Big River
Shows · Big River
Set in 1849, with the action taking place both on the Mississippi River and in various locations along its banks (thanks to Heidi Landesman’s atmospheric settings), the imaginative and faithfully conceived adaptation of the picaresque novel is concerned primarily with the relationship between Huck Finn and the runaway slave Jim (Daniel H. Jenkins and Ron Richardson) as they enjoy the untethered life traveling on a ra…
- Opened
- 1985
- Performances
- 1,005
- Type
- Musical
- Era
- Megamusical
Won the Tony Award for Best Musical, 1985.
Productions2 on Broadway
| 1985 | Eugene O'Neill Theatre Original. April 25, 1985 · Des McAnuff | 1,005 performances · 1 Tony wins |
| 2003 | Revival Theatre unknown. July 24, 2003 | 67 performances · 1 Tony wins |
Every Broadway staging held in broadway-data, sourced to IBDB. West End runs are not yet held.
Recordings 1 album held
Licensing 2 entries
| US | Concord Theatricals Concord Theatricals | available |
| UK | Concord Theatricals Concord Theatricals | available |
Read from the licensor's own pages and catalogues. Rights move, and an empty row means we have not confirmed a publisher, not that the show cannot be licensed.
28 passages naming Big River, found by keyword across 178 books. It's where this show turns up in the literature, not curated trivia about it.
Broadway Musicals Show by Show is a combination history, guide, fact book, and photograph album of the most memorable productions presented both on and off Broadway from The Black Crook in 1866 to Big River in 1985. book:broadway-musicals-show-by-show-seventh-edition-stanley-green-cary-ginell#p7
In 1985, a musical called Big River based on Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn opened and won the following Tony Awards: Best Musical, Best Book (William Hauptman), Best Score (Roger Miller), Best Direction (Des McAnuff), Best Featured Actor (Ron Richardson), Best Scenic Design (Heidi Landesman), and Best… book:at-this-theatre-100-years-of-broadway-shows-stories-and-botto-louis-viagas-rober#p229
For every year of its long run, Big River hosted a jumping-frog contest outside its theater under the auspices of publicist Adrian Bryan-Brown. book:broadway-its-history-people-and-places-an-encyclopedia-bloom-ken-1949-2nd-ed-new#p535
When he died at the age of 79, he was working on a musical version of Huckleberry Finn, even though the musical Big River had opened and won the Tony Award. book:broadway-musicals-the-101-greatest-shows-of-all-time-bloom-ken-1949-vlastnik-fra#p309
other musical roles include The Duke in Big River (1985) book:historical-dictionary-of-the-broadway-musical-volume-22-william-a-everett-paul-r#p59
Big River came at the end of a disappointing Broadway season and brought sufficient charms to run for about two and a half years. book:historical-dictionary-of-the-broadway-musical-volume-22-william-a-everett-paul-r#p69
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