Two Iconic Musicals Opened This Same Day On Broadway, But 22 Years Apart!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                              And I saw one but could have seen the other.

                             I was all of four when "The Sound Of Music" opened on Broadway in 1959, at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.   That is the original cast album cover, featuring Mary Martin, and Laurie Peters (Liesl), William Snowden (Friedrich), Kathy Dunn (Louisa), Joseph Stewart (Kurt), Marilyn Rogers (Brigitta), Mary Susan Locke (Marta), and Evanna Lien (Gretl).  Though they did not become as iconic as the film children, there would have been no iconic film if not for them.

                             I could well have been taken to see this and "Gypsy" with Ethel Merman.  I was precocious and could sit still through a performance.  Oh, hons, to hear Patricia Neway as Mother Abbess almost shatter the chandelier, hitting that final note in "Climb Ev'ry Mountain."  I get shivers just thinking about it now!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                            Now, in 1981, I was in my twenties--yes, girls, I WAS!!!!!!!!--and just making forays onto the theater scene.  But I did manage to see not once, but twice, the original production of "Merrily We Roll Along," which opened on this day in 1981, at the then Alivn Theatre.  I was so captivated by the score, and the likes of Ann Morrison and Lonny Price that I went to see it a second time before it closed, which I knew it would.

                           Interestingly, I knew about 'Merrily' before most.  While working in the NYU Bookstore back then, one of my coworkers, Mary Rose Wood, was auditioning for something but would not tell what it was.  On the day she was cast, we were all excited and then found out it was the new Harold Prince-Stephen Sondheim collaboration, "Merrily We Roll Along."  Of course, we all thought it would be a hit, and it was......but not for another 42 years.  What kept it in the public eye that long was its haunting score, which, once heard, does not leave you, darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                           Yes, November 16 is perhaps the most important day of Musical Theater Week!!!!!!!!!

                           But stay tuned, dolls, there is more coming!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!