Based on the 1956 play by Patrick Dennis, Auntie Mame, this musicalization is written by composer and lyricist, Jerry Herman along with playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee who adapted the novel for the Broadway stage starring Rosalind Russell. Mame ran 3 years and 8 months on Broadway which set a record for one of the longest running musicals in Broadway history to date – 1508 performances.
Mame is the story of the indestructible, irrepressible Auntie Mame, who is the center of a highly exclusive clique of playwrights, artists and journalists as well as the beautiful people of New York society in 1928. During on of her famed cocktail parties in her Beekman Place apartment attended by actress-friend, Vera Charles, the chatter rises to a din when her ten year old, orphaned nephew, Patrick arrives at her door. Accompanied by her deceased brother’s maid, Agnes, Mame discovers she is to be his guardian according to his late father’s will.
Patrick is initially overwhelmed by the room’s dense population of flamboyant characters. It is not long before he is making strides in becoming accustomed to his aunt’s social life- even so far as being able to mix a perfect cocktail.
Mame is wiped out in the stock crash of 1929 but, undefeated, tries her hand at “regular work” by getting a job in an operetta in Connecticut. She inadvertently wrecks the show by almost falling off a riser, golden cardboard moon.
Mame then lands a job as an inept manicurist at a very elegant barbershop. She meets courtly Southern beau, Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside. He falls madly in love with Mame, proposes and whisks her off on an around-the-world honeymoon leaving Patrick in an exclusive boarding school. During their honeymoon, Beauregard accidentally falls of the Matterhorn while Mame is taking a photo of him. Now a wealthy widow, Mame returns to New York and is shocked to find that Patrick is engaged to a witless, insipid society girl. Of course, she saves him from his fiancée and her bigoted family, the Upsons, during a hysterical, comic comeuppance. Soon thereafter, thanks to Mame’s encouragement, Patrick renews his acquaintance with, Pageen, a former schoolmate of his at a very progressive school, which Mame had enrolled him in years earlier. They fall deeply in love, marry and have a son of their own, who at the age of ten, is whisked whisked away on a round-the-world adventure with his ever-younger great Auntie Mame.
This delightful carnival of a show, with spectacular costumes and ebullient choreography follows Mame and Patrick through years of fantastic and funny adventures- all supported by Jerry Herman’s glittering score that features unforgettable songs such as “Need a Little Christmas”, “Best Girl”, “Bosom Buddies”, “If He Walked Into My Life”, “That’s How Young I Feel”, and the rousing title song, “Mame”.
Mame is a banquet of life, one of the liveliest, happiest and most entertaining musicals of Broadway’s golden age. Audiences will jump to their feet with applause and will leave the theater humming every song.
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