Information

Show Credits: Adapted by Bro Herrod
Music and Lyrics by Barry Manilow

Description: A 19th century melodrama...by  Barry Manilow?!

THE DRUNKARD is based on "the world-famous melodrama by W.H.S. Smith." Bro Herrod and the king of 1970s pop take us back to a simpler, infinitely less subtle day in this deliciously coy and exaggerated play about the good, the bad, and the besotted. When Sweet Mary Wilson weds the virtuous Edward, the villainous lawyer Cribbs, determined to foreclose on the quaint little cottage Mary shares with her poor widowed mother, sees to it that the devil's beverage-alcohol-is served. Alas and alack! Edward is lured to the city and ensnared in a web of sin and drunkenness! Can Mary and her innocent young child save her inebriated husband from the evils of the bottle? And what of the diabolical Cribbs?

Insight from the experts Staging Tip: Five or six easy sets. Inside a humble cottage, a "wooded glade," a "wooded glen" (just re-arrange the glade), a "wooded glade in a wooded glen" (just re-arrange the glade and the glen), a tavern, a "wooded glade near the wooded grove in the wooded glen" (you get the idea), the Bowery in New York City, a tenement room, a street corner (re-arrange the Bowery). There are two spots for "olios," which are specialty acts performed in front of the show curtain. The authors leave it to you to find the talent (singing, dancing, juggling -- whatever) and the appropriate public-domain song of the era. They give you a list of suggestions.