Summer '69, Off-Off-Broadway's musical "happening," will no longer happen after the 7 PM, Oct. 10 performance. The show received mixed reviews but ran for 110 total performances, including its downtown stint at Theatre 8 and current run at the Douglas Fairbanks Theatre, where it opened Aug. 16.
A production spokesperson from Publicity Outfitters told Playbill On-Line the show has "strong possibilities" for a tour, though he had no word on any plans for a CD of the rock-and-roll score. He did say that the Fairbanks had already booked its next show, the drama Last Train to Nibroc, which had a brief run at the 78th Street Theatre Lab this past winter.
Actor-writer-director Bill Van Horn and Ellen Michelmore co-wrote '69, a look at the summer of Woodstock, told through tunes by Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, Janis Joplin, Country Joe McDonald, J. R. Robinson and Stephen Sills and Graham Nash. Seven actors play over 30 roles, ranging from a farmer and his wife to suburban parents and their hippie children to Captain Condom. Former Tommy Tune collaborator and Barrymore Award winner Bruce Lumpkin directs.
Lumpkin collaborated with Tune on My One and Only, Nine and Grand Hotel, co-directing the West End production. Other credits include Cabaret for which he won a Philadelphia Barrymore Award for Best Director and Best Musical. Lumpkin is currently developing a musical version of the film Time After Time and Honky Tonk Angel, the Patsy Cline story.
The cast includes Alyssa Claar (30th anniversary production ofHair), Jamie Hurley, Brian Maillard , Ron McClary, Kirk McGee (Uncle Vanya), Anne Moore, Rik Sansone and Christine M. Williamson. The design team is John Farrell (set), James Tomaselli (sound), Colleen McMillan (costumes) and Jeffrey Koger (lighting). Michelmore is the musical director.
$40 tickets for both engagements are available by calling Ticketmaster at (212) 307-4111. Theatre 80 is located at 80 St. Marks Place.
As for Last Train to Nibroc, director Michael Montel's production of Arlene Hutton's play ran Feb. 11-March 21 at the 78th Street Theatre Lab. Montel directed the original production, which premiered Aug. 19, 1998 at the New York International Fringe Festival.
Set in World War II, Last Train follows two young Kentuckians who meet on a train carrying the bodies of Nathanael West and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Raliegh, the man, is inspired to leave Kentucky to seek a literary career in New York. May, on the other hand, returns to her home to maintain a life of diversion.
Hutton, a member of the New Dramatists, won the 1998 Samuel French Short Play Contest. Last Train was a finalist for the 1998 Denver Theatre Center's Francesca Primus Prize.
-- By Christine Ehren & David Lefkowitz
