By Ernio Hernandez
and Doug Nevin, Robert Viagas
20 Jul 2009

1961 Stop The World - I Want To Get Off opens tonight at the Queen's Theatre on London's West End. The musical, which follows the life of one man from birth to death, will run 485 performances. The show, which features book, music, and lyrics by its star, Anthony Newley, and Leslie Bricusse, will then open at Broadway's Shubert Theatre on October 3, 1962 for a 555 performance run.

1987 Up-and-coming singer-actor Kevin Marcum, currently playing minor roles in the Broadway production of Les Miserables, is found dead in his apartment today. Marcum, also a current Jean Valjean understudy, was slated to take over that role full-time after original star Colm Wilkinson's planned departure the following November. The cause of death is "acute cocaine intoxication."

1987 Charles Busch's sendup of beach movies, Psycho Beach Party, opens Off-Broadway at the Players Theatre. Busch himself is among the cast of the lampoon directed by Kenneth Elliott. It will ride the waves for 344 performances and close May 15 the following year.

2000 Producer Stewart F. Lane and former theatre columnist Ward Morehouse III's first collaboration, If It Was Easy... opens in Atlanta's 7 Stages theatre. The play about a Frank Sinatra musical that becomes a hit when the mob gets involved will open Off-Broadway March 7 at the Douglas Fairbanks. It will swim with the fishes, though, as it closes April 1.

Today's Birthdays: Pavel Kouhout 1928. Sally Ann Howes 1930. Diana Rigg 1938.