John Kander and Fred Ebb wrote, among other great musicals, Chicago and Caberet. They wrote the musical in which Liza Minelli made her Broadway debut (and it wasn’t Caberet…), and remained involved with her career for years. They wrote the song New York, New York, made famous by an Italian kid from Hoboken, and they wrote much, much more. Then Fred Ebb had to go and die, a fairly brazen final act, indeed.
NYT: Here’s to new beginnings. John Kander has been working with the young New York fiction writer and playwright, Greg Pierce (whose website is really fun to peruse, by the way) in the development of three one acts that involve four actors and three instrumentalists each. The actors portray different characters in each play, stories that are linked by the theme of characters getting what they think they want. The NYT article about the collaboration is succinct enough, but I’m struck by the subtext of being well past retirement age, losing your lifetime writing partner, and still not knowing defeat. Imagine being 84 and going through the process of “what’s next?” It would be so easy to give up…here’s to old souls.
