Musicals by Cy Young
That Hat - Produced in New York Off Bdwy
An adaptation of the play, An Italian Straw Hat by Eugene Labiche and Marc Michel.
A wealthy man has given his beautiful young wife an expensive and one-of-a-kind Italian Straw Hat. When the young woman is taken by her lover on a buggy ride in the park where they complete their assignation, she leaves the hat on a tree. While they’re distracted with each other, Ferdinand, a young businessman passes by the tree in his horse-driven buggy and stops to get a drink of water from a nearby pond, he hitches his horse to the tree and while he’s at the pond, his horse eats the young woman’s hat. When she discovers her devastated ex-hat, she insists that Ferdinand replace the hat with a similar-looking one that day. The acton of the musical is Ferdinand’s search for the replacement. A song from this show, “Draw Me A Circle,” was recorded and used by Barbra Streisand to open her third TV Special.
Duh–!:
A musical review using songs and sketches of humor in the 13th Century. Example: A song 2 people sing who have come to the office of a magnetizer who’ve been treated by wearing metal magnetized vests who sing a song called, “Drawn To You” and keep getting magnetized to each other with humorous results; a sketch revealing the origin of the tap dance in which half a dozen peasants are trying to plant seeds in a garden; suddenly they’re attacked by a swarm of locusts, and as the peasants are stomping on the insects, slowly a rhythm develops into tap steps and the stomping grows rhythmically and develops into a chorus of tap leading to alphabetic moves and exotic, sophisticated steps that include running up the walls and flipping over as Donald O’Conner did in “Make ‘Em Laugh” in “Singin’ In The Rain,” or a doctor’s cure for Erectile Dysfunction which is to urinate through his wife’s wedding ring, or priests who sing a round of “How Many Angels Can Stand On The Head Of A Pin,” etc.
Rodney & Shelby:
Two-character musical with songs sung by a power-house sensual knockout singer/actress female and a meek nebbish who perform material in one (in front of a curtain) and have an ongoing dialogue of witticisms, the woman making fun of the man and the man cracking defensive gags.
Greatest Man in the World:
Adaptation of a short story by James Thurber about a man, Jacky Smurch, who is the first man to fly around the world alone, and he does so in a single-engine, one-propeller, old-fashioned mono-plane. As he’s accomplishing this feat, the press builds him up as a great, international persona, but when he lands and is lauded as a great hero, Jacky turns out to be a nasty S.O.B. Politicians and the D.C. crowd, fearing the bad p.r. Smurch will generate for America and devise a plan to eliminate the threat; at a banquet on the top floor of a posh, fancy hotel, Smurch is enticed onto the veranda where one of the President’s secret service agents pushes him over the balcony.
The Mudlark:
A movie made in 1950 with Alex Guinness and Irene Dunne about a boy who scavenges along the banks of the Thames in London in 1875 London. It is a fictional account of how Queen Victoria was eventually brought out of her mourning for her dead husband, Prince Albert. (Wikipedia). In my adaptation, the boy, 10-year-old Wheeler, sees a picture of the Queen,
Sees her as a mother figure he never had, and decides to visit her. He sneaks into Windsor Castle and hides under the dining room table. Queen Victoria is having an important state dinner with her Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, when Wheeler is detected under the table. All think he’s a spy and Wheeler is thrown into prison. The action of Disraeli and the Queen with the Mudlark comprises the musical. I spoke with the author of the book and co-screenwriter, Theodore Bonnet, who was open to optioning the play to me for a musicalization, but no producer was forthcoming. 1963
Glorious Age: Produced as an Off-Broadway musical in 1975 at Theatre Four
This musical tells the story of an outcast woman and a young man who isn’t accepted by the villagers in the 15th century. I recently received a recording of the score from an unknown source.
The Children’s Crusade: Produced at Oklahoma City University Theater Dept.
Musicalization of the actual Children’s Crusade of 1212 across Italy. The musical is narrated by a Monk who also sings and takes place in the action of the show which includes a children’s chorus, an adult chorus, and a dozen Knights who sing/dance as both Christian Knights and Arabian Warriors, featuring The White Knight and the great Arabian General, Saladin. The story follows The White Knight’s son as he’s swayed into going on the children’s crusade against his father’s will. Children are engulfed in the passion sweeping the Middle East of marching to the Holy Land and freeing Jerusalem from the grasp of the ruling Turks. Twenty-two songs and dance music, all created by the author, including the musical score, using 12 instruments. The show is complete with script and score and is available for production. Would be ideal for a ballet company and a professional male-female chorus and a children’s chorus to sing and dance. Songs can be heard here.