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"Try to Remember"
Manage episode 439901024 series 3540370
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Today’s Sometimes a Song comes from the longest-running musical in the entire world, a low-budget off-Broadway production called “The Fantasticks.” The play ran without a pause for forty-two years, opening in May of 1960 and closing in January of 2002. As if that “first run” were not enough, the play was revived in 2006 and ran for an additional eleven years, closing less than a decade ago, in 2017.
The Fantasticks premiered at the Sullivan Street Playhouse, a small off-Broadway theatre in Greenwich Village, with singer/actor, Jerry Orbach (whom some of you will recall from the television show, Law and Order), and librettist, Tom Jones (not to be confused with the British singer of the same name) in lead roles. Having the librettist in the cast was only one of many ways that “The Fantasticks” beat the odds against succeeding even in a small way with the big-budget Broadway productions of the day, when $250K was a typical price tag of getting a play to opening night. “The Fantasticks” launched with a total budget of under $1,500, with the most pared down set imaginable and a costume budget of about $200.
This play’s enduring popularity can hardly be overstated. To this day it is still the most-performed play in the United States, with an annual average of 250 versions of it produced in small theater companies and high schools across the land. What’s not to like about a (forbidden) love story, turned on its ear by conspiring fathers who engage in a faux feud in the hope that their son and daughter will reject the “feud” and actually fall in love with each other? And audiences have been enjoying this story for over 60 years. How normal is THAT?
You might be interested to know that composer Harvey Schmidt and librettist Tom Jones DID win a Tony Award for “The Fantasticks” — only thirty-three years into their 42-year run. And THAT was about time! The two are best remembered for this single musical (and for one other romantic musical, called “I Do, I Do“). Who knows? They might have created more plays together, but for the huge success of their first one, which became a career in itself for them.
My choice today is to give you an original recording of “Try to Remember” from 1963, recorded by lead actor, Jerry Orbach shortly after the play opened in 1960. The song hit Number 14 on the charts that year and has been recorded professionally about 300 times and is still immensely popular with choirs and chorales and with individual art-song singers around the world.
And now, without further ado, here is this week’s lovely little song …
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Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song!
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