''Beggar's Holiday'' is a

musical Musical is the adjective of music. Musical may also refer to: * Musical theatre, a performance art that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance * Musical film Musical film is a film genre in which songs by the Character (arts), charac ...

with a book and lyrics by John La Touche and music by

Duke Ellington Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American Jazz piano, jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous Big band, jazz orchestra from 1924 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D ...

History and background

The project originated with black scenic designer Perry Watkins, who envisioned a jazz-driven adaptation of John Gay's

The Beggar's Opera ''The Beggar's Opera'' is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of sati ...

. Watkins hired John Latouche, who'd written lyrics for the cantata "Ballad for Americans" and "Cabin in the Sky," and teamed him with Ellington, still best known at the time as a band leader. Ellington and Latouche updated the play's locale to a modern American city and turned Macheath into what Bowers calls "a pin-stripe-suited mobster, a singing, dancing Bugsy Siegel." The book itself mixed jazz and blues rhythms with more traditional musical theater, including comedy numbers written for Zero Mostel, making his Broadway debut as Peachum. The Broadway production, directed by Nicholas Ray and

choreographed Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies (or their depictions) in which motion or form or both are specified. ''Choreography'' may also refer to the design itself. A choreographer creates choreographies thr ...

by Valerie Bettis, opened on December 26, 1946 at The Broadway Theatre, where it ran for 111 performances. The cast included

Alfred Drake Alfred Drake (October 7, 1914 – July 25, 1992) was an American actor and singer. Biography Born as Alfred Capurro in New York City, the son of parents emigrated from Recco, Genoa, Drake began his Broadway career while still a student at Bro ...

Zero Mostel Samuel Joel "Zero" Mostel (February 28, 1915 – September 8, 1977) was an American actor, comedian, and singer. He is best known for his portrayal of comic characters including Tevye on stage in ''Fiddler on the Roof'', Pseudolus on stage and o ...

, Bernice Parks, Jet MacDonald, Dorothy Johnson, Mildred Joanne Smith, Marie Bryant, Avon Long, William Dillard, Rollin Smith,

Thomas Gomez Thomas Gomez (July 10, 1905 – June 18, 1971) was an American actor. Life and career Spanish on his father (Sabino Tomás Gómez)'s side (Gibraltar and Santander, Spain) and French-Irish on his mother's side (Alsace and County Cork), Gomez's ...

, and

Herbert Ross Herbert David Ross (May 13, 1927 – October 9, 2001) was an American actor, choreographer, director and producer who worked predominantly in theater and film. He was nominated for two Academy Awards and a Tony Award. He is known for directing ...

. The show included an interracial relationship resulting in nightly

picketing Picketing is a form of protest in which people (called pickets or picketers) congregate outside a place of work or location where an event is taking place. Often, this is done in an attempt to dissuade others from going in (" crossing the pi ...

outside the theater. No Broadway

cast album A cast recording is a recording of a stage musical that is intended to document the songs as they were performed in the show and experienced by the audience. An original cast recording or OCR, as the name implies, features the voices of the sho ...

was recorded, but a

demo tape A demo (shortened from "demonstration") is a song or group of songs typically recorded for limited circulation or for reference use, rather than for general public release. A demo is a way for a musician to approximate their ideas in a fixed for ...

was discovered and released, together with the score from the West End musical ''Bet Your Life'' featuring Julie Wilson and

Sally Ann Howes Sally Ann Howes (20 July 1930 – 19 December 2021) was an English actress and singer. Her career on screen, stage and television spanned six decades. She is best known for the role of Truly Scrumptious in the 1968 musical film ''Chitty Chitt ...

, on an LP on the Blue Pear label.

Lena Horne Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American singer, actress, dancer and civil rights activist. Horne's career spanned more than seventy years and covered film, television and theatre. Horne joined the chorus of the C ...

's recording of "Tomorrow Mountain," the show's first-act closer, was a hit.

Plot summary

The musical is set in a corrupt world inhabited by rakish

mobster A gangster (informally gangsta) is a criminal who is a member of a gang. Most gangs are considered to be part of organized crime. Gangsters are also called mobsters, a term derived from '' mob'' and the suffix '' -ster''. Gangs provide a level ...

s and their double crossing gangs, raffish

madam Madam (), or madame ( or ), is a polite and formal form of address for Woman, women in the English language, often contracted to ma'am (pronounced in American English and this way but also in British English). The term derives from the French la ...

s and their dissolute whores, panhandlers and

street people Street people are people who live a public life on the streets of a city. Street people are frequently homeless, sometimes mentally ill, and often have a transient lifestyle. The delineation of street people is primarily determined by residential ...

as they conduct their dirty business, ply their trade, and struggle to survive in brothels,

shanty towns A shanty town, squatter area, squatter settlement, or squatter camp is a settlement of improvised buildings known as shanties or shacks, typically made of materials such as mud and wood, or from cheap building materials such as corrugated iron sh ...

, and

prisons A prison, also known as a jail, gaol, penitentiary, detention center, correction center, correctional facility, or remand center, is a facility where people are imprisoned under the authority of the state, usually as punishment for various cr ...

. The plot focuses on the exploits of MacHeath, a suave New York mobster, his three women, and their various trials and tribulations with the law.

Characters

* MacHeath, a ruthless mobster * Jenny, MacHeath's lover * Polly Peachum, MacHeath's wife * Hamilton Peachum, Polly's father * Mrs. Peachum, Polly's mother * Lucy Lockit, daughter of the Chief of Police * Careless Love * The Cocoa Girl * Chief of Police Lockit * The Horn

Musical numbers

Original 1946 production

;Act I *"In Between" — Lucy Lockit *"When You Go Down By Miss Jenny's" — Citizens and Girls *"I've Got Me" — MacHeath *"Take Love Easy" — Jenny *"I Wanna Be Bad" — Careless Love *"Rooster Man" — Jenny *"When I Walk With You" — Polly Peachum and MacHeath *"I've Got Me" (Reprise) — First Girl *"The Scrimmage of Life" — Mrs. Peachum, Hamilton Peachum and Lucy Lockit *"Ore From a Gold Mine" — Mrs. Peachum and Hamilton Peachum *"When I Walk With You" (Reprise) — MacHeath and Polly Peachum *"Tooth and Claw" — Mac's Gange *"Maybe I Should Change My Ways" — MacHeath *"The Wrong Side of the Railroad Tracks" — The Cocoa Girl, Careless Love and The Horn *"Tomorrow Mountain" — MacHeath ;Act II *"Brown Penny" § — Lucy Lockit *"Tooth and Claw" (Reprise) — Hamilton Peachum and Reporters *"Lullaby for Junior" — Jenny *"Quarrel for Three" — Polly Peachum, Lucy Lockit and MacHeath *"Fol-de-rol-rol" — MacHeath *"Women, Women, Women" (Reprise) — The Cocoa Girl and Careless Love *"When I Walk With You" (Reprise) — MacHeath *"The Hunted" — MacHeath ;''Notes'' *§: Lyrics based on poem by William Butler Yeats

Productions

Original 1946 production

''Beggar's Holiday'' premiered on Broadway at the Broadway Theatre on December 26, 1946 and closed on March 29, 1947 after 111 performances. Directed by Nicholas Ray, the show starred

as MacHeath, Bernice Parks as Jenny, Jet MacDonald as Polly Peachum,

as Hamilton Peachum, Dorothy Johnson as Mrs. Peachum, Mildred Joanne Smith as Lucy Lockit, Avon Long as Careless Love, Marie Bryant as the Cocoa Girl, Rollin Smith as Chief of Police Lockit, and William Dillard as the Horn. The show featured orchestrations by Billy Strayhorn, choreography by Valerie Bettis, production design by Oliver Smith, lighting design by Peggy Clark, and costume design by Walter Florell.

2004 Marin Theatre Company Production

In 2004,

Dale Wasserman Dale Wasserman (November 2, 1914 – December 21, 2008) was an American playwright, perhaps best known for his 1965 book, ''Man of La Mancha''. Early life Dale Wasserman was born in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, the child of Russian Jewish immigr ...

, one of the musical's producers and the author of ''

Man of La Mancha ''Man of La Mancha'' is a 1965 musical with a book by Dale Wasserman, music by Mitch Leigh, and lyrics by Joe Darion. It is adapted from Wasserman's non-musical 1959 teleplay '' I, Don Quixote'', which was in turn inspired by Miguel de Cervan ...

'', teamed with the Marin Theatre Company in

Mill Valley, California Mill Valley is a city in Marin County, California, United States, located about north of San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge and from Napa Valley. The population was 14,231 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Mill Valley is lo ...

to create a revamped, updated, and radically rewritten version that toned down much of the original's social criticism and political humor. The substantially rearranged

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...

score included hints of

funk Funk is a music genre that originated in African-American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African-Americans in the ...

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spiritual (music), spirituals, work songs, field hollers, Ring shout, shouts, cha ...

and

rock and roll Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock-n-roll, and rock 'n' roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from African ...

. Overall, its mood was far lighter and more optimistic than that of the 1946 version. Although Wasserman had hopes of a Broadway staging, to date his plans have not materialized.

2012 Cast Recording

In 2012, French baritone David Serero performed and produced a full revival production of ''Beggar's Holiday'' by Ellington and Wasserman i
November 2012 in Paris
with an international cast including Emmy Award winner John Altman, Charlie Glad, Gilles San Juan and directed by James Marvel. David Serero has also performed, arranged and produced the only cast album recording of ''Beggar's Holiday''.

References

External links

Internet Broadway Database listing
{{Duke Ellington 1946 musicals Broadway musicals Musicals based on operas Operas by Duke Ellington Works based on The Beggar's Opera