Celebration

Celebration is a musical with a book and lyrics by the renowned team
behind The Fantasticks, Tom Jones and music by Harvey Schmidt.

An avant-garde fable set on New Year’s Eve, it focuses on four characters: Orphan, an idealistic and cheerfully optimistic young man, in possession of the stained-glass eye of God, who reminds Edgar Allen Rich, a wealthy but jaded old man, of his younger self; Angel, a sweet entertainer who longs to be “somebody”; and Potemkin, a Loki-like character who serves as narrator, commentator, and advisor. Surrounding them are a chorus known as the Revelers, who take on various roles throughout the action of the play, a group masked by the impersonal industrialism of their society, obediently following the rich man’s demands but secretly aiding the boy who sees and respects them as individuals.

At the musical’s core is the struggle between youth and old age, innocence and corruption, love and ambition, and poverty and wealth, as
Angel tries to decide if she would be better served by her feelings for Orphan or Rich’s willingness to fulfill her every dream.