Playbill Vault's Today in Theatre History: May 6 | Playbill

Playbill Vault Playbill Vault's Today in Theatre History: May 6
LaChanze with the original cast of Once on This Island. Martha Swope / The New York Public Library

1912 Richard Le Gallienne's Orestes stars Edyth Olive and Rathmel Wilson. It plays London's Boudoir Theatre.

1922 J.M. Barrie's Dear Brutus plays 258 performances in a revival at the Wyndham's Theatre in London. Gerald Du Maurier produces.

1963 Actor-director Monty Woolley dies in Albany, New York. His most memorable performance was portraying Sheridan Whiteside—The Man Who Came To Dinner. He was 74 years old.

1970 Elinor Jones adapts an anthology of memoirs of Colette. Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt provide the songs and Zoe Caldwell is the French lady of letters for 101 performances at the Ellen Stewart Theatre.

1990 Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens' musical Once on This Island, based upon the novel My Love, My Love by Rosa Guy, begins performances Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons. The show transfers to the Booth Theatre on Broadway on October 18, 1990, where it runs 469 performances.

1999 Peter Parnell adapts the John Irving novel into Cider House Rules: Here at St. Clouds, the first part of a two-part play which opens at Off-Broadway's Atlantic Theater Company. Tom Hulce and Jane Jones co-direct the cast that includes Colm Meaney, Ross Gibby, and Josh Hamilton.

2003 Vanessa Redgrave and Brian Dennehy star in a Broadway revival of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night at the Plymouth Theatre. Redgrave and Dennehy both win Tony Awards for their performances, and the production wins Best Revival of a Play.

2008 Glory Days, a coming-of-age pop musical written by young newcomers Nick Blaemire (music and lyrics) and James Gardiner (book), opens on Broadway at the Circle in the Square Theatre, following a hit run at the Signature Theatre in Virginia. Its stay is brief, however: it also closes tonight, having played 17 previews and a single performance.

2013 The world premiere of Nikolai and the Others, Richard Nelson's play that imagines a weekend shared by Russian artists George Balanchine, Igor Stravinsky, Nikolai Nabokov, and more, opens Off-Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. Directed by David Cromer, the cast includes Michael Cerveris, John Glover, Alvin Epstein, Stephen Kunken, and Blair Brown.

Today's Birthdays: Orson Welles 1915. Richard Cox 1948. Douglas Bernstein 1958. Kerry Ellis 1979. Adrienne Warren 1987.

Watch original Once on This Island star LaChanze sing "The Human Heart" from the musical, in preparation for a 2012 New York Pops concert celebrating Ahrens and Flaherty:

 
More Today in Theatre History
 X

Blocking belongs
on the stage,
not on websites.

Our website is made possible by
displaying online advertisements to our visitors.

Please consider supporting us by
whitelisting playbill.com with your ad blocker.
Thank you!