Come Summer: History and Key Facts

Come Summer is a Broadway musical with a book and lyrics by Will Holt and music by David Baker, based on Rainbow on the Road by Esther Forbes and vocal arrangements by Trude Rittmann. The original Broadway production opened on March 18, 1969 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre starring, Ray Bolger, Leonard John Crofoot, David Cryer, Cathryn Damon, Margaret Hamilton, and Barbara Sharma. Directed by Agnes de Mille it closed after 7 performances on March 22, 1969. Despite its short run, David Cryer won the 1969 Theatre World Award.

The story tells of an itinerant peddlar in 19th century New England, and the people whose lives he affects.

Behind the scenes, the musical was a disaster. Ray Bolger demanded that the producers expand his role; several rewrites later, de Mille herself was fired and replaced by Burt Shevelove. Only a few days after that, Shevelove exited, and "the producers asked Agnes to come back, but only to choreograph." De Mille's assistant director, James Mitchell, turned down the director's chair, but became the de facto director anyway. As a result, "neither she [de Mille] nor anyone else could say who directed the show." Come Summer turned out to be de Mille's final Broadway production.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Come Summer by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.