Tom Jones, who wrote the e book and lyrics for the musical “The Fantasticks,” a show that ran for forty two years,
died on Friday at his domestic in Sharon, Conn. He was ninety five and handed from cancer, his son said.
The Fantasticks opened in 1960 in Greenwich Village and is first-rate remembered for its beginning song, “Try to Remember.”
Jones began his theater profession in New York writing for the revues being staged with
the aid of the impresario Julius Monk, running with another composer, John Donald Robb.
Jones and Robb referred to as that display “Joy Comes to Deadhorse,” and in 1956,
they staged it on the University of New Mexico, wherein Robb become a dean. The two had a falling out over what labored
and what didn’t inside the manufacturing, and Jones turned to participating with buddy Harvey Schmidt.
Jones kept running on the piece with Schmidt that became at first devised with Robb. In 1959,
whilst a friend become seeking out a one-act musical for a summer season pageant at Barnard College,
they supplied their spare musical about two younger lovers and their feuding fathers.
The play used a narrator and minimalist staging, each unusual steps far from the components of a large Broadway musical.
Producer Lore Noto saw the Barnard College display, and brought it to the Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village,
where it opened in May 1960 as “The Fantasticks.” The solid protected Jerry Orbach as El Gallo, the narrator, who sings the outlet “Try to Remember.”
The initial evaluations were blended, despite the fact that some critics raved. It didn’t depend
– the general public voted with their wallets, and the display would run at Sullivan Street for greater than 17,000 performances,
sooner or later remaining in 2002 as the longest-strolling musical in U.S. History.
Jones and Schmidt went on to collaborate on other suggests. Jones wrote the lyrics for Schmidt’s musical,
“110 inside the Shade,” which opened on Broadway in 1963 and ran for 330 performances.