Richard Barr: The Playwright's Producer

313 Pages·2013·2.83 MB·English

by  David A. Crespy

CRESPY
THEATER
Richard
“Thank you, David Crespy, for turning a brilliant and long overdue spotlight
on the life and career of Richard Barr, one of the seminal figures of twentieth-
century theater. Crespy reminds us how much of today’s theater finds its roots
in Barr’s work as a discoverer, nurturer, and producer of new work, as a man
who restructured a sclerotic commercial theater, as a man who changed the
rules—in short, all the daring he learned as Orson Welles’s assistant in the
The
legendary Mercury Theatre. Everyone working in theater today owes a debt R Barr
to the remarkable Richard Barr.” i
c
—John Guare, playwright h
a Playwright’s
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“David Crespy’s book is a stellar parade and a fascinating portrait of a producer d

as a young, then mature, man. Richard Barr is a ‘present at the birth’ character, B
as he crosses our theatre’s history in too many ways to count. Now, thanks a Producer
r
to Professor Crespy, we can be present too. We’re with him on his opening r

nights, including the joyous bloodlettings of Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia |

Woolf? and Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd on Broadway. We can stumble upon T DAVID A. CRESPY
an intrepid line of gay men waiting for tickets to the pre-Stonewall run of h
The Boys in the Band and grieve a community decimated by AIDS. We can e FOREWORD BY EDWARD ALBEE

witness the passion of a man who would hock his house to put a play up. If P
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you care about the American theatre, Barr is a man to know.” a
y
—Todd London, artistic director, New Dramatists
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r
I i
n Richard Barr: The Playwright’s Producer, author David A. Crespy inves- g
h
tigates the career of one of the theatre’s most vivid luminaries, from his
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work on the film and radio productions of Orson Welles to his definitive ’s

productions of Edward Albee’s major plays to his triumphant—and final— P
production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet ro
Street. Crespy draws on Barr’s own writings on the theatre, his personal papers, d
and more than sixty interviews with theatre professionals to offer insight into a u
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man whose legacy to producers and playwrights resounds in the theatre world. e
Also included in the volume are a foreword and an afterword by Edward Albee, a r
three-time Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and one of Barr’s closest associates.
David A. Crespy is a professor of playwriting, acting, and dramatic literature
at the University of Missouri at Columbia. He is the author of Off-Off Broadway
Explosion.
$40.00 usd
isbn 0-8093-3140-3
southern illinois university press
isbn 978-0-8093-3140-6
www.siupress.com
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Printed in the United States of America rn Illin
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Cover illustration: Richard Barr in the late 1980s. Photo by Friedman-Abeles; © Billy Rose is U
Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. n
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Crespy cvr mech.indd 1 2/12/13 8:54 AM
A Series from
Southern
Illinois
University
Press
Robert A.
Schanke
Series Editor

Richard
The
Barr
P laywright’s
Producer
DAVID A. CRESPY
WITH A FOREWORD
BY EDWARD ALBEE
Southern Illinois University Press
Carbondale and Edwardsville
Copyright © 2013 by David A. Crespy
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
16 15 14 13 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Crespy, David Allison.
Richard Barr : the playwright’s producer / David A.
Crespy ; with a foreword by Edward Albee.
p. cm. — (Theater in the Americas)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8093-3140-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8093-3140-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8093-3141-3 (ebook)
ISBN 0-8093-3141-1 (ebook)
1. Barr, Richard. 2. Theatrical producers and direc-
tors—United States—Biography. I. Title.
PN2287.B22C84 2013
792.02’32092—dc23
[B] 2012034893
Printed on recycled paper.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of American National Standard for In-
formation Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
In loving memory of my brother, Jonathan Brooks Crespy

ContentS
Foreword ix
Edward Albee
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: “You Have to Hock Your House: The Story of a Producer” 1
1. Privilege with a Price: Washington, Princeton,
and Early Theatre Efforts 4
2. Playing with Martians: Stage and Screen with
Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre 12
3. A Theatrical Warrior: Lieutenant Richard Barr 39
4. Learning the Director’s Craft: Stock,
Broadway, and City Center 49
5. Broadway Beginnings: Ethel Waters, Ruth
Draper, and Theatrical Collage 66
6. The Zoo Story: Discovering Edward Albee 78
7. Producers at Work: On Broadway,
Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway 95
8. Experimenting with Edward: Malcolm to All Over 139
9. Hocking the House: Seascape to Sweeney Todd 165
vii
Contents
10. Brightening Broadway’s Lights: Barr’s Legacy
to the American Theatre 195
Afterword 225
Edward Albee
Notes 227
Bibliography 261
Index 269
Gallery follows page 138
viii
Foreword
You have, ahead of you, a record of the life and accomplishments of one of
the most important figures in American theatre in the 1960s and 1970s—a
man whose audacity, combined with intelligence and courage, did much
to bring maturity to an important arena of our culture, one largely beset
by the destructive forces of commercialism but not yet engulfed by them.
It is an exciting and educating journey, led by a man who understood
that in the battle for the life of the serious arts in our country, caution and
compromise are the twin handmaidens of disaster.
I was privileged to accompany Richard Barr on much of this adventure,
and I learned so much—about how the arts are run (often into the ground)
in our society and how integrity, joined to talent, can often win in the face
of terrible odds.
Learn and enjoy!
New York City, 2011 Edward Albee
ix