The Broken Date

The Broken Date centered on a young man obsessed by a beautiful woman who is on the brink of returning to her husband. Their last rendezvous is planned, but she fails to show up (and so, according to the program notes, he “gives way to despair”). When a group of friends arrive for an impromptu party, he succumbs to the charms of a sultry vamp and is later “convulsed with remorse.” He then becomes haunted by the memories of his beloved and “seeks surcease in suicide” by drinking a glass of poison (which takes the shape of a female dancer). Suddenly le femme appears, and in his joie he somehow forgets he’s taken poison and is about to die. (But he does.) And his amour, thinking him asleep, dances away in the throes of “frantic exultation.” John Martin in the New York Times suggested if Françoise Sagan had spent more than five minutes on the scenario then she had wasted her time. He also noted that film director Roger Vadim had been credited with the staging, but indicated “it is not altogether clear what this implies.” As for the score, it was “sentimental café music complete with saxophone and fashionable dissonance.” He praised Noelle Adam (in the role of the vamp) and said that once “we have accepted the cheap-mindedness of the work as a whole” it was easier to enjoy the second-act’s seduction pas de deux (which was “well designed and theatrically effective”). He also mentioned that of the evening’s two seduction scenes, one took place in a bathroom (“probably the most inelegant milieu romance has yet achieved”). Martin reported each of the three acts lasted about twenty minutes apiece and both intermissions were in themselves about twenty minutes in length. Since the production started at 8:30 and was over at 10:30, the evening was quite short but perhaps not quite short enough. Dancer Vladimir Skouratoff had been scheduled to dance the role of the young man, but an injured tendon resulted in his replacement by Adolfo Andrade whose role of the concierge was in turn danced by co-choreographer Don Lurio. As for Noelle Adam, she returned to the Adelphi Theatre (which was now named the 54th Street Theatre) four years later under happier circumstances in Richard Rodgers’s No Strings. Theatres and Performance Dates: The musical opened on September 30, 1957, at the Cass Theatre, Detroit, Michigan, and closed on October 26, 1957, at the Hanna Theatre, Cleveland, Ohio. Set in seventeenth-century France, the comic plot dealt with Sgnarelle (Jack Carter), who to the consternation of his wife Martina (Billie Worth) masquerades as a doctor and thus enjoys a comfortable lifestyle with the aid of his nurse Jacqueline (Susan Johnson). He’s also instrumental in encouraging the romance of two young lovers, Lucinda (Jayne Turner) and Leander (Allen Case). But Variety suggested the doctor should “cure thyself” and said it would be “unwise” for the musical to risk Broadway. During the course of the tryout, the character of the Actor-Manager was eliminated, as was his song “Moliere”; the song “To the Clinic” was added. The original cast album was to have been recorded by Decca (LP # DL-9057), but was cancelled when the musical closed during its pre-Broadway tryout. A demo recording of the score includes ten songs performed during the tryout (“She’s Appealing, She’s Alluring, She’s Dumb,” “I Would Love You Still,” “I Am Your Man,” “Bleed and Purge,” “Rich Man, Poor Man,” “Who Is? You Are!,” “The Carefree Heart,” “Would I Were,””Formula, Formulae, Formulorum,” and “Anatomy”) and nine unused songs (“Other Than That,” “Bedeviled,” “Promised,” “Unpromised,” “Odds and Ends,” “Loose in the Foot, Light in the Heart,” “His Father’s Son,” “’Toinette,” and “Sunflower Seeds”). As The Love Doctor, the musical opened in London at the Piccadilly Theatre on October 12, 1959, for sixteen performances. It was again produced by Lynn Loesser and Shamus Locke (who now coproduced it with The Robin Fox Partnership Ltd.); directed by Albert Marre and choreographed by Todd Bolender, the cast included Ian Carmichael, Joan Heal, Douglas Byng, Patricia Routledge, and Anna Sharkey. Songs retained from the American version were: “Bleed and Purge,” “Rich Man, Poor Man,” “Who Is? You Are!,” “She’s Appealing, She’s Alluring, She’s Dumb,” “I Would Love You Still,” “I Am Your Man,” “Would I Were,” “Formula, Formulae, Formulorum,” “Anatomy,” and the title song; unused songs from the American version which were added for the West End were: “Promised,” “Loose in the Foot,” “His Father’s Son,” and “Be-Angelled,” which was probably the earlier “Bedeviled”; and there were three numbers apparently new for London: “Up,” “The Parade,” and “The Chase.” There have been at least two other musical versions of Moliere’s “doctor” plays; both were produced Off-Broadway and were based on The Imaginary Invalid. ’Toinette opened at the Theatre Marquee on November 20, 1961, for thirty-one performances; the book was by J. I. Rodale and the lyrics and music by Deed Meyer.

Music

Michel Magne

Lyrics

Marshall Barer, Jack Barnett, Irving Berlin, Fred Ebb, Larry Holofcener, Biff Jones, Chuck Meyer, David Rogers, Joe Sherman, and Noel Sherman