Hot Spot (musical)

Infobox Musical
name= Hot Spot
subtitle=


caption=
music= Mary Rodgers
Stephen Sondheim
lyrics= Martin Charnin
Stephen Sondheim
book= Jack Weinstock
Willie Gilbert
basis=
productions= 1963 Broadway
awards=

"Hot Spot" is a musical comedy with book by Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert, lyrics by Martin Charnin, music by Mary Rodgers, and additional lyrics and music by Stephen Sondheim. It ran at the Majestic Theater in April and May, 1963.

The cast starred Judy Holliday and included Conrad Bain, Joe Bova, Joseph Campanella, Mary Louise Wilson, Carmen De Lavallade, and George Furth.

One of Broadway's most well-known flops, it had 58 "preview" performances, setting a record by cancelling its official opening 4 times, and then ran for only 43 "official" performances, or 5 weeks. The play marked Judy Holliday's final stage performance. (She was quoted as saying "You can only live through one or two Hot Spots in your life.")

At least five directors worked on the show (Morton Da Costa, Martin Charnin, Robert Fryer, Richard Quine, Arthur Laurents, Herbert Ross); Stephen Sondheim, a friend of Rodgers', was brought onto the creative team, resulting in the show's opening and closing number, "Don't Laugh".

The show, a political satire, was inspired by the furor which erupted over comments made by a Peace Corps volunteer, Marjorie Michelmore, on a postcard she had written in Nigeria on 13 October 1961, describing the primitive living conditions there. Nigerians were indignant, and some accused the volunteers of being American spies. This led to the first public relations crisis for the Peace Corps.

Marjorie Michelmore was fictionalized as Peace Corps hygeiene teacher "Sally Hopwinder" stationed in a fictional nation, "D'hum" with decent living conditions. She concocts a plan to obtain U.S. aid for D'hum by convincing the Pentagon that Russia is about to invade it.

External links

* [http://www.peacecorpswriters.org/pages/2000/0001/001pchist.html Peace Corps page describing the actual postcard incident]
*ibdb show|id=4506|title=Hot Spot

References

*Mandelbaum, Ken, "Not Since Carrie: 40 Years of Broadway Musical Flops",St. Martin's Press, New York, 1991 ISBN 0-312-08273-8, pp. 63ff.