 The Madwoman of
Central Park West
An Original Musical Comedy in 2 acts. (A semi-autobiographical
one-woman play about surviving as a woman/wife/mother). Book
by Phyllis Newman and Arthur Laurents. Music by Peter Allen,
Leonard Bernstein, Jerry Bock, et al
22 Steps Theatre, New York City - 13 June, 1979
- (86 performances )
Synopsis
ACT 1
This is about a woman who's trying to clean up her bedroom, and
get out of it. The lights come up on a very messy bedroom dominated
by an even messier bed. A woman roughly thirty or forty crawls out
from under the bed with a barbell in her hand, finds a second and
does a couple of deeply perfunctory exercises. She tosses them aside … stares
catatonically for a moment, shakes herself out of it, plants a smile
on her face and sings: "Up! Up! Up!"
She is in the middle of making yet another of her endless lists,
when her thirteen year old daughter barges in wearing pounds of her
Mother's makeup badly applied …The kid accuses her of destroying
her life because she's not a normal mother. They exchange zingers,
the kid storms out yelling "Mommie Dearest" and she slams
the door. The woman goes back to her list and writes, "Do not
be deeply affected by your child . . . remember you were one" .
. . she says to herself "But it wasn't supposed to be like this
... " She sings: "My Mother Was A Fortune Teller."
She looks for answers by going to a "hot" seventies self-help
seminar ... there, along with a couple of hundred other people in
a hotel ballroom, she is abused into … "Sharing" …
She sings: "The Cheerleader."
Strengthened with new temporary resolve she devises a "With-It" high
concept country western punk act which she is trying out in a Greenwich
Village club ... "the Bitter Pits" ... she sings a song
about her father and a hypnotizing cat … one of his crazy
schemes … she is losing her audience … she stops her
act and "Gets Real" … she tells them about loyalty
and their long marriage … She sings what her Mother always
used to say about her Daddy: "What Makes Me Love Him?"
Back in her bedroom … we find out how she met her husband.
We're back in the late fifties, at Sardi's where she's having her
first nervous date with him … it's not going too well … she's
afraid she's losing him completely so she tells him: "Don't
Laugh."
We're back in the present … and the woman is trying out
yet another act, this time a "commercial" one. She and
her choreographer are working in a rehearsal hall. She sings: "The
Woman's Medley."
ACT TWO
"Up! Up! Up!," Reprise. Once again she's buoyed herself
up to make it all work ... the phone rings … it's her agent
with an offer for a very tacky job … her daughter comes in,
overhears it and hits her again with the "Humiliating Mother
Routine". The woman goes back in time to other humiliations
and triumphs
… like the night she won a Tony Award against all odds. She
sings: "Better."
She attempts an affair with her son's grade school teacher. She fouls
herself up by talking too much and too hysterically. The scene changes
dramatically and theatrically to a highly stylized appearance she's
doing on the Johnny Carson Show where she tells the sad story of this
year's slipped disco queen, Lola, in: "Copacabana."
Back in her room, she's feeling better because she has exorcised
so many feelings … she starts making a list of her assets … her
three kids … her husband is the oldest. She says maybe if she
could just make peace with them and simply say to them "My New
Friends" then she makes her final list: "The Song of Lists."
"My Mother Was A Fortune Teller," Reprise.
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