Skyscraper
Musical Comedy in 2 Acts, 25 Scenes.
Book by Peter Stone. Based on the play Dream Girl by Elmer Rice. Music by James Van Heusen. Lyrics by Sammy Cahn. Directed by Cy Feuer. Dances and musical numbers staged by Michael Kidd. Scenery and lighting by Robert Randolph. Dance music arranged by Marvin Laird.
Opened 13th November, 1965 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre and closed 11th June, 1966 (248 perfs).
Story
ACT I
In Georgina Allerton's bedroom in her Manhattan brownstone, our sleeping heroine is dreaming of cavaliers, apaches and other exotic characters fighting over her. She is awakened by her mother's telephone call. Mrs.
A is making another of her regular calls urging her daughter to be
smart and sell her house to the Bushman Construction Company,
which is building a mammoth skyscraper on her block and needs her land. But Georgina,
who is a leader in the fight to
preserve historical buildings in New York,
won't hear of such a thing. She much prefers to daydream
that she has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Urban
Prevention, but even her dream characters worry about
her, and question her constant day dreaming.
This hardly fazes Georgina. "What," she inquires gaily, "is so abnormal about imagination?" In the construction company's shack right outside Georgina's brownstone bastion, the brothers Bushman are discussing the lady's stubbornness. Older brother Bert, who hopes to inherit their father's business, cannot understand how Georgina could refuse his offer of $150,000. Younger brother Tim, an architect, whose aesthetic sensibility has forced him to leave the family building business is even more concerned that the new skyscraper, which is to be covered by a pimply metal exterior, will give the city of New York a case of acne. He warns his brother that no one can enjoy defacing the city's skyline and urges Bert to stop dong work he hates.
Outside the construction shack, the foreman, Stanley, is angry with his men because they completely ignore two passing girls. The girls are insulted! "Where's your civic pride?" he asks plaintively, then briskly gives the men assignments in whistling, leering, smiling, and making appropriate comments. Back in the construction shack, Georgina, thinking Tim is a steel worker, demands to know why the company has cut off her electricity and punctured her gas pipes.
Though his denials are to no avail, Tim is attracted to Georgina and asks her to have dinner with him. Georgina won't hear of such a thing; he is her enemy and she continues the quarrel.
Downstairs in the
brownstone where
Georgina has an
antique shop, The
Litterbug, whose
contents are more
second hand than
Second Empire and
which has no customers, we meet her part-time assistant Roger Summerhill. He is a would-be film
festival impressario who
spends most of his time trying to get backing for this
project. He becomes dejected
because of his inability to
raise money, and Georgina
comforts him.
After he leaves, Georgina daydreams that Roger is her reserved but dashing English lover. Bert Bushman, making his daily visit, snaps her out of her reverie and offers Georgina $165,000, which she angrily refuses.
Because Roger is in such desperate need of money for his festival, he offers to help Bert break down Georgina's resistance. And what part of the pie does he want for his efforts? Just the Crust, replies Roger, and Bert agrees.
In the midst of a daydream in which Georgina imagines Tim to be a complete clunkhead, the real Tim appears in her shop. He still tries to make a date with her. Once Tim
has left, Georgina indulges in another daydream; this time she is a Scarlet O'Hara-ish Southern belle and Roger is her Rhett-ish suitor. Awake, she begins to have doubts about keeping the unproductive antique shop, which leads appropriately into another dream in which her shop is crowded with happy customers.
At the Knickerbocker Auction Gallery, where Georgina has gone to bid on more antiques, she meets Roger who urges her to sell her brownstone because he has discovered that it does not, as has been claimed, date back to the days of Rutherford B. Hayes. This is hardly a persuasive enough argument for Georgina who then, in a daydream, finds herself bidding on, of all things, Tim. Back in her bedroom, Georgina is star-tied to find Tim hanging outside her window on a crane. She reluctantly agrees to have dinner with him because he has also promised to take her to the Lincoln Film Festival, which she has been anxious to attend.
