Dearest Enemy (1925)

Music by Richard Rodgers
Lyrics by Lorenz Hart
Book by Herbert Fields

Directed by Roy Casstevens
Musical Director: Catherine Snider
Choreographer: Alex Perez

Playbill Notes

The idea of Dearest Enemy came to Larry Hart in 1924 when he spotted a plaque in Manhattan's Murray Hill commemorating Mrs. Murray who, during the revolutionary war, had detained British generals at a tea long enough for American troops to joing General Washington in the Harlem Heights. Hart took the idea to Herbert Fields and Richard Rodgers, and the three quickly concocted a musical comedy called Sweet Rebel. Popular Broadway actress Helen Ford, who had been involved romantically with Rodgers, was recruited for the star part of Betsy, and year of frustrating backer's auditions began.

The tide turned when, in mid-1925, Rodgers, Hart, and Fields were pressed into service to provide the sketches, music, and lyrics for a Theatre Guild benefit, The Garrick Gaieties. The show was an unexpected smash hit and transferred to a Broadway run. Two of the songs, "Manhattan" and "Sentimental Me," took the country by storm, and Rodgers and Hart were no longer stuggling songwriters.

On the strength of the success of the Gaieties, Sweet Rebel--now retitled Dear Enemy--began try-outs, Retitled one more time as Dear Enemy it arrived triumphantly at New York's Knickerbocker Theatre on September 18, 1925. The New York Times waxed rhapsodic over "duets, trios, and chorals that are as uncommon as most of them are beautiful..." while the New York Evening World cited "a book which is wise and truly witty and genuinely romantic; verses that take ripplingly to every lyrical mood and turn, melodies that laugh and sing and dance and love without even a touch of that heard-it-before feeling."

In fact, the score was so delightfully different from the Broadway standard (exemplified by the recently opened No, No, Nanette) that Rodgers and Hart found themselves in heavy demand. The year 1926 would see the team opening no less than six new musicals--a nightclub revue, a London production, and four Broadway shows!

As with most shows of the period, revivals of Dear Enemy have been scarce. Notable exceptions were an NBC TV version in 1955 starring Anne Jeffreys, Robert Sterling, Cornelia Otis Skinner, and Cyril Ritchard, and a production at the Goodspeed Opera House in 1976 with Jeanne Lehman as Betsy and Nancy Andrews as Mrs. Murray.

We hope you'll enjoy this rare opportunity to see the musical which made Rodgers and Hart--and Herbert Fields--the toasts of Broadway!

--Greg MacKellan

Plot Summary

Based on a true Revolutionary War incident, its heroine is Mary Lindley Murray who, under orders from General Washington, detained British troops by serving them cake and wine in her Kips Bay, Manhattan home long enough for some 4,000 American soldiers to reassemble in Washington Heights in September 1776. Reality gives way to fanciful fictionalization with the addition of a pair of love stories, one involving Mary's daughter Jane and British General Tyron's son Harry, the other focusing on the on-again, off-again relationship between Mary's Irish niece Betsy Burke and British Capt. Sir John Copeland. Also playing a role in the plot is a houseful of beautiful young ladies eager to engage the enemy in more than just conversation, and a group of handsome young men happy to forget their patriotic duty for refreshments, music, and flirtations at the Murray mansion. (wikipedia)

Press Release

MAY 8-26, 1996 SAN FRANCISCO (18 April 1996) -- Rodgers and Hart's first Broadway hit, Dear Enemy, receives its San Francisco premiere May 9 - May 26, 1996 (preview May 8), at the New Conservatory Theatre, 25 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco. The award-winning 42nd Street Moon presents the 1925 musical comedy in concert form, as part of its 1996 Lost Musical Series celebrating songwriters of the Golden-Age of Broadway music.

42nd Street Moon is one of only three companies in the world exclusively devoted to presenting the "lost" treasures of musical theatre. This year, the company received a special award from the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle acknowledging its presentation of classic American musical theatre.

