatre producer and director and a college professor.A cum laude graduate of Bryn Mawr, Meadow attended the Yale School of Drama...
, artistic director of the Manhattan Theatre Club
Manhattan Theatre Club
Manhattan Theatre Club is a theater company located in New York City. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Lynne Meadow and Executive Producer Barry Grove, Manhattan Theatre Club has grown since its founding in 1970 from an Off-Off Broadway showcase into one of the country’s most acclaimed...
, approached Maltby and Shire to ask for a song for a topical revue on urban themes that director John Tillinger
John Tillinger
John Tillinger is a theatre director and actor.Born in Tabriz, Iran, Tillinger was raised in England, where he first was exposed to the theatre...
was creating. Maltby showed them his "Urban File", which Tillinger and Meadow found appealing. Tillinger had initially planned on only a small amount of music, but after seeing the file, altered his original concept, with the final product being six songs by Maltby and Shire and one song by Edward Kleban
Edward Kleban
Edward “Ed” Kleban was an American musical theatre composer and lyricist.Kleban was born in the Bronx, New York in 1939 and graduated from New York's High School of Music & Art and Columbia University, where he attended with future playwright Terrance McNally. Kleban is best known as lyricist of...
. The work was a critical success with both the public and critics. New songs for this production included "There's Nothing Like It", "Miss Byrd" and "One of the Good Guys". They also wrote "Three Friends" for the revue, but finally did not use it. The music was interspersed with dramatic sketches on urban themes by various playwrights, including Christopher Durang
Christopher Durang
Christopher Ferdinand Durang is an American playwright known for works of outrageous and often absurd comedy. His work was especially popular in the 1980s.- Life :...
, A. R. Gurney
A. R. Gurney
A. R. Gurney is an American playwright and novelist. He is known for works including Love Letters, The Cocktail Hour, and The Dining Room. Gurney currently lives in both New York and Connecticut....
, Terrence McNally
Terrence McNally
Terrence McNally is an American playwright who has received four Tony Awards, an Emmy, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Hull-Warriner Award, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been a member of the Council of the...
, Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...
, Shel Silverstein
Shel Silverstein
Sheldon Allan "Shel" Silverstein , was an American poet, singer-songwriter, musician, composer, cartoonist, screenwriter and author of children's books. He styled himself as Uncle Shelby in his children's books...
, Ted Tally
Ted Tally
Ted Tally is an American playwright and screenwriter.-Screenwriter:Born William Theodore Tally in North Carolina, Tally was educated at Yale College and the Yale School of Drama, and has also taught at each of them...
,
and Wendy Wasserstein
Wendy Wasserstein
Wendy Wasserstein was an American playwright and an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University...
. Titled Urban Blight, the revue premiered in May 1988 and ran for six weeks at the Manhattan Theatre Club. The cast included Larry Fishburne, John Rubinstein
John Rubinstein
John Arthur Rubinstein is an American film, Broadway, and television actor, a composer of film and theatre music, and a director in theatre and television.-Early life:...
, Oliver Platt
Oliver Platt
Oliver James Platt is a Canadian-American actor. He is currently starring in the Showtime original series, The Big C with Laura Linney.-Early life:...
, Nancy Giles
Nancy Giles
Nancy Giles is an American actress and television journalist .-Biography:...
, Faith Prince
Faith Prince
Faith Prince is an American actress and singer known primarily for her work on Broadway. Prince has won the Tony Award as Best Actress in a Musical and received three Tony nominations.-Life and career:...
, Rex Robbins and E. Katherine Kerr.
In the Fall of 1988, the playwright and director and pianist Steven Scott Smith, an assistant to Maltby, approached Maltby and Shire for permission to use the "Urban File", with some other unused songs of theirs, to assemble a cabaret evening consisting entirely of their music. Maltby and Shire approved this, and Smith began to assemble a review titled Next Time, Now! with director Patrick Scott Brady and choreographer Arthur Faria. One of the songs added into this show was "Life Story". The one hour cabaret show opened in January 1989 at Eighty-Eight's, a nightclub in Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
, with Brent Barrett, Michael Brian and Lynne Wintersteller as the show's performers. The work was a critical success with both the public and critics, and Maltby and Shire decided to expand this product into a full evening-length show.
Maltby and Shire received support to expand the show when producers Janet Brenner, Michael Gill, and Daryl Roth came on board. They wanted to turn the production into a two act evening, which required new songs and additional material from the "Urban File". The show also added one more actress, Sally Mayes, to the cast. New songs written for the expansion include the opening number, "Doors", "You Want To Be My Friend?", "Fandango", "If I Sing", "The March of Time", "Back On Base", and the finale, "Closer Than Ever". "Another Wedding Song", written by Shire and his wife Didi Conn
Didi Conn
Didi Conn is an American film, stage and television actress.-Personal life:Conn was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of a clinical psychologist. "Didi" was her childhood nickname...
for their wedding, was also added into the show at this time. The full-scale version of the show went through a trial run at the Williamstown Theatre Festival
Williamstown Theatre Festival
The Williamstown Theatre Festival is a regional summer stock theatre on the campus of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, founded in 1954 by Williams College news director, Ralph Renzi, and drama program chairman, David C. Bryant. The theatre was conceived as a way to use the Adams...
in Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
during the summer of 1989. Marcia Milgrom Dodge
Marcia Milgrom Dodge
Marcia Milgrom Dodge is an American director, choreographer and writer for the stage. After working in regional theatre, off-Broadway and elsewhere for thirty years, Dodge directed and choreographed her first Broadway production, a revival of Ragtime in 2009...
was hired to choreograph the expanded show and Maltby became Smith's co-director. Well received by audiences, the show headed for New York City.
Song list
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