Hello Again
Book, Music and Lyrics by Michael John LaChiusa
Lincoln Center, Off-Broadway - January 30, 1994 - (65 perfs)
As though seers through the lens of a combination time machine and bawdy, old-time kinescope the joys of sex are here for the asking in this adult musical fantasy suggested by Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde.
Synopsis
Ten nameless characters pair up in ten different scenes of sexual pleasure and/or despair. One character from each scene moves on to the next, seemingly dumping his old partner in favour of new prey.
The play, begins in 1900 with a Prostitute soliciting an unwilling Soldier: The next scene takes place in the 1940s, and the Soldier, afraid of dying in the war, tussles with a sympathetic Nurse. Next, the Nurse becomes a 1960s dominatrix over her patient, an upper-crust College Boy with wild leanings. In the 1930s, the College Boy reappears as the impotent partner of an adulterous Young Wife who can only have relations with him in seedy, out-of-the-way places. Meeting the woman's Husband in the next scene, we see why she's been driven to such moral turpitude. In her loneliness, the Wife dances a haunting pas-de-deux with the mirror image of her repressed, sensual self: Experiencing the Wife's scene from a totally different perspective, we then meet the Husband as a closet homosexual.
Cast:
6 men, 4 women
Instrumentation:
Piano/Conductor, Violin, Percussion, Cello, Horn, Reed, Keyboard 2
Musical Numbers:
- Ah, Maien Zeit
- Angel of Mercy
- At the Prom
- The Bed Was Not My Own
- Hello Again
- I Gotta Little Time
- In Some Other Life
- Listen to the Music
- Mistress of the Senator
- Montage
- The One I Love
- Rock With Rock
- Safe
- Silent Movie
- The Story of My Life
- Tom
- We Kiss
- Zei Gezant
Discography:
Original Cast Recording - RCA Victor - 09026-62680-2