In the 1980's Joe Rapso came back to do a stage version of Raggedy Ann and it was soon to be called the "creepiest show" of that year. And I've been trying to find photos and clips of the show does anyone know where I could find such?
shareI've been looking for the same thing. The only information I've been able to find is in the book Not Since Carrie, but there aren't any pictures or anything.
The situation is now so terrible that we have no choice but to BEGIN WRITING IN CAPITAL LETTERS.
Here's a live audio from the show: http://www.sendspace.com/file/y54t0g
It's interesting, and I actually think many of the songs are better than the second half of the film's songs (like the Greedy song, and the King's song), but it's a very different story. There's no Raggedy Andy, and Raggedy Ann is much less naive and innocent, and a lot more sassy. Marcella herself plays the innocent Raggedy Ann role from the movie, and Ann is her guide. And if you think the movie has adult undertones, they are nothing compared to the stage version, which has a song ("Diagnosis") in which the doctors tell Marcella that she's going to die.
You can hear all the kids getting fidgety on the audio - clearly they weren't getting this show. And General Doom, at various times, represents Marcella's father, mother, and lover, in the creepiest way possible. Also Marcella's mother tries to kill herself like three times. I'm sure the parents had a great time explaining that to their kids.
Here is a Theatre Review by Frank Rich from Oct. 1986. Wow..sounds baaaad.
THE bad news is broken early in Broadway's newest musical, ''Raggedy Ann.'' No sooner does the curtain rise at the Nederlander Theater than the audience is solemnly informed that the heroine's pet canary, Yellow Yum Yum, is dead. One might think that ''Raggedy Ann'' had nowhere to go but up after that, but never underestimate the self-destructive persistence of theater people who just can't bear to part with a terrible idea. Late in Act I, for a production number's sake, they go and bring Yellow Yum Yum back to life.
''Raggedy Ann'' is the musical that, under the title ''Rag Dolly,'' traveled earlier this year to Moscow, where it initiated a new Soviet-American cultural-exchange program. If only the visit had been a few months later, the Americans could have offered to take the show back in exchange for the release of Nicholas Daniloff. This is the kind of kiddies' entertainment in which the words ''heart,'' ''love'' and ''dream'' are plastered over every scene and song, except those that instruct us about the wonders of ''make believe.'' Indeed, a song titled ''Make Believe,'' not to be mistaken for Jerome Kern's, is sung three times in Act I alone.
The musical's creators are not the rank amateurs that the mortifying on-stage chaos, much of it shrouded in dry-ice smoke and carrot-colored wigs, would suggest. The book of ''Raggedy Ann'' is by William Gibson, the distinguished author of ''The Miracle Worker'' and ''Two for the Seesaw.'' The music and lyrics were written by Joe Raposo, a not unsophisticated songwriter known for his contributions to ''Sesame Street'' and the Muppets films. Patricia Birch, the director and choreographer, once made lively contributions to ''Grease'' and ''A Little Night Music.'' But ''Raggedy Ann'' finds all three of these collaborators afflicted by the cutes, which, combined with a low budget and a blue dancing camel even more ubiquitous than Yellow Yum Yum, extinguishes any hope that they might promote their little Ann into an ''Annie.''
Mr. Gibson attempts to construct a fable in the tradition of ''Peter Pan'' and ''The Wizard of Oz.'' His heroine, named Marcella (Lisa Rieffel), journeys from her bed at home to a dreamy never-never land where good and evil battle for command of her soul under the light of a lollipop moon. In the case of ''Raggedy Ann,'' good is represented by the doll of the title (Ivy Austin), a ragamuffin so ''posilutely'' perky that even a Barbie doll might find her a bit much. The bellowing villain, who looks like the bastard offspring of Captain Hook and a wicked witch, goes by the name of General D. The ''D'' stands for ''darkness, decay, dissolution, death'' and, in Leo Burmester's unvaried performance, dull.
What makes the script unpalatable is not so much the old formula Mr. Gibson trots out but his pretentious exploitation of it. ''Raggedy Ann'' is loaded with psychoanalytic subtext -sex, death and even a holocaustal mass grave are always peeking through Marcella's nightmares - but the author apparently considers it beneath him to wrap his highfalutin message in a coherent, let alone exciting, story. Instead we get some confusing incidents about a search for ''a doll doctor,'' interspersed with clinical fantasy sequences that spell out Marcella's adolescent woes without ever reimagining them in the transporting terms of myth. The inert results, by turns incomprehensible and depressing, suggest what might have happened if L. Frank Baum had undergone Jungian analysis - or if a playwright decided to dramatize a Bruno Bettelheim exegesis of a fairy tale rather than the tale itself.
