Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt

Attention Bay Area residents! Diablo Light Opera Company recently presented 110 In The Shade August 29-October 4, 1997 at the Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek. Yours truly played Lizzie. Check it out!!

Read the article from Show Music Magazine's Fall '96 issue!

On the upcoming volumes of Lost In Boston (IV) and Unsung Musicals (III) there will be more S&J;, including Evening Star and Pretty Is, both cut from 110 in the Shade, and Wishes Won't Wash Dishes from The Bone Room.


Check out Playbill magazine's April 26, 1996 interview with Jones & Schmidt!



Read about The Shows
Who are Jones & Schmidt?
Peruse some of The Lyrics
Reference The Discography
Stay for the Credits (yawn)


Accessed times since 8/7/96
Updated 5/12/97

The Shows

Fantasticks


The Team

Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt began writing musicals together when they were students at the University of Texas. Their New York careers were lauched writing material for the famed Julius Monk Upstairs-Downstairs Revues and Ben Bagley's "Shoestring" Revues. The true turning point came in May, 1960 when Lore Noto produced their now legendary musical The Fantasticks at the Sullivan Street Playhouse. Still playing after 36 years, and likely to continue indefinately, The Fantasticks is the longest running musical in the world and the longest running show of any kind in the history of the American theater. It has had over ten thousand productions in sixty-four foreign countries.

Next came a musical version of N. Richard Nash's play The Rainmaker, entitled 110 In The Shade. It was their first Broadway show and it boasted a glorious score which was especially singled out by the critics. Their next opus was a two character musical called I Do! I Do! starring Mary Martin and Robert Preston. A great success on Broadway and on the road, it was later filmed for video starring Lee Remick and Hal Linden.

Seeking to expand the scope of the Broadway musical, the team's next effort was the inovative Celebration, which attempted to combine aspects of myth and ritual with popular entertainment. For several years they worked privately at Portfolio, their own theater workshop in New York, concentrating on small-scale musicals in new and often untried forms. The most notable of these efforts, which also included The Bone Room and Portfolio Revue, was Philemon, which won the Outer Critics Circle Award and which was later produced by Hollywood Television Theater.

Beginning in 1970, in a production starring Zoe Caldwell and Mildred Dunnock, and continuing on through various incarnations, Jones and Schmidt worked on a major musical covering the long and varied life of the great French writer Colette. Among their most recent endeavors is a musical version of Thornton Wilder's classic play Our Town. Entitled Grover's Corners, it played in Chicago to great acclaim, and it is now planned for production in '97. They are currently preparing a musical based on the award-winning children's story Mirette on the High Wire, entitled Mirette, which was presented in August, 1996 by Goodspeed Musicals in Chester, Connecticut.