We’re celebrating the career of composer/lyricist William Finn, whom we lost in April, on this week’s Dress Circle (6/22 7:00 p.m.) with thirteen songs from a variety of his often autobiographical musicals.
We’re beginning with the 1979 musical that brought Finn to the attention of audiences even though it had a short run off-Broadway. “In Trousers” was the beginning of what would come to be called the “Marvin Trilogy” focusing on a gay man coming to grips with his sexuality. We’ll also be including a song from one of the subsequent musicals, “Falsettoland” from the 1990 production.
Other musicals include “A New Brain,” his 1998 musical about the onset, surgery, and recovery from a brain tumor and “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” that delighted audiences on Broadway in 2005.
The rest of the show is made up of music a song cycle and a revue. The song cycle is titled “Elegies.” It was begun as a collection of songs Finn wrote about his friends and acquaintances whom he lost to AIDS, but after 9/11, he shifted its focus to include that event as well as the loss of family members like his mother. The “story song” nature of many of these pieces is unsurpassed in musical theatre and features a cast including Betty Buckley, Carolee Carmello, and Christian Borle.
We’ve also included three songs from the revue that was compiled from his “catalogue” of songs that were often overlooked or appeared in vehicles that weren’t produced or produced at small venues.
These include songs from his score “Romance in Hard Times” and “The Royal Family of Broadway.” We’ve also added a song he wrote about his time at Williams College entitled “You’re Even Better than You Think You Are” in which he discusses his artistic growth.
We’ve done our best to amass a group of songs to showcase the talents of this unique member of the musical community in order to introduce you to someone with whose music you may not be familiar. When Finn passed at the age of 73, we lost another part of our musical history who will be missed.
