1900 The Irish Literary Theatre stages The Bending of the Bough by George Moore, Maeve by Edward Martyn, and The Last Feast of the Fianna by Alice Milligan during a weeklong engagement at Dublin's Gaiety Theatre. These performances are later seen as the first steps of what will become Ireland's famed Abbey Theatre.
1935 Stella Adler stars in Clifford Odets' drama Awake and Sing! The study of the effects of the Depression on a family in the Bronx runs 26 weeks at the Belasco Theatre.
1953 Picnic opens on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre. William Inge's tale of a handsome drifter's effect on a small Kansas town stars Ralph Meeker, Kim Stanley, Paul Newman, Eileen Heckart, and Janice Rule. Joshua Logan stages the 477 performance run.
1978 Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green adapt Charles Bruce Millholland's plays into On the Twentieth Century. The musical stars Madeline Kahn as a glamour queen who's the victim of a con. Also in the cast: John Cullum, Imogene Coca, and Kevin Kline. The production runs 449 performances and wins five Tony Awards, including Best Original Score for Comden, Green, and composer Cy Coleman.
1981 A revival of the Eric Blau and Mort Shuman musical Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well Living in Paris opens at New York's Town Hall. The celebration of the late French artist stars Sally Cooke, Joe Masiell, Shawn Elliott, and Betty Rhodes.
1992 George Gershwin's Girl Crazy is reinvented by Mike Ockrent and Ken Ludwig as Crazy for You; thirteen Gershwin songs are added to the production at the Shubert Theatre. Ockrent directs and his future wife, Susan Stroman, choreographs. It runs 1,622 performances and wins the Tony Award for Best Musical.
2009 The Story of My Life, Neil Bartram and and Brian Hill's two-actor musical about a lifelong friendship (and its sudden ending), opens on Broadway at the Booth Theatre. Richard Maltby, Jr. directs Will Chase and Malcolm Gets, who play two childhood friends from ages 6 to 35. The show closes three days later, after only five performances.
2019 A new production of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's Merrily We Roll Along opens Off-Broadway at the Roundabout Theatre Company's Laura Pels Theatre. Fiasco Theater's newly revised version of the musical condenses the show to one act and a cast of six, and incorporates additional material from George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's 1934 play.
Today's Birthdays: Ernest Glendinning (1884-1936). Cedric Hardwicke (1893-1964). Louis Calhern (1895-1956). John William "Bubbles" Sublett (1902-1986). Saul Chaplin (1912-1997). Carson McCullers (1917-1967). George Rose (1920-1988). Marshall Barer (1923-1998). David Margulies (1937-2016). Carlin Glynn (b. 1940). Cecilia Hart (1948-2016). Jeff Daniels (b. 1955). Theresa Rebeck (b. 1958). Hugh Panaro (b. 1964).
