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A
new book by Dale Wasserman
Published by Applause Books It
was born of a mistake. An item in a Madrid newspaper
read, "Dale Wasserman in Spain to research a movie
version of DON QUIXOTE, to star Yves Montand."
Actually Wasserman was in Spain for no purpose other
than to kick back and have fun. But the item started
him speculating -- how come there had been hundreds
of adaptations of DON QUIXOTE but never a successful
one? He began brooding on it and concluded that while
the novel was unadaptable, the life of its creator might
be the stuff of great theatre.
And so MAN OF LA MANCHA was written,
first as a TV special, then a play for stage, and then
as a musical, an astonishing hit which for forty years
has been running throughout the world in forty languages,
and looks never to close. And now Wasserman has written
the book which others have attempted but, denied information
available only to the play's creator, been unable to
write. It's called THE IMPOSSIBLE MUSICAL and is indeed
an astonishing account -- not only rich in backstage
revelations but also as an uncensored look into the
minds of authors at work.
Here's the first paragraph
of the book:
"MAN OF LA MANCHA was a production nobody wanted,
booked into a theatre nobody else would have, and ignored
by everyone except the public. During its tryout it
had been adjudged by the wise men of Broadway as having
a certain shy charm but a dim future, incapable of competing
among the heavyweights. Certainly not, as LIFE MAGAZINE
proclaimed, "A Metaphysical Smasheroo." Metaphysical
it certainly was, but none of those wise men -- or anyone
else, in fact -- had dared predict that it would become
a "Smasheroo." |
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