Inside the Playbill: Romance/Romance August 1988

 Inside the Playbill:

Romance/Romance August 1988

Almost 37 years ago, I took a summer trip to the Big Apple, fresh out of college and before putting my new Bachelor's degree to work! Of course, tickets to the biggest new shows - Into the Woods and The Phantom of the Opera - were impossible to get that soon after the Tony Awards, but I did get tickets to another of that season's Best Musical nominees. And really, after seeing their performance on the awards show, I wanted to see it very much. (I was instantly smitten with the very gallant and handsome leading man.) That show was the four-person musical, Romance/Romance, the antithesis of the 1980s mega-musical trend. I loved every minute of it!

Four actors, two one act musicals. Act One: The Little Comedy (turn of the 20th century Vienna). Act Two: Summer Share (modern day Hamptons).

I love when they put production photos in the Playbill. And it's interesting to look at the "At This Theatre" column - so much has happened at the Hayes in the past three and a half decades! (Click to enlarge the photos above.)

It's also a lot of fun to look at the listings - what was playing, who was playing. And it sure is interesting to see what was trending all those years ago, too.

The long-running hits were still going strong - A Chorus Line, Oh! Calcutta! and 42nd Street - and the Mega-musicals were packing them in - Cats, Les Miserables, Starlight Express, and now, The Phantom of the Opera. The artistic musicals also had their place - Sarafina!, Romance/Romance, and the now-classic Into the Woods. There were also some terrific play offerings, including Burn This, Broadway Bound, Speed-the-Plow and the new Tony-winning Best Play, M. Butterfly. Revivals showed theatergoers a great range of possibilities, from Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana, the jazzy Fats Waller revue, Ain't Misbehavin' to the sensation of the season, Lincoln Center's Cole Porter's Anything Goes.

And if you were looking for star power, there was no shortage then, either: Nell Carter, Patti LuPone, Joan Rivers, some guy named Denzel Washington, talk of the town Madonna, and John Lithgow. The once and future Eva Peron trod the boards of Broadway at the same time!

Romance/Romance ran for 15 previews and 297 performances at the Helen Hayes Theatre before closing there on January 15, 1989. It was nominated for 5 Tony Awards: Best Musical, Best Book (Barry Harman), Best Score (Music by Keith Herrmann, Lyrics by Barry Harman), Best Actor in a Musical (Scott Bakula), and Best Actress in a Musical (Alison Fraser).