ACT 2
At The Gaiety, a tiny, bustling delicatessen where Georgina has joined Tim for dinner, she causes something of a stir by ordering a pastrami sandwich on toasted raisin bread with lettuce and mayonnaise. However, the jostling crowd hardly disturbs her as she imagines herself dining at an elegant French restaurant.
Following the movie at Lincoln Center, Tim takes Georgina atop the steel girders of the new building. He tries to explain that while some of the newer buildings in the city are ugly, many are really well designed, and that there is more than one way to build a city.
Roger, of course, is still anxious to get his "crust," but has yet to come up with an idea that will alter Georgina's mind about selling her house. Meeting Bert, he tries to calm him and suddenly hits upon an idea. Dashing over to The Litterbug, he asks Georgina to sell her house and go away with him. While she is trying to decide what to do, Tim comes In and urges her to stop living in a dream world and try to turn her dreams into reality? This convinces Georgina she will go away with Roger. Alone and miserable, Tim tries to console himself.
In a final dream Georgina comes face-to-face with the reality of selling her house, which, as Tim has pointed out, she has been preserving as her dreaming place. She pleads with her dream Tim, but unexpectedly he rebels and takes over her dream, causing it to misbehave.
In the end, Georgina wakes up and marries Tim. They spend their wedding night in her house the last night it will be standing before the wrecker's ball begins knocking it down.
Stanley Green
Author, The World of Musical Comedy -
from the original album
Musical Numbers
- Occasional Flight of Fancy - Georgina, Officials
- Run For Your Life - Tim, Herbert
- Local 403 (Socially Conscious Iron Workers) - Stanley, Construction Workers, Girls
- Opposites - Georgina, Tim
- Run For Your Life (reprise) - Tim
- Just the Crust - Roger, Stanley
- Everybody Has the Right to Be Wrong - Georgina, Tim
- Everybody Has the Right to Be Wrong (reprise) - Georgina
- Wrong! - Georgina,Mrs Allerton, Charlotte, Customers
- The Auction (Ballet) - Customers
- Occasional Flight of Fancy (reprise) -
Georgina
- The Gaiety - Customers
- More Than One Way - Tim
- Haute Couture - Stanley, Models, Workers
- Don't Worry - Roger, Herbert
- Don't Worry (reprise) - Georgina, Roger
- I'll Only Miss Her When I Think of Her - Tim
- Spare That Building - Georgina, Tim, Roger, Company
Cast (in order of appearance)
- Georgina (Allerton)
- Mrs. Allerton
- Mr. Allerton
- Charlotte
- Mayor
- Doctor
- Herbert Bushman
- Stanley
- Timothy Bushman
- Roger Summerhill
- Woman Customer
- Auctioneer
- Harry the Waiter
- Cab Driver
- Jazz Musician
- Photographer: Christian Gray.
Scenes and Settings
The action took place yesterday in New York City in and around a large skyscraper and a very small brownstone.
Act 1
- Scene I: Georgina's Bedroom.
- Scene 2: The Construction Site.
- Scene 3: The Bushman Building; Construction Shack.
- Scene 4: The Construction Site.
- Scene 5: Skyscraper—Ground Level.
- Scene 6: The Construction Site.
- Scene 7: The Construction Shack.
- Scene 8: The Construction Site.
- Scene 9: The Litter Bug (Antique Shop).
- Scene 10: The Construction Site.
- Scene 11: The Litter Bug.
- Scene 12: The Construction Site.
- Scene 13: Two Phones.
- Scene 14: Knickerbocker Auction Galleries.
- Scene 15: Two Phones.
- Scene 16: Georgina's Bedroom at night.
Act 2
- Scene 1: The Gaiety Delicatessen.
- Scene 2: Limbo.
- Scene 3: The Film Festival.
- Scene 4: The Construction Site.
- Scene 5: Atop the unfinished skyscraper.
- Scene 6: The Construction Site.
- Scene 7: The Litter Bug. Scene
- 8: The Skyscraper—A Dream.
- Scene 9: The Allerton Bedroom.