New Girl In Town
Opening Night: July 26, 2012
Closing: September 9, 2012
Theater: Irish Repertory Theatre
Along the sordid New York Waterfront teeming with drunks and merchant sailors, Anna, a young woman with a secret past, arrives searching for her father, old Chris Christopherson, Swedish captain of a coal barge traveling between New York and Provincetown. On a foggy night, a sailor is pulled from the cold, dark waters of the Atlantic…and when the fog clears, Anna comes face to face with merchant sailor, Matt Burke, and both lives are changed forever.
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July 29, 2012
A musical version of Eugene O’Neill’s “Anna Christie” sounds only marginally more plausible than a gotta-sing, gotta-dance Tyrone family in a reworked “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” Imagine the 11 o’clock number: “Malt Whiskey, Morphine and Memories.” But “New Girl in Town” was the creation of a formidable group of showmen. Produced by Harold Prince, it had a book and direction by George Abbott, music and lyrics by Bob Merrill and choreography by Bob Fosse. It also had Broadway’s greatest dance performer, Gwen Verdon, demonstrating her dramatic chops in the lead role of O’Neill’s title character, a Swedish milkmaid who arrives not exactly fresh from the Minnesota farm to the seedy New York waterfront. Verdon shared Tony Award honors with Thelma Ritter as the jaded girlfriend of Anna’s father in the original 1957 Broadway production, which ran for a year.
READ THE REVIEWJuly 26, 2012
“The sunshine girl has raindrops in her eyes.” That lyric, with its potent imagery, has run through my brain since seeing Irish Rep’s revival of this seldom-performed 1957 show by Bob Merrill (music and lyrics) and George Abbott (book) based on Eugene O’Neill’s “Anna Christie.” In the title role, Margaret Loesser Robinson brings steeliness and a soft heart as the ex-prostitute looking to start a new life. She brings out all the spiky irony in the song “On the Farm,” in which Anna recalls abuse by men.
READ THE REVIEWJuly 26, 2012
To the extent that the 1957 musical New Girl in Town is remembered today, it’s for three things: as being the first true star vehicle for Gwen Verdon, following up her success in Damn Yankees; as the first theatre score written by pop composer Bob Merrill; and for a scandalous second-act ballet by choreographer Bob Fosse that was cut out of town, bringing too-vivid life to the central character’s lady-of-the-evening past. Few regard the show as a classic — its one-year run hints at assimilation problems even at the time — and there have been few calls for revivals, whether at Encores! or anywhere else.
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July 27, 2012
At one time, the term "sportin’ lady" did not refer to a female athlete. A largely upbeat musical based on a downbeat story about just such a lady, "New Girl in Town," is enjoying a sprightly off-Broadway revival at the Irish Repertory Theatre. The musical comedy is based on Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer Prize-winning tragedy "Anna Christie." First seen on Broadway in a 1957 production that ran for a year, the show garnered a rare Tony Award tie for best actress in a musical for its two leading ladies, Thelma Ritter and the now-legendary Gwen Verdon, but has never had a major revival.
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July 26, 2012
o revive something is to breathe new life into it, but the Irish Repertory Theatre’s "revival" of "New Girl in Town," the George Abbott–Bob Merrill musical adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s drama "Anna Christie," does the opposite. This uneven, miscast, and occasionally preposterous production sucks the life out of the 1957 original and makes it hard to believe that the same musical garnered a Tony Award nomination for best musical, won best actress Tonys for its stars Gwen Verdon and Thelma Ritter in a tie, and ran for 431 performances.
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