Performances: 15

With Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady now in its second sold-out year, City Center’s revival was well-timed as it gave audiences a chance to once again see the team’s earlier musical. In reviewing the current revival of Brigadoon, Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times noted that Lerner and Loewe had “the two finest musical plays on Broadway at the moment” and Walter Kerr in the New York Herald Tribune said Brigadoon was “quite possibly the simplest smash hit ever to stray onto Broadway.” (Atkinson also mentioned that the team’s short-lived Paint Your Wagon should have enjoyed a much longer New York run.) Many critics noted the scheduled two-week run of Brigadoon was too short (City Center was already booked for its next offering, a revival of The Merry Widow), and they hoped the musical could be extended should another theatre become available. And, sure enough, the out-of-the-way and refurbished Adelphi Theatre was ready for bookings after a long hiatus (but not for long, because on May 7 Damn Yankees was set to transfer there from the 46th Street Theatre, which was now booked for New Girl in Town). So the entire City Center cast (with the exception of chorus singer Marilyn Cooper, who doesn’t seem to have made the transfer) moved to the Adelphi (under the auspices of City Center and by arrangement with the Lowal Corporation) for an additional four weeks of performances through May 5. The City Center and Adelphi engagements tallied up a total of forty-seven performances. Brigadoon was the first legitimate production to play the Adelphi since My Romance premiered there in 1948. In the intervening years, the theatre had been a television studio, and among the shows filmed there was the complete 1955–1956 season of The Honeymooners (otherwise known as the “Classic 39” episodes). By the late 1950s, the venue’s name was changed to the 54th Street Theatre, and a decade later was for a short time known as the George Abbott Theatre before it was demolished.

Music

Frederick Loewe

Lyrics

Alan Jay Lerner

Book

Alan Jay Lerner