TOD:
Mary Martin on television, always in black and white because my family didn't get their first color set till way late. To the best of my knowledge I never saw it in color at all until I "grew up" and got the laserdisc. And boy, was that a return to one of the great cultural artifacts of childhood. Pure magic. By then, it had been many years since I'd seen it, and I watched it straight through twice.
Never got my arse to a professional production, nor have I watched any other one on DVD. Yet. That will be remedied. The only other one I've even seen, period, was when I played in the pit for a community theater production in 2007 in the wilds of Connecticut. That was great fun, even if, sad to say, I was only playing string reinforcement on synth because it was a volunteer orchestra and they only had a couple of violins and bass. Someone else already had the piano/celeste part.
I LOVE this score! And it was equal parts frustrating and rewarding to navigate the still-original manuscript parts with cues and notations that say "Mary" does this and "Mary" does that! I figured that would go away someday and I kept a photocopy for myself -- but for expediency I had to capture it on 11" x 17" paper and I have yet to cut it down and assemble it, so it sits in a box, waiting for me.
Of course, I since learned that McGlinn was restoring this one! And boy did it need it. The piano/conductor score itself was lacking in many ways, and it seemed that nothing agreed with anything else. DR ELMORE: Did that get completed, and were you involved with this one? Please forgive if I've already asked that.
Wish I could have caught this production! Wonderful, wonderful show.
