About THE FANTASTICKS

The following is an excerpt from The Fantasticks original cast album compact disk (a Decca Broadway original cast album). It was written by Peter Felichia, former drama critic for the Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ) and daily columnist for www.Theatre.com.

Back in early 1958, young lyricist Tom Jones and younger composer Harvey Schmidt were asked to contribute to an upcoming nightclub revue called Demi-Dozen. One of their first ideas was to write about the burgeoning theatrical scene that was suddenly taking place downtown, many blocks south of the Great White Way.

And so, Schmidt wrote a melody to which Jones wrote, “Everyone calls me Mr. Off-Broadway,” about an actor who regularly performs there. He would sing, “It was many blocks off-Broadway where I got my fame. I’m very well-represented south of 14th Street.”

Actually, Jones and Schmidt were the ones who would be extraordinarily well-represented south of 14th Street two years later - and then some. For on May 3, 1960, a little show opened at the Sullivan Street Playhouse. It was a time when Percy Faith had the nation’s #1 record with A Summer Place, when Gunsmoke and Wagon Train were TV’s top-rated shows, and when cigarettes were prominently displayed in stores. Things have changed, but, like Ol’ Man River, The Fantasticks just kept rolling along.

How charming it’s been for audiences to see the show in its original home, the exact spot where Jerry Orbach as the narrator El Gallo, Kenneth Nelson as The Boy, and Rita Gardner as The Girl opened it (at salaries of $45 a week - less than 1/3000th of the check Orbach would eventually get for a single episode of TV’s Law and Order.) Now the nation knows Orbach as a tough guy, unaware that he was a fine musical actor who won a Tony Award for Promises, Promises. Theatergoers as old or older than The Fantasticks remember that Kenneth Nelson evolved from The Boy in the show to The Boys in the Band. And Rita Gardner is still around, too, after subsequent appearances in everything from off-Broadway hits (Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris), to Broadway flops(Ari - the musical version of Exodus).

In 1959, producer Lore Noto couldn’t have predicted he’d produce such a household-name hit. Thus far, he only mounted one play that, ominously enough, had been called The Failures. Its failure, though, didn’t daunt him from seeking another theatrical property. He looked high and low, even traveling to Barnard College one night to see a trio of one-acters. He especially liked the opening attraction, a musical based on Edmund (Cyrano de Bergerac), Rostand’s Les Romanesques. Noto encouraged Jones and Schmidt to expand the show to a full evening. They did, and the Sullivan Street Playhouse was booked for the $16,500 production.

Not for long, it seemed. After the all-important Brooks Atkinson in the Times and Walter Kerr of the Herald-Tribune wrote lukewarm reviews, Jones and Schmidt might have thought about another line they wrote for their Mr. Off-Broadway song - when the actor told of being in a play - “Till Atkinson reviewed it, it was doing fine. I lost my job through the New York Times.”

But they had nothing to worry about, because Noto would never say no. He convinced MGM to record the cast album on June 13 in hopes that the disc would generate some income. “When the first statement arrived some months later,” says Noto, “MGM said we owed them $11.”

So who knew that soon it was gonna reign as the world’s longest-running musical? In fact, in August 1960, Noto did close the show at Sullivan Street - for one week - and took it to East Hampton. “That turned us around,” he says. “Those people out there understood it, cared about it, and became great supporters. People like Anne Bancroft saw what I saw in it, and told their friends.”

But word-of-mouth wasn’t the only reason The Fantasticks survived. While producers had traditionally prevented their plays from being done by amateurs until the original and touring productions had closed, Noto permitted community, college, and high school groups to stage the show while his production was still running. Not only did he feel he might make some ancillary monies, but he also believed that people who saw these versions - or acted in what have now amounted to more than 12,000 productions in 3,500 cities - would want to see where it all began. They have.

Then Noto broke another unwritten theatrical rule by allowing a still-running show to be broadcast on TV. The Fantasticks was a Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation in 1964, with John Davidson as The Boy, Bert Lahr as his father, Susan Watson as The Girl, Stanley Holloway as her father, and Ricardo Montalban as narrator El Gallo. Noto was warned that the broadcast would negatively impact the stage show, because those who watched it would feel they’d already seen it. Instead, his prediction that it would whet their appetites to see it at Sullivan Street proved true.

Having rising star Barbra Streisand record a couple of songs from the show on her best-selling albums didn’t hurt, either. Soon The Fantasticks had lasted long enough for patrons to change from calling OR-4-3838 to 674-3838. By the time the May 3, 1970 New York Times ad proudly proclaimed, “Second decade!” the show had already become a synonym for longevity. Cabaret singers who warbled Rodgers and Hart’s “Manhattan,” which originally had a line about Abie’s Irish Rose never closing, used The Fantasticks to make the point in lieu of that chestnut. In the early 80’s, a mini-series called Amerika took place in the very distant future - and yet opened with a shot of an audience watching The Fantasticks. In 1984, New York Mayor Edward I. Koch had another sign added to the pole on Sullivan and Bleecker Streets, dubbing the block, “Fantasticks Lane.” And in 1992, Broadway’s Tony Awards bent its rules by acknowledging off-Broadway and giving The Fantasticks a special award.

Low overhead has helped, of course. There’s no microphone budget, because the show is unamplified. When a character isn’t performing, he sits on the piano bench and turns pages for the pianist, one of only two musicians. The other is a harpist who doubles on percussion. (But that’s part of the charm.) And in 1970, when Actors’ Equity arranged for off-Broadway salaries to skyrocket to $100 a week, Noto decided to save money by playing The Boy’s father - which he did for the next 16 years. He’s now in the Guiness Book of Records for doing a still-unsurpassed 6,348 performances.

Nevertheless, none of this would have mattered if the show itself wasn’t good. The Fantasticks certainly is, and, more than that, it has universal appeal. Parents knowingly laugh when The Girl’s Father says “It isn’t easy to raise a daughter.” Teenagers laugh at themselves when they see the kids’ adolescent need to fight their folks. Little kids enjoy seeing the antics of the Old Actor and the Indian when they stage their mock fight. And let’s not forget those oh-so-lovely songs, starting with “Try to Remember,” herein produced in a digital re-mastering that would have been impossible to predict when this album was originally recorded.

If Jones and Schmidt didn’t know they’d see The Fantasticks celebrate so many anniversaries, they still might have felt deep down inside that they’d have a run. For the script has The Old Actor say, “There’s usually an audience somewhere,” and El Gallo remark, “The story is not ended, and the play is never done.” Indeed.