- Anya (musical)
Infobox Musical
name= Anya
caption= Original cast recording]
music= Robert Wright
George Forrest
lyrics= Robert Wright
George Forrest
book=George Abbott
Guy Bolton
basis= Marcelle Maurette's play "Anastasia " and "Anastasia" 1956 film
productions=1965 Broadway
awards="Anya" is a musical with a book by
George Abbott andGuy Bolton and music and lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest.Based on Bolton's 1954 English adaptation of Marcelle Maurette's play "Anastasia" and the subsequent 1956 film adaptation of the same name, it focuses on Anya who, when discovered in a
Berlin psychiatric facility in 1925 by taxi driver Bounine, a formerCossack general in Czarist Russia, claims to be Anastasia, the supposedly murdered youngest daughter of Emperor Nicholas II.A number of
fiction al elements, including a romantic triangle involving Anya, Bounine, and his mistress Genia and the addition of a comical character, café proprietor Katrina, weakened the plot of the true story. It also continued to perpetuate the notion that the Dowager Empress had met Anya in real life, when in fact the two never crossed paths.After sixteen previews, the Broadway production, directed by Abbott and
choreographed byHanya Holm , opened onNovember 29 1965 at the Ziegfeld Theatre. Denounced as an old-fashionedoperetta by the critics, it closed after only 16 performances, the last production to be presented in the historic venue, which had housed the original "Show Boat " in 1927.The cast included
Constance Towers as Anya, Michael Kermoyan as Bounine, Karen Shepard as Genia,Irra Petina as Katrina, andLillian Gish as the Dowager Empress. Supporting roles were played byGeorge S. Irving andJohn Michael King .The production was nominated for the
Tony Award for Best Scenic Design. An original cast recording was released byUnited Artists Records .ong list
;Act I
*A Song from Somewhere
*Vodka, Vodka!
*So Proud
*Homeward
*Snowflakes and Sweethearts (The Snowbird Song)
*On That Day
*Anya
*Six Palaces
*Hand in Hand
*This Is My Kind of Love
*On That Day (Reprise);Act II
*That Prelude!
*A Quiet Land
*Here Tonight, Tomorrow Where?
*Leben Sie Wohl
*If This Is Goodbye
*Little Hands
*All Hail The EmpressReferences
"Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops" by
Ken Mandelbaum , published bySt. Martin's Press (1991), pages 235-36 (ISBN 0-312-06428-4)External links
* [http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?id=3267 Internet Broadway Database listing]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.