Today In Theatre History: MAY 9
By Robert Viagas
and Anne Bradley
09 May 2008
1860 Birthday of James M. Barrie (1860-1937), British author and playwright whose creations will include What Every Woman Knows, The Little Minister, The Admirable Crichton and the work that will make him immortal, Peter Pan.
1921 Robert Atkins directs Shakespeare's Pericles for Lilian Baylis at London's Old Vic Theatre. This continues the cycle that began in 1914 and which will end in 1923, when all 37 of the Bard's works have been performed.
1956 In The House by the Lake lives a woman who was saved from suicide by her husband years before through hypnosis. Now, he plans to bring her to commit the act, again through hypnosis. Hugh Mills's thriller draws audiences for 928 performances at the Duke of York's Theatre in London. 1972 The children's classic Tom Brown's Schooldays is adapted by Joan and Jack Maitland with a score by Chris Andrews. Adam Walton and Roy Dotrice are in the cast at the Cambridge Theatre in London. 1978 Ain't Misbehavin', a review based on the music of Fats Waller, opens at the Longacre Theater on Broadway. Nell Carter, Ken Page, Charlaine Woodard and Andre DeShields are in the cast. It will run 1,604 performances. 1982 On this ninth day of May, Arthur Kopit and Maury Yeston open their musical Nine at Broadway's 46th Street Theatre. Tommy Tune directs a cast that includes Raul Julia and a slew of women. The musical was inspired by the film "8 1/2" by Federico Fellini. 1994 The 1981 film "Passione D'Amore" becomes Passion, the new musical by Stephen Sondheim. Marin Mazzie, Gregg Edelman and Donna Murphy star at the Plymouth Theatre under the direction of James Lapine in a show about obsessive love. 2002 The Phantom of the Opera plays its 5,960th Broadway performance, surpassing Oh! Calcutta! to become the fourth longest running Broadway show ever, after Cats Les Miserables and A Chorus Line.
2003 Jack Gelber, who wrote one of the seminal sensations of Off-Broadway's early years, The Connection, dies at his Manhattan home of Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia, a cancer of the blood. He was 71. 2005 The Broadway theatres long known as the Plymouth and the Royale are renamed by the Shubert Organization in honor of longtime leaders Gerald Schoenfeld and the late Bernard B. Jacobs.
More of Today's Birthdays Leonard Sillman, 1908. Fay Kanin 1917. Alan Bennett 1934. Albert Finney 1936. Glenda Jackson 1936. Candice Bergen 1946.
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