With a colorful story set in a time period rarely visited in musicals, the Herbert Fields book for Dear Enemy takes its inspiration from an incident that Fields and Rodgers found recorded on a 37th St. historic plaque. Set in the midst of Manhattan forest during the American Revolution, Dear Enemy follows the sly, "good Whig woman," Mrs. Murray, who skillfully kept British Revolutionary War officers in her mansion--and thus off the battlefield--by plying them with cake, wine, and conversation. Due to her hospitality, the enemy was detained long enough for American General Putnam's embattled division to escape to the Heights of Harlem, sparing three thousand lives. Declared the New York Times, "Dear Enemy blooms with a fresh charm . . . richer than the average musical comedy stories."

Dear Enemy was Rodgers and Hart's first Broadway show. Beginning their twenty-four year collaboration in 1919 at Columbia University, Rodgers and Hart prefaced their first commercial success with contributions to varsity shows, amateur theatrics, and occasional songs in scores by other songwriters. With Rodgers' lilting melodies tempering Hart's bittersweet cynicism, the two rose to prominence six years later with the Theatre Guild Revue Garrick Gaieties (1925), a surprise hit compiled as a benefit to help purchase tapestries for the new Garrick Theatre in New York. Their entree onto Broadway soon followed, with Dear Enemy opening five months later, on September 18, 1925, to overwhelmingly enthusiastic response from audiences and critics. The show ran through May 1926, taking to the road in a tour of twelve cities. Rodgers and Hart followed this hit in 1926 by The Girlfriend, Garrick Gaieties of 1926, the London opening of Lido Lady, and A Connecticut Yankee in 1927. To gether they went on to write some of American theatre's most enduring hits, a total of 28 musical comedies, including The Boys From Syracuse, Babes in Arms, and Pal Joey.

Also marking the start of Helen Ford's Broadway career, Dear Enemy cinched Rodgers and Hart's place as masters of musical comedy, and was praised by the New York Evening World as having "a book which is wise, truly witty, and genuinely romantic, verses that take rippingly to every move and turn, melodies that laugh and sing, and dance, and love radiantly. It is decidedly first rate!"

Citing "a delectable score, minus molasses and devoid of that insipid saccarinity so in vogue," the New York World enthused about this first production of Dear Enemy, starring Ford and Charles Purcell, and more than a few critics raved about the operatic qualities of the score. According to the New York Times, because "of the full-toned qualities of the music and the richly design of the plot, Dear Enemy is an operetta, with more than a chance flavor of Gilbert and Sullivan." With songs noted as "uncommon as they are beautiful", the score, composed by Richard Rodgers, echoes the sound of the spinet, harp and string in such numbers as the delicate "Here in My Arms," "Where the Hudson River Flows," and "Bye and Bye." In 1955, the musical was made into a TV program starring Anne Jeffries, Robert Sterling, and Cornelia Otis Skinner.

42nd Street Moon's production of Dear Enemy will be the show's first since it was performed twenty years ago at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut. The production will be directed by Roy Casstevens, in his fourth show with 42nd Street Moon. Previously, he directed Very Warm for May, America's Sweetheart, and the musical revue The Song is You. Kathy Sneider makes her debut with 42nd Street Moon as Musical Director.

Marsha Mercant hits the boards as the mischievous, young American, Betsy Burke. Marsha's credits include 42nd Street Moon's The Song is You, As Thouasands Cheer, plus Broadway Babies, and the Los Angeles production of Les Miserables. The scheming hostess, Mrs. Robert Murray, will be portrayed by Lois Saunders. Ms. Saunders has previously appeared with 42nd Street Moon in Three Sisters and in TheatreWorks' The Secret Garden. Clay Crosby will take the role of Sir John Copeland. An actor and cabaret singer, Crosby performed with 42nd Street Moon in One Touch of Venus, last summer's Ameria's Sweetheart, and has appeared in his own cabaret act in New York, Los Angeles, and at San Francisco's Plush Room. His first CD is soon to be released. In the role of Mrs. Murray's daughter Jane will be Helene Davis, with Brett Owen as Captain Tryon and Marc Chambers as General John Tryon, leader of the British forces.