Paint Your Wagon, with Revisions, May Be Heading for Bway

By: Nov. 23, 2005
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The 1951 Lerner and Loewe musical Paint Your Wagon will be rolling to other theatrical plains after producers Christopher Allen, D. Constantine Conte and Larry Spellman met with Utah's Pioneer Theatre Company to discuss future plans for a new, possibly Broadway-bound, production of the overlooked musical.

With music by Frederick Loewe and a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner (who with Loewe, penned My Fair Lady, Brigadoon and Camelot), Paint Your Wagon was a moderate hit; it ran for 289 performances at the Shubert Theatre in a production that featured Agnes DeMille's choreography. A musical western that also recounts the romance of Jennifer Rumson, a gold prospector's daughter and Julio, a Mexican boy, Paint Your Wagon's score features such classics as "They Call the Wind Maria," "I Talk to the Trees," "Wand'rin' Star" and others. The book, however, is considered to be problematic; a 2004 production at the Geffen Playhouse in L.A., made use of a revised score and libretto (with changes by David Rambo).

Directed by Geffen artistic director Gil Cates (who will not be on board for the new production), the L.A. staging also featured Sharon Lawrence (Chicago, "NYPD Blue") as Lily, a new character who was added to serve as the love interest for Ben Rumson, the prospector who was played in the original Broadway production by James Barton.

The new Paint Your Wagon would also feature the Rambo revisions. Allen, one of the producers, has been working on preparing a polished version of the musical for seven years. Allen stated that Paint Your Wagon's rousing and rambunctious score was Loewe's favorite. On the future of the show, he said, "We learned from the Geffen production. As a result of that, Pioneer Theatre in Utah came to us and was interested in mounting the next step…revising from what we learned in L.A." A creative team is currently being assembled, and the producers are reportedly in talks with "American Idol's"'s Diana DeGarmo and country singer Larry Gatlin (for the roles of Jennifer and Ben Rumson, respectively).

Paint Your Wagon was preserved in an unsuccessful 1969 film version that starred Clint Eastwood, Lee Marvin, Harve Presnell and Jean Seberg. Directed by Joshua Logan, it featured additional songs by Lerner and Andre Previn.


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