The Great Parade
Broadway's Astonishing, Never-to-Be-Forgotten 1963-1964 Season
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
It was the Broadway season when Barbra Streisand demanded "Don't Rain on My Parade" and Carol Channing heard the waiters at the Harmonia Gardens say "Hello, Dolly!". From June 1, 1963 through the final day of May 31, 1964, theatergoers were offered 68 different productions: 24 new plays, 15 new comedies, 14 new musicals, 5 revivals of plays, 3 revues, 3 plays in Yiddish, 2 in French, 1 double-bill and even 1 puppet show. Peter Filichia's The Great Parade will look at what a Broadway season looked like a half-century ago analyzing the hits, the flops, the trends, the surprises, the disappointments, the stars and even how the assassination of JFK and the arrival of the Beatles affected Broadway. The Great Parade is a chronicle of a Broadway season unprecedented in the star power onstage: Barbara Streisand, Carol Channing, Claudette Colbert. Colleen Dewhurst, Hal Holbrook, Mary Martin, Christopher Plummer, Robert Preston, Julie Harris, Jason Robards, Jr., Carol Burnett, Tallulah Bankhead, Alec Guinness, Kirk Douglas, Albert Finney, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Richard Burton, Mary Martin, Beatrice Lillie, Hermione Gingold, Robert Redford and many more. Neil Simon and Stephen Sondheim burst on to the Broadway stage with Barefoot in the Park and Anyone Can Whistle. The '63-'64 season was one of Broadway's greatest and in The Great Parade, Peter Filichia gives us another classic.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A glance at the dramas, musicals, and comedies performed during Broadway's 1963 64 season tells a great story, but theater critic Filichia's choppy recounting gives the reader little sense of the context or importance of this remarkable concentration of theatrical talent. Barbara Streisand wowed crowds in Funny Girl, Robert Redford captivated audiences in Barefoot In the Park, and major stars and complete unknowns trod the boards in hits and flops, but the descriptions of the 68 productions staged in this time frame read like rewritten vintage reviews. Some of the pieces are quite fine, like the one about the surprise hit Any Wednesday starring Sandy Dennis and then relative unknown Gene Hackman, and Filichia does offer a wonderful summary of the lineup of musicals. In isolation, there are plenty of good short set pieces, such as the marvelously snarky takedown of The Passion of Josef D., Paddy Chayefsky's final Broadway play. Filichia's summary of how Chayefsky's grinding, real-time account of Stalin's rise to power in the late stages of the Russian revolution leaves few questions about why it was not a runaway success. While Filichia includes some fine observations throughout (such as the flop drama "But For Whom Charlie" "wasn't as bad as the title"), they aren't enough to sustain the narrative.
