Flora, the Red Menace, 1965

The run closed July 24, 1965

Opened

May 11, 1965

Closed

July 24, 1965

Performances

87

Previews

Unknown

Theatre

Neil Simon Theatre

Of the 605 productions we hold that opened in the 1960s and carry a performance count, this is the 209th longest. That is a rank within what we hold, not within everything that was staged.

Other stagings of Flora, the Red Menace 1 more that season

1987

off Original

Who was in it39 named

Harry Bell
Elaine Cancilla
Art Carney
Danny Carroll
Ciya Challis
Barbara Christopher
Gordon Dilworth
Barbara Doherty
Judith Doren
Dortha Duckworth
Anthony Falco
Les Freed
Marcello Gamboa
Ellen Graff
Louis Guss
Daniel P Hannafin
Stephanie Hill
Charles Kalan
Robert Kaye
Henry le Clair
Diane Mcafee
James Mcardle
Clark Morgan
Mary Ann Niles
J Vernon Oaks
Anne C Russell
Marie Santell
Neil J Schwartz
Abbie Todd
Phyllis Wallach

9 of these 39 names have a person record behind them and link to one. The other 30 are set from the identifier in the cast list, which is a slug of the name, so hyphens and full stops are lost and a few come out wrong. We hold nothing else about them. Nobody here is matched to a character: the cast list records who was in the company and not what they played.

Creative team

Director

George Abbott

Choreographer

Lee Theodore

A producer is one string on this record, however many people or companies it names. Directors and choreographers are held both as text and as identifiers; where an identifier exists the name links to a page.

Tony Awardscategories not held

1 win from 2 nominations. We don't know which categories.

Recordings 2 held for the work

None of these is attributed to this staging. They are filed against Flora, the Red Menace, and nothing says which production any of them documents. Closing that join is the point of this catalogue and it is not closed yet.

Around this production

Flora the Red Menace is a musical with a book by George Abbott and Robert Russell, music by John Kander, and lyrics by Fred Ebb. The original 1965 production starred Liza Minnelli in the title role in her Broadway debut, for which she won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. The show marked the first collaboration of Kander and Ebb, who went on to write the Broadway and Hollywood hits Cabaret and Chicago. While only two numbers ("A Quiet Thing" and "Sing Happy") became notable outside the show, the score does present a valuable insight into the later work of Kander and Ebb: like Cabaret and Chicago, it features a headstrong heroine and has a strong dose of political content.

I remember some years ago looking up the unhappy Richard Rodgers/Stephen Sondheim opus Do I Hear a Waltz? There I was, suddenly faced with five pages-worth of reviews of a brief-lived tuner titled Flora, the Red Menace. More Opening Nights On Broadway Steven Suskin, p. 27

• Maurice Chevalier at 77, a personal appearance by Ingrid Bergman plays Saint Joan in Maxwell Anderson's play-within-a-play Joan of Lorraine (1946). the French singer, came to the AJvin in 1965, as did the Broadway debut of Liza Minnelli in an unsuccessful musical, Flora, The Red Menace, the Broadway debut of Kander and… At This Theatre 100 Years of Broadway Shows Stories and Botto Louis Viagas Rober, p. 291
• Flora, the Red Menace (5/11/65; 87 performances), John Kander and Fred Ebb’s first Broadway score and Liza Minnelli’s Broadway debut; Broadway Its History People and Places An Encyclopedia Bloom Ken 1949 2nd Ed New, p. 27
• The four subsequent Abbott-authored musicals—Tenderloin (1960), Flora, the Red Menace (1965), Anya (1965), and Music Is—all failed. More Opening Nights On Broadway A Critical Quotebook of Compiled By Steven Suski, p. 649
• FLORA was the last of the Abbott-Prince shows; the old formula was becoming outmoded, and Prince decided to move on without Abbott and direct future shows himself. What was good about FLORA was the bright, funny score and Liza Minnelli, who won a Tony Award in her Broadway debut. Show Tunes 1905 1985 the Songs Shows and Careers of Steven Suskin 1st Ed New Yor, p. 532
• Scott Ellis, Susan Stroman, and David Thompson first joined together in 1987 to revise and rethink an Off Off Broadway revival of Kander and Ebb’s FLORA, THE RED MENACE [May 11, 1965]. Show Tunes the Songs Shows and Careers of Broadway S Suskin Steven Suskin Steven, p. 368

Passages naming this production, found by keyword across 178 books. Where it turns up in the literature, not curated notes about it.

What this page does not know

• No photograph of this staging.
• No character names. We can say who was in the company and not who they played.
• Which of the 2 recordings of Flora, the Red Menace document this run, if any.
• Reviews, box office, running order, understudies and designers: none of it is held for any production.