Spittoonia on the Erie
The Absolutely-Historically-Accurate-Except-Where-It's-Not American Cinderella Story
Book & Lyrics by Nathan Christensen, Music by David Mallamud
HISTORY - DEMOS - SYNOPSIS - CAST - PRESS - CREATIVE TEAM - CONTACT
Picture the classic story of Cinderella. But the American folktale version. As improvised at bedtime by a dad whose sense of humor is not appreciated by his newly-adolescent daughter. He ends up spinning a funhouse ride of a story that bounces between Grimm fairytales, the satire of Candide, and the self-referential cheekiness of The Princess Bride. Spittoonia on the Erie is a snarky, historically inaccurate, musical romp that will forever change the way you think of Cinderella, the 19th century, and the invention of the ice cream truck.
HISTORY
Spittoonia on the Erie was commissioned by The Albany Symphony as as part of their Water Music NY Tour to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the building of the Erie Canal. The symphony premiered the piece on a barge in the Erie Canal with soprano Alyson Cambridge. Though forty minutes long at the time, it was clear after that performance that there was a full length musical in Spittoonia on the Erie, and David and Nathan immediately worked on expanding it. It was further developed through the Apples and Oranges Arts Theater Accelerator Program.
DEMOS
Performed by Ricky Todd Adams
Performed by Ricky Todd Adams
Performed by Jenn Gambatese
SYNOPSIS
It’s bedtime, and newly-adolescent Molly is insisting that, if her dad wants to tell her a story, he needs to stick to an authorized, published fairytale, like “Cinderella”, rather than this improvised nonsense he usually comes up with. But when Dad explains that he actually knows the original American version of the Cinderella story, Molly is curious, and cautiously lets him begin his tale.
The story’s heroine is named Spittoonia. (“No, it makes total sense!” insists Dad when Molly objects. “Cinderella was named for the cinders she had to sweep. What do you think the American Cinderella would have to clean?”) She lived in Ashenpuddle, New York, on the banks of the newly completed Erie Canal. Like her European counterpart, Spittoonia lived with a pair of stepsisters (who were also suffragists, vegetarians, teetotalers, spiritualists and just basically made everyone around them feel inferior). When they would demand she perform chores around the house, like rendering the lard and delousing the silverware, she would instead sit by the canal and weep dramatically. Until, of course, the day the canal spoke back, promising to bring Governor Dewitt Clinton’s party barge to Ashenpuddle, if that would just stop Spittoonia from salting up her water with all those tears for a few minutes.
And so begins a hilarious romp that even wins over Molly in the end (though she would never admit it). In her quest to find love and avoid work, Spittoonia crosses paths with enchanted muskrats, a cheese boat, the ghost of George Washington, an overly effective séance, questionable medical advice, the Mattress King, and a passive aggressive maid who is sure that she is the true heroine of the story.
CAST
Spittoonia on the Erie requires a cast of seven (three men and four woman):
Man 1 (Tenor)
Man 2 (Baritone)
Man 3 (Baritenor)
Woman 1 (Soprano, youth or young-looking woman)
WoMan 2 (Soprano)
Woman 3 (Mezzo)
Woman 4 (Soprano)
CREATIVE TEAM
NATHAN CHRISTENSEN (Book, Lyrics)
Bookwriter/lyricist Nathan Christensen loves the musicality of language and the challenge of crafting a good plot structure. This is reflected in the range of his creative work, ranging from untraditional plays and musicals, to multimedia works, to elaborate immersive productions.
His musical adaptation of Lois Lowry’s novel The Giver, written with composer Scott Murphy, was featured at the NAMT Festival of New Musicals, as has been seen in musical theatre festivals across the country. Their musical Broadcast, a panoramic history of radio, has been performed at Playwrights Horizons in New York City, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Wesleyan University in Connecticut. The Battle Creek Cure, an immersive comedy about gender politics and questionable medical advice, was performed as part of the Tallgrass Theater Festival.
Spittoonia on the Erie, written with composer David Mallamud, was written for the bicentennial of the Erie Canal, and was first performed by the Albany Symphony on a barge in the canal. Christensen and Mallamud are currently working on a glam rock mashup of Hamlet and The Golden Girls. Other current projects include an adaptation of a silent Harold Lloyd film with singer/songwriter Lamar Holley, and a Dungeons & Dragons-style adaptation of A Doll’s House.
Christensen earned an MFA in musical theatre writing from New York University, and his musical theatre work has been honored with a Richard Rodgers Award, a Jonathan Larson Award, a Daryl Roth Award, a Dramatists Guild Fellowship, and an O’Neill Theater Center residency. He has also been a professional concert violinist, tutored Kazakhstani jewelers in entrepreneurship, produced a live comedy variety show, served as a missionary in South Korea, conducted experiments in sonoluminescence, written greeting cards, co-founded an exotic fruit-growing business, composed a women’s jazz quartet that is performed around the world, and was a theater critic in Tucson, Arizona. He and his wife co-authored Keeping Kyrie, a memoir about the experience of adopting six children with special needs, one of whom was born with a life-threatening birth defect called Pierre Robin Sequence.
DAVID MALLAMUD (Music)
David Mallamud has composed for venues ranging from Carnegie Hall to Off-Broadway, where his music for the recent production of Flight School: The Musical was lauded by Laurel Graeber of the New York Times as the show’s “biggest boon . . . variously embracing classical lyricism, pulsing pop, the poignant ballad and at least one all-out, Alice Cooper–style rock rant.”
Recently Mallamud was thrilled to work with Mike Mills (of R.E.M. fame), arranging and composing additional music for his Concerto for Rock Band and Violin (Toronto Symphony). It just kicked off a second tour in which Chuck Leavell, of the Rolling Stones, joined the band.
Other projects include: Dr. Seuss’s The Sneetches The Musical with playwright Philip Dawkins, (Children’s Theatre Company, Minneapolis); Flight School, The Musical which has had several off-Broadway runs, two US tours, and is currently touring China; and Kid Frankenstein, which ran Off-Broadway and has a recent production at The Millbrook Playhouse. He is currently developing projects with Nathan Christensen, Joshua H. Cohen, Alisa Hauser, and Trav S.D.
An active classical composer, his music has been performed by many classical, ensembles including the Albany Symphony, New World Symphony, the the Harrisburg Symphony, and the Westchester Philharmonic.
His acclaimed CD, The Wild & Whimsical Worlds of David Mallamud (Broadway Records), won a Broadway World Album Award for Best New Compilation. It earned praise from Amy Biancolli (Albany’s Times Union), “The sum is an album of music conceived for imaginary stages in imaginary worlds, but rendered like old hands, with all the relaxed brio of a Broadway cast album. Whether aching or upbeat, whether evoking Disney or Bernstein or Tin Pan Alley or "Tommy," the music is delightful. It's also insane. There's a nuttiness to the whole thing, a kind of crazed enthusiasm....”
He has been a MacDowell Fellow, a Dramatist Guild Fellow, A Leonard Bernstein Fellow (Tanglewood), received two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards, and a Charles Ives Scholarship from The American Academy of Arts and Letters. He holds degrees from Juilliard, Eastman, and Tisch, and has pursued additional graduate studies at Yale.
PRESS
“Spittoonia on the Erie” was a grand, boppy, punny creation that showed off his gifts for melody and song and kept the crowd laughing."
Geraldine Freedman, The Daily Gazette