DOCTOR SELAVY’S MAGIC THEATRE Re-Released By Rounder Records

Rounder Records has just released the digitally restored, first complete recording of the landmark 1972 musical DOCTOR SELAVY'S MAGIC THEATRE, with music by Stanley Silverman, lyrics by Tom Hendry, and conceived by Richard Foreman. DOCTOR SELAVY is available on CD through Amazon.com, and digitally through iTunes and various outlets. Stage rights to DOCTOR SELAVY are licensed by R&H Theatricals, an Imagem Company.

DOCTOR SELAVY has had a production history as antic as the story it tells. The songs, originally written for a Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada's production of THE SATYRICON, were reorganized by Richard Foreman into an entirely different work which became DOCTOR SELAVY (as in the French, "C'est la vie"). The new work premiered at the Lenox Arts Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1972 and was transferred intact for an Off-Broadway run at the Mercer Arts Center, produced originally by Lyn Austin and Oliver Smith. Over the years, productions have been staged in Chicago, Cleveland, and Oxford; the work also had a New York revival in 1984.

In his liner notes for the original LP album, Anthony Burgess called DOCTOR SELAVY "one of the most treasurable albums of this or any other year" and praised the score as "one of the most brilliant ever contrived for the modern theatre." Burgess continued: "Stanley Silverman [who won a Drama Desk Award for his music for DOCTOR SELAVY] is perhaps the most versatile musician of present-day America...The score of DOCTOR SELAVY represents an anthology of popular styles, many of them delivered through a haze of irony or satire."

The digitally restored first complete recording includes such well-regarded set pieces as "Swinging at the Stock Exchange," "Life on the Inside," and "Dearest Man," featuring members of the original Off-Broadway cast. The CD also features a bonus track of "Life on the Inside" by James Taylor.
To learn more about the recording, visit www.rounder.com.  For performance rights to DOCTOR SELAVY'S MAGIC THEATER, visit R&H Theatricals at www.rnh.com where you can also find an interview with SELAVY composer Stanley Silverman.  Learn more about this and other R&H Theatricals titles at www.facebook.com/rodgersandhammerstein.