Tony Tuesday: THE WILD PARTY
Imagine this: you spend weeks, months, years working on your next musical, workshopping this new piece with a full cast including Kristin Chenoweth and you manage to secure an off-Broadway opening for your show. Then you discover another brand new musical, of the same name and based on the same source material is to open on Broadway in the same year. That’s exactly what happened with Andrew Lippa and The Wild Party.
John Moncure March’s The Wild Party is a long narrative poem, written in a series of rhyming couplets. It was written in the mid 1920s and following its publication in 1928, it was widely banned due to its provocative and controversial subject matter. The story and characters within the poem would inspire two new musicals on the edge of the 21st century, one by Michael John LaChiusa and George C. Wolfe and the other by Andrew Lippa.
The Wild Party in each of these pieces broadly follows the story of vaudeville’s Queenie, a dancer, and her lover, Burrs, a passionate, violent clown. Queenie, tired of her present depressing life, decides to throw the wildest party imaginable.
LaChiusa and Wolfe’s musical opened at the Virginia Theatre on 13 April 2000 starring Toni Collette in her first musical role as Queenie, alongside Mandy Patinkin as Burrs with Eartha Kitt, her first performance on Broadway in over 20 years, as Delores and Yancey Arias as Black. This version of the show is presented as a series of vaudeville sketches and features over 40 individual songs presented within five sections; The Vaudeville, Promenade of Guests, The Party, After Midnight Dies and Finale. The Broadway production closed in June after 68 performances.
The Wild Party was initially intended to star Vanessa Williams as Queenie, however she was replaced due to becoming pregnant. Whilst LaChiusa did not write the part of Queenie for any particular race, he felt a Black Queenie may have held a different kind of significance with audiences within the show.
At the 54th Annual Tony Awards, LaChiusa’s The Wild Party earned seven award nominations, including Best Musical, Best Performance for Collette, Patinkin and Kitt and Best Book and Original Score, but it ultimately failed to take home any of its nominated categories. The show too was unable to succeed in winning its three Drama Desk Award nominations for Outstanding Actor (Mandy Patinkin), Outstanding Actress (Toni Collette) and Outstanding Featured Actress (Eartha Kitt).
The off-Broadway production from Lippa differs in following a more typical musical storyline with a greater focus on the core love triangle and features a much smaller cast of 5, compared to Broadway’s 15. In the year 2000 the Lippa cast included Julia Murney (Queenie), Brian d’Arcy James (Burrs), Taye Diggs (Mr. Black) and Idina Menzel (Kate). Whilst not eligible for Broadway nominations, Lippa’s The Wild Party earned the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music, the Obie Award for Best Choreography, as well as Lucille Lortel Awards for Scenic, Costume, and Lighting Design. At the Outer Critics Circle Awards, The Wild Party won Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical and received nominations for Outstanding Actor in a Musical (Taye Diggs), Outstanding Director of a Musical (Gabriel Barre), Outstanding Choreography (Mark Dendy), and Outstanding Lighting Design.
Encores! Off-Centre, who regularly produce limited runs of musicals that haven’t recently been performed, put on Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party in New York City in July 2015. Sutton Foster took on the role of Queenie, with Steven Pasquale as Burrs and Brandon Victor Dixon as Black.
Broadway’s The Wild Party is the only version to have made it over to London in a professional production so far. In 2017, the show premiered at The Other Palace starring Frances Ruffelle, John Owen-Jones and Donna McKenzie, alongside other West End favourites including Victoria Hamilton-Barritt, Ako Mitchell, Genesis Lynea and Bronté Barbé. The show was directed and choreographed by Drew McOnie. Elsewhere in the UK was the first and only production of Lippa’s The Wild Party, performed at the 2004 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. At The Other Palace, The Wild Party was not poorly received but did not win over audiences critically, and we can’t help but wonder how the off-Broadway production, which was more celebrated in the US, might fare in the UK today?
Despite the similarities at first glance between Broadway and off-Broadway’s The Wild Party, these are two largely different shows. Neither have had particularly lengthy or celebrated runs and the adult themes within the text can still represent similar blockers to the mainstream even 100 years on from the original poems. What happened in the year 2000 with these two shows was a strange coincidence and one we will unlikely ever see again.
FACTS:
Music and Lyrics: Michael John LaChiusa
Book: George C. Wolfe and Michael John LaChiusa
Original Broadway Theatre: Virginia Theatre
Original Production Run: 13 April 2000 - 11 June 2000
TONYS:
NOMINATED: Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical - George C. Wolfe and Michael John LaChiusa, Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical - Toni Collette, Best Performance by a Leading Actorin a Musical - Mandy Patinkin, Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical - Eartha Kitt, Best Lighting Design - Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer
Original Broadway performance at the Tony Awards:
The Wild Party (Andrew Lippa) Encore Production starring Sutton Foster: