Dear World

Showtunes! Theatre Company, the Puget Sound arts organization devoted exclusively to mounting book-in-hand, concert stagings of lost, forgotten, and lesser known musicals, goes continental with its first production of the New Year. Journey to a mythical, post WWII Paris with the 1969 Broadway musical Dear World.

Directed by Marcus Wolland and with music direction by Deanna Schaeffer, Dear World is based on Jean Giradoux’s famed 1946 play The Madwoman of Chaillot, and was adapted for the stage in 1969 by the team red-hot from the Broadway smash Mame: composer/lyricist Jerry Herman, book writers Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, and star Angela Lansbury as the “Madwoman” herself, Countess Aurelia.

Set just after WWII, the prophetic plot tells of Aurelia’s and her fellow Madwomen Gabrielle and Constance’s efforts to save Paris from ecological ruination at the hands of greedy and unscrupulous politicians. The Broadway production earned Miss Lansbury the second of what would be (to date) four Tony awards, as well as praise for many of Herman’s melodically appealing songs such as “I Don’t Want to Know and “Kiss Her Now.” Showtunes! Theatre Company has been given the script and score for an early post Broadway version which includes the song “From the Bottom of the Glass” which was added after the Broadway run.