Do you remember? Tom Jones, A New Musical!
 Click on the program cover above to see all pages of the program. |
David Honneus sent in the following: “I found this in a trunk (literally) and sent a copy to John Stewart, as he was a cast member. This was the undergraduate-written Spring Musical of The Dramat in 1960 – before the famous Albert Finney movie!
“It was a rousing success! The opening night curtain calls numbered 16!! “62’ers figured prominently. Proctor played Tom Jones. Also on stage were Stewert, Ligon, Saccio, Stott, Hinnant, Holt and Neary. “Backstage were Honneus, Titus, Dolowitz, Brooke-Miller and Light. “Glory days in our golden youth!” |
Notes on “Tom Jones”
By John Stewart
Production Stage Manager and classmate David Honneus sent me a copy of the 1960 Spring production of “Tom Jones” and I’m glad to supply some annotations. My pal Boyd Murray and I got to stay at Yale after graduation for the end of the run. We occupied our days in bellowing opera arias and enjoying an empty-ish TD. It was existence at Yale in an entirely new light – free, easy, no classes. Being in a Dramat production was a great deal of fun, and sadly not to be repeated by some of us since Glee Club Director Fenno Heath powerfully discouraged members (Boyd and me) from indulging in any activity leading to possible time conflicts.
What’s fascinating is to look at who was involved and their afterlives, not the entire cast but only the ones I know about. Austin Pendleton ’61 wrote it and is still active in an incredible career of acting, writing and directing in movies and on Broadway. The lyricists were Joe Mathewson ’61 who was an upper level Lincoln Center administrator, and Peter Bergman ’61, Phil Proctor’s partner in the Firesign Theater. Settings and Costumes were by John Conklin ’61 who has gone on to a huge career in theater, opera, and movies. Lighting Designer Peter Hunt the same : movies and Broadway. Beloved Director Bill Francisco worked in professional theater and opera and taught at Wesleyan until he retired. Composer /Conductor Artie Rubenstein was at the Yale School of Music as a French horn player. When the musical was revived in NY the original composer had dropped out and Artie did a new musical version.
The Cast
The women were at the Yale Drama School. They were amused by the undergraduate attention paid to their chests.
• Clyde Holt is an architect
• Dan Neary (RIP 2018) became a writer and photographer in Vermont.
• Peter Saccio taught in the Dartmouth English department.
• Joanna Glass, at that time in the Drama School, became a much beloved science fiction writer.
• Jeff Barnouw taught at Columbia
• Gordon Fairbairn (RIP 2000) was a psychoanalyst
• Skip Hinnant and Tom Ligon have had major success as actors
• Ed Shapiro (whom I stood next to in the Yale Glee Club) is a psychoanalyst
• Stan Riveles ’63 is an expert negotiator in the nuclear disarmament arena
• Bill Stott is well known to us from his brilliant essays and pictures about his life in South America.
• Boyd Murray works in finance and has been for many decades a stalwart tenor in his church choir
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