Tom Jones, the lyricist, director and writer of “The Fantasticks,” the longest-running musical in history, has died.
NEW YORK – Tom Jones, the lyricist, director and writer of “The Fantasticks,” the longest-running musical in history, has died. He was 95.
Jones died Friday at his home in Sharon, Connecticut, according to Dan Shaheen, a co-producer of “The Fantasticks,” who has worked with Jones since the 1980s. The cause was cancer.
Jones, who teamed with composer Harvey Schmidt on “The Fantasticks” and the Broadway shows “110 in the Shade” and “I Do! Yes, I do!”, was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1998.
“The Fantasticks,” based on an obscure play by Edmond Rostand, doesn’t necessarily have the makings for a hit. The set is just a platform with poles, a curtain and a wooden box.
The story, a mock version of “Romeo and Juliet”, is about a girl and a boy, secretly reunited by their parents, and a variety of strange characters.
Dozens of actors have appeared on the show, from the 1960 opening cast that included Jerry Orbach and Rita Gardner, to stars like Ricardo Montalbán and Kristin Chenoweth, to “Frozen” star Santino Fontana. The show received Tony Honors for Excellence in Theater in 1991.
“So many people have come, and this is still the same: the platform, the wooden box, the cardboard moon,” Jones told The Associated Press in 2013. “We just come and do our little thing and then leave.”
For nearly 42 years, the show ran at the 153-seat Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village, finally closing in 2002 after 17,162 performances, the victim of both a destroyed post-9/11 center and a jittery new mood. post terrorism.
In 2006, “The Fantasticks” found a new home at The Snapple Theater Center, later The Theater Center, an Off-Broadway complex in the heart of Times Square. In 2013, the show celebrated reaching 20,000 performances. It closed in 2017, finishing as the longest-running production of any kind in American theater history with a staggering 21,552 total performances.
“My mind doesn’t get it, in a way,” Jones said. “It’s like life itself: you get used to it and you don’t realize how extraordinary it is. I’m grateful for that and I’m in awe.”
His best-known song, “Try To Remember,” has been recorded by hundreds of artists over the decades, including Ed Ames, Harry Belafonte, Barbra Streisand, and Placido Domingo. “Soon It’s Gonna Rain” and “They Were You” are also among the most recognized songs from the musical.
The lyrics of “Try to Remember” read: “Try to remember the kind of September/When life was slow and oh so smooth./Try to remember the kind of September/When the grass was green and the grain was yellow.”
Its longevity came despite early reviews that weren’t too kind. The New York Herald Tribune reviewer only liked Act 2, and the New York Times reviewer sniffed that the show was “the kind of thing that loses its magic the longer it goes on.”
In 1963, Jones and Schmidt wrote the Broadway show “110 in the Shade,” which earned the duo a Tony Award nomination for best composer and lyricist. “Yes! I Do!” followed their two-person Broadway musical in 1967, which also earned them a Tony nomination for best composer and lyricist.
Jones is survived by two sons, Michael and Sam.
“What a nice guy. I really adored it,” Broadway veteran Danny Burstein wrote on Facebook.
___
Mark Kennedy can be reached at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits