The original creation and rehearsal process
Notice the original three-level set itself, constructed mainly out of scaffolding, reinforcing that idea of cold, disconnected, modern urban life.
There was the joy of total creative freedom,
"We just didn't care," Mr. Guare remembered. "We did it for nothing."
"It was great to be living in New York and having a hit play off Broadway - why not?" said Mr. Guare.
"We just didn't care," Mr. Guare remembered. "We did it for nothing."
"It was great to be living in New York and having a hit play off Broadway - why not?" said Mr. Guare.
"We had this idea that the songs would function as kind of subtitles. You would be aware of the meaning, you would understand what the text was saying, and the poetry wouldn’t get in the way. The idea was to make it bold and simple, without reducing it in any way."
Guare says, "One day Raul Julia [as Proteus] would do a Harry Belafonte imitation, and the next day I’d say, ‘We have to have a Harry Belafonte number for Raul, and it’ll be ‘Calla Lily Lady.’ I would call Galt up and leave lyrics on his service, mail them to him, or drop them off. Songs were written, thrown away, and put back. Mel [Shapiro, the director] created a wonderful moonstruck atmosphere and bit by bit we assembled it."
HARRY BELAFONTE IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHO HE IS:
(here's the opportunity to click the link and pretend you knew the whole time, you're welcome)
Guare says, "One day Raul Julia [as Proteus] would do a Harry Belafonte imitation, and the next day I’d say, ‘We have to have a Harry Belafonte number for Raul, and it’ll be ‘Calla Lily Lady.’ I would call Galt up and leave lyrics on his service, mail them to him, or drop them off. Songs were written, thrown away, and put back. Mel [Shapiro, the director] created a wonderful moonstruck atmosphere and bit by bit we assembled it."
HARRY BELAFONTE IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHO HE IS:
(here's the opportunity to click the link and pretend you knew the whole time, you're welcome)
For the original production, we cast a Puerto Rican for Proteus and Speed, a Cuban for Julia, Valentine and Silvia and the Duke and occasionally Lucetta were played by Blacks, Launce was originally done in Yiddish, then went country western in a cast change, Eglamour was Chinese, Thurio was an Irishman, Lucetta a Russian-Danish girl. The chorus was every color under the sun.
Rolling Stone said the score sounded like "walking down the street in El Barrio with all the windows open and a different radio blaring out of each one."
Rolling Stone said the score sounded like "walking down the street in El Barrio with all the windows open and a different radio blaring out of each one."
“It has a surge of youth to it, at times an almost carnal intimation of sexuality, and a boisterous sense of love. It is precisely this that the new musical catches and makes its own. The musical also has a strange New York feel to it – in the music, a mixture of rock, lyricism and Caribbean patter, in Mr. Guare’s spare, at times even abrasive lyrics, in the story itself of small-town kids and big-town love. It also has a very New York sense of irreverence. It is a graffito written across a classic play, but the graffito has an insolent sense of style, and the classic play can still be clearly glimpsed underneath."
"This is no parlor trick of a musical; there’s a rich vein of Shakespeare’s favorite ingredient – the wondrous depths of the human heart – that elevates the show from cunning stunt to artful meditation on the destructive nature of power and the redemptive power of love." The same is true of Two Gents. Papp and the musical’s creative team returned to the original spirit of Shakespeare’s plays – rowdy, sexy, dirty, funny, popular, irreverent, rule-busting, and most of all, deeply, crazily human.