Knickerbocker Holiday

Knickerbocker Holiday is a Broadway musical written by Kurt Weill (music) and Maxwell Anderson (book and lyrics); it was directed by Joshua Logan. It opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on October 19, 1938 and closed on March 11, 1939 after 168 performances. The original production starred Walter Huston, Jeanne Madden, and Ray Middleton. Among the songs introduced in the show was the "September Song", now considered a pop standard.

History

Knickerbocker Holiday is both a romantic comedy and a thinly veiled allegory equating the New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (whose ancestor is one of the characters on the corrupt town council) with fascism. As is apparent from the preface he wrote for the play, as well as the play and the songs themselves, Maxwell Anderson was a pacifist and an individualist anarchist. He saw the New Deal as another example of the corporatism and concentration of political power which had given rise to Nazism and Stalinism. His animus toward the state is more soberly revealed in one of his two tragedies about the Sacco and Vanzetti execution, Winterset.

Story origins

This play, coincidentally, starred Burgess Meredith, the same actor who was originally to star in Knickerbocker Holiday (Burgess, a friend of Weill's, who was to play the romantic young lead Brom Broek, left when he saw the villainous Stuyvessant character growing into a more a more lovable and important role, upstaging him). The setting of the musical is New Amsterdam. It is narrated by Washington Irving, who wrote the source material for the musical, Father Knickerbocker's Stories.

Plot

Knickerboker Holiday begins shortly before the arrival of the new Governor, Peter Stuyvessant (played by Walter Huston in the Broadway show). Broek, an American individualist, cannot take orders. If ever anyone gives him an order, he assaults them. This has made it difficult to court his beloved, Tina Tienhoven, the daughter of the head of the town council.

Stuyvessant arrives just in time to rescue Broek from a hanging engineered by his beloved's father, in order to get the impoverished ne'er do well to make way for the wealthy and powerful Stuyvessant himself as a suitor for the fair Tina. Naturally Broek is grateful: until Stuyvessant quickly asserts what is for all intents and purposes a fascist dictatorship.

Performances outside the US

Knickerbocker Holiday made its Canadian premiere on February 20, 2009 at the Jane Mallet Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts in Toronto, Ontario. It was produced by the Toronto Operetta Theatre, under the direction for Guillermo Silva-Marin. This production featured Curtis Sullivan as Washington Irving, Dale Miller as Brom Broeck, Amy Wallis as Tina Tienhoven, David Ludwig as Governor Peter Stuyvesant and Rejean Cournoyer as Roosevelt. It also featured Jeffery Sanders as Schermerhorn, Greg Finney as Vanderbilt and Ford Roberts as Mr. Tienhoven. It was directed by Guillermo Silva-Marin, musically directed and conducted by David Speers, stage managed by Myra Malley and featured the TOT Orchestra and vocal ensemble.

In June 2009, Knickerbocker Holiday was featured in the York Theatre's "Mufti" reading series. Directed by Michael Unger, the cast featured Josh Grisetti as Washington Irving, Nick Gaswirth as Brom, Kelli Barrett as Tina, Martin Vidnovic as Stuyvesant, William Perry as Roosevelt, and Walter Charles as Tienhoven.

Songs

The 1944 film version, starring Nelson Eddy as Broeck, Constance Dowling as Tina, and Charles Coburn as Stuyvesant, not only removed most of the songs and added new ones not by Weill and Anderson, but watered down the political allegory considerably, despite being released during World War II.

External links

• Knickerbocker Holiday at the Internet Broadway Database
• Internet Movie Database Listing