Relief is not provided by Mr. Raposo, who seems to have used the occasion of his Broadway debut as an excuse for auditioning a trunk load of faceless pop songs. The score and lyrics of ''Raggedy Ann'' are so generic that they could have been written for any mediocre musical, not just this specific one. Among the more egregious examples of the shameless song plugging are a boogie-woogie number titled ''Welcome to L.A.'' - which unaccountably yanks ''Raggedy Ann'' into California late in Act II - and a ''Whatever Lola Wants'' derivative in which a big-breasted bat suddenly materializes to render Raggedy Andy randy. The musical's most persistent ditty, inevitably if pointlessly dictated by the title character's name, is a rag. Between ''Rags'' and ''Raggedy Ann,'' this is fast becoming the most ragged Broadway musical season in memory.
Rather than camouflage the show's many frailties, Ms. Birch flaunts them. Her performers are either bland or broad, whether the characters be humans, dolls or the slavishly ''Cats''-like bats. As choreographer, Ms. Birch expends all her energy in an opening sequence in which white-gloved chorus dancers, impersonating Bob Fosse's minstrels in ''Pippin,'' make much suspenseful ado about revealing the production's scenery to the audience. Why bother? The few mean scraps of set that finally emerge, most of them blackish blue or muddy brown, all too literally announce the bruising evening that's in store.
Following that, the most extravagant dance number is a sequence set in heaven in which Ms. Birch demonstrates what Busby Berkeley might have done if he had only a half-dozen dancers and several celestial Hula-Hoops at his disposal. Having been subjected to such interstellar indignities in ''Raggedy Ann,'' is it any wonder that Moscow drew the line at ''Star Wars''?
TATTERED TALE - RAGGEDY ANN, book by William Gibson; music and lyrics by Joe Raposo; directed and choreographed by Patricia Birch; set design, Gerry Hariton and Vicki Baral; costume design, Carrie Robbins; lighting design, Marc B. Weiss; sound design, Abe Jacob; flying by Foy; musical supervision and dance arrangements, Louis St. Louis; orchestrations, Stan Applebaum; musical directors, Ross Allen and Roy Rogosin; conducted by Mr. Allen; assistant choreographer, Helena Andreyko; production stage manager, Peggy Peterson. Presented by Jon Silverman Associates Ltd., the Kennedy Center, Empire State Institute for the Performing Arts and Donald K. Donald, in association with CBS. At the Nederlander Theater, 208 West 41st Street. Doctors... Dick Decareau, Joe Barrett and Richard Ryder; Poppa...Bob Morrisey; Marcella...Lisa Rieffel; Raggedy Ann...Ivy Austin; Raggedy Andy...Scott Schafer; Baby Doll...Carolyn Marble; Panda...Michelan Sisti; General D...Leo Burmester; Bat...Gail Benedict; Wolf...Gordon Weiss; Camel With the Wrinkled Knees...Joel Aroeste; Mommy...Elizabeth Austin; Company... Melinda Buckley, Gregory Butler, Anny DeGange, Susann Fletcher, Michaela Hughes, Steve Owsley and Andrea Wright.
I put the songs on You Tube, accompanied by scans of the Broadway Playbill. According to all sources, what I posted is demos by "The Original Broadway Cast" (most of whom appeared in all 3 incarnations of the play), but I presume the recordings were made prior to its debut in Moscow (under the title "Rag Dolly," not "Raggedy Ann"), as the Broadway set list is a little different. A previous poster mentioned an audience heard in the defunct link (there's no audience on my copy) so I guess there's a different tape floating around.
Weirdly, only "Rag Dolly," "Blue" and the opening credits theme ("Gingham and Yarn") made it to the musical. You'd think "I'm No Girl's Toy" and "Candy Hearts" would've made the transfer.
If you think the movie is dark and twisted, you ain't heard nothing yet! The musical was lavishly staged, from all accounts, but relentlessly downbeat and it got parents up in arms when it played in Albany. In Moscow, however, it was highly lauded and an old A/P story stated that the performance was filmed for posterity. Too bad that tape hasn't made its way to the net... but never say never, as bizarre things are continuously surfacing online. It's one video I'd kill to see!
Someone said Raggedy Andy wasn't in the Broadway flop... BOOM BABY!!
http://www.ivyaustin.com/images/bio_page/rag_dolly_sb_normal.jpg
Explain to me who that is standing with Annie then!!!
It is Andy!
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