![]() "It's a story I've loved since I first read it," she admitted. Preserving that poetry was the primary concern for him and for lyricist Hall, who's equally smitten with the material. I just loved the poetry of this man's words." I first encountered it when my seventh-grade teacher read it in class. " A Christmas Memory was always one of my favorite pieces of American literature. He'd had some bad experiences with Breakfast at Tiffany's - twice, actually - and he wasn't crazy about House of Flowers - basically, he just thought Capote wouldn't musicalize very well, but, at the end of the lunch, he said 'Go out and explore it.'" "Glenn loved the TV movie I did and suggested musicalizing it," Poole recalled, "so I called up Alan Schwartz with the Capote estate and said, 'Can I take you out to a very expensive lunch?' He really wasn't disposed to it at all. ![]() Glenn Casale, resident director at Sacramento Music Circus, got the ball rolling when he expressed just such a sentiment to book-writer Poole. There are theatres in towns all across the country that are sick of doing A Christmas Carol so we've put another option out there for them to consider." "Because we designed this show specifically for the regional market, these are the people we want to be playing to. "We decided to coincide our presentation with the festival so the regional artistic directors coming in for the whole event could have a chance to catch it," said the show's producer, Jayson Raitt, who is shepherding the work with fellow producer Brannon Wiles. A Christmas Memory was not part of the NAMT festival, per se - just a side benefit for the early arrivals. 26 in Manhattan, welcoming regional-theatre delegates who attended the National Alliance for Musical Theatre's 23rd Annual Festival of New Musicals Oct. The show was seen in a 45-minute industry presentation Oct. Human Race Theatre in Dayton, OH, gave the show an earlier reading and is considering the title for a future full production. "It remains on my short list of 'shows I want to produce,' whether it is Christmas in December or June," said Human Race producing artistic director Kevin Moore. This year a whole new production will play the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery, Nov. ![]() ![]() Penny Fuller starred as Sook when this musicalized memoir world-premiered a year ago at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, CA. Thirty years later, it returned to television as a two-hour Hallmark special starring Patty Duke, adapted and expanded by Duane Poole, who has now authored a new libretto for its latest reincarnation - as a musical, with lyrics by Carol Hall and music by Larry Grossman. In 1967, a 50-minute TV edition, adapted and narrated by Capote himself, won cheers, tears and two Emmys (for its teleplay and for Geraldine Page's exquisite performance). She is Sook, a lovely loon of an old lady, signaling the start-up of much holiday hustle-and-bustle for herself and her best bud and distant cousin, seven-year-old Buddy (i.e., the boy Capote), in rural Alabama of The Depression.Ĭapote's tender recall of this special friendship first appeared as a short story in Mademoiselle magazine in December 1956 and subsequently enjoyed a variety of multi-media lives. "Oh, my, it's fruitcake weather," announces the fruitcake-in-residence in Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory" one frosty morn about this time of year some 80 autumns ago. ![]()
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