Simply Heavenly, 1957

The run closed October 12, 1957

Opened

August 20, 1957

Closed

October 12, 1957

Performances

62

Previews

Unknown

Theatre

Playhouse Theatre

Of the 706 productions we hold that opened in the 1950s and carry a performance count, this is the 282nd longest. That is a rank within what we hold, not within everything that was staged.

Other stagings of Simply Heavenly 1 more that season

Who was in it16 named

Josephine Woods

15 of these 16 names have a person record behind them and link to one. The other 1 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

Joshua Shelley

Producer

Vincent Carow and Abel Enklewitz

Orchestrations

David Martin

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.

Recordings 1 held for the work

None of these is attributed to this staging. They are filed against Simply Heavenly, 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

But Simply Heavenly is perhaps the best black musical ever, a work of immense, unpretentious charm, extremely funny and with a great deal to say as well.

Simply Heavenly (transfer from Off Broadway; book musical) Complete Book of 1950s Broadway Musicals the Dan Dietz, p. 868

• Simply Heavenly first opened Off-Broadway on May 21, 1957, at the 85th Street Playhouse for forty-four performances; it transferred to Broadway at the Playhouse Theatre three months later on August 20 for sixty-two performances; and then returned to Off-Broadway on November 8 for sixty-three more performances at the Re… Complete Book of 1950s Broadway Musicals the Dan Dietz, p. 642
• Simply Heavenly is perhaps the best black musical ever, a work of immense, unpretentious charm, extremely funny and with a great deal to say as well. Not Since Carrie Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops Ken Mandelbaum, p. 342
• But like The Human Comedy and Simply Heavenly, which also began off-Broadway, The Golden Apple was not a hit on Broadway. Not Since Carrie Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops Ken Mandelbaum, p. 348
• The commercial disappointment of Simply Heavenly did nothing to deter Hylton from promoting more black material. Three years later he had a reasonable run with the all-black King Kong, ‘an all-African jazz musical’ that had never approached New York but been a great 1959 success in South Africa. West End Broadway the Golden Age of the American Musical Adrian Wright Boydell B, p. 156
• Simply Heavenly, which has nevertheless enjoyed West End revival and a much more enthusiastic critical reception than it enjoyed in 1958. West End Broadway the Golden Age of the American Musical Adrian Wright Boydell B, p. 158

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 1 recordings of Simply Heavenly document this run, if any.
• Reviews, box office, running order, understudies and designers: none of it is held for any production.