Via Galactica is a rock musical

Rock musical

A rock musical is a musical theatre work with rock music. The genre of rock musical may overlap somewhat with album musicals, concept albums and song cycles, as they sometimes tell a story through the rock music, and some album musicals and concept albums become rock musicals...

 with a book by Christopher Gore and Judith Ross, lyrics by Gore, and music by Galt MacDermot

Galt MacDermot

Galt MacDermot is a Canadian composer, pianist and writer of musical theatre. He won a Grammy Award for the song African Waltz in 1960. His most successful musicals have been Hair and Two Gentlemen of Verona...

. It marked the Broadway debut of actor Mark Baker

Mark Baker (actor)

Mark Baker is an American stage and film actor. He made his Broadway debut in the original production of Via Galactica, one of the most expensive flops in Broadway history.- Biography :...

.

Originally entitled Up!, it offers a futuristic story of social outcasts living on an asteroid

Asteroid

Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...

 in the year 2972. Among them is Gabriel Finn, a space sanitation man who collects trash in a clamshell-shaped garbage ship called the Helen of Troy.

The storyline was so incomprehensible that at the last moment producers decided to insert a plot synopsis in the Playbill

Playbill

Playbill is a monthly U.S. magazine for theatregoers. Although there is a subscription issue available for home delivery, most Playbills are printed for particular shows to be distributed at the door...

, but audiences were still baffled by what they were witnessing unfold on stage. Pyrotechnic displays and other special effects did little to enhance the project.

After fifteen previews, the Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 production, directed by Peter Hall, produced by George W. George

George W. George

George W. George was an American theater, Broadway and film producer. His credits included the 1981 film My Dinner With Andre and several hit Broadway productions....

 and choreographed by George Faison

George Faison

George Faison is an African-American dancer and choreographer.-Biography:Faison was born in Washington, D.C. where he studied dance with the Jones-Haywood Capitol Ballet and Carolyn Tate of Howard University while attending Dunbar High School, and appeared with The American Light Opera Company in...

, opened on November 28, 1972, the first production at the brand new Uris Theatre

George Gershwin Theatre

The Gershwin Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 222 West 51st Street in midtown-Manhattan in the Paramount Plaza building. The theatre is named after composer George Gershwin and lyricist Ira Gershwin...

 where, unable to withstand a universal assault by the critics, it ran for only seven performances. The cast included Raul Julia

Raúl Juliá

Raúl Rafael Juliá y Arcelay was a Puerto Rican actor.Born in San Juan, he gained interest in acting while still in school. Upon completing his studies, Juliá decided to pursue a career in acting. After performing in the local scene for some time, he was convinced by entertainment personality Orson...

, Irene Cara

Irene Cara

Irene Cara is an American singer and actress. Cara won an Academy Award in 1984 in the category of Best Original Song for co-writing "Flashdance... What a Feeling." She is also known for her recording of the song "Fame", and she also starred in the 1980 film Fame.She married Hollywood stuntman...

, Keene Curtis

Keene Curtis

Keene Holbrook Curtis was an American character actor.-Film career:Curtis made his film debut in the 1948 Orson Welles adaptation of Macbeth...

, Chuck Cissel

Chuck Cissel

Charles "Chuck" Cissel is an American singer, dancer, director, choreographer and producer. He was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and graduated from Booker T. Washington High School. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Oklahoma, and was one of the first African Americans to...

, Ralph Carter

Ralph Carter

Ralph Carter is an American actor, and singerCarter is best known for his work as a child and teenager, both in the Broadway musical Raisin and as the character Michael Evans, the youngest member of the Evans family, on the 1970s sitcom Good Times...

, Melanie Chartoff

Melanie Chartoff

Melanie Chartoff is an American actress. Among her most prominent roles are her voice role in Rugrats, her comedic work on the ABC series Fridays from 1980–1982, and on the early 1990s Fox sitcom Parker Lewis Can't Lose....

, and Virginia Vestoff

Virginia Vestoff

Virginia Vestoff was an American actress of film, television and Broadway.Vestoff was born into a family of vaudeville performers in New York City. Both her Russian immigrant father and mother, who was the great niece of American composer Stephen Foster, died and left Virginia an orphan at the age...

.

Via Galactica, one of the first Broadway shows to lose more than $1 million, was MacDermot's second flop of the season. His Dude

Dude (musical)

Dude is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. It is an allegory about good and evil, the conflict between mankind's creative and destructive urges, the power of love, and the joy to be found in simple pleasures...

had closed after 16 performances a mere five weeks earlier.

Songs

Act I

• Via Galactica
• We Are One
• Helen of Troy
• Oysters
• The Other Side of the Sky
• Children of the Sun
• Different
• Take Your Hat Off
• Ilmar's Tomb
• Shall We Friend?
• The Lady Isn't Looking
• Hush
• Cross on Over
• The Gospel of Gabriel Finn

Act II

• Terre Haute High
• Life Wins
• The Worm Germ
• Isaacs' Equation
• Dance the Dark Away!
• Four Hundred Girls Ago
• All My Good Mornings
• Isaacs' Equation (Reprise)
• Children of the Sun (Reprise)
• New Jerusalem

External links

• Internet Broadway Database link
• Jennifer George, "My Family's Flop", The New York Times
  The New York Times
  The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
  
  , January 2, 2011.
• BroadwayEdition.org host Paul Leary's Exclusive interview about Via Galactica with Rick Gore: http://www.paulleary.org/web/Home/Entries/2011/1/7_Exclusive_interview_about_Via_Galactica.html