TBW Daily Diary

I was a theater addict back in the ‘60s. I couldn’t wait to get to New York, Philadelphia, or to our own professional company, the Arena House just off Market Square on Second Street. I have a huge collection of old playbills. Some bring back wonderful memories; a few I don’t even remember. . . One musical that caught my fancy was Riverwind, a little show down in Greenwich Village that ran for over a year. I saw it a couple of times there, and again at Arena House when Helon Blount of the original cast came to Harrisburg to reprise her role . . . I wore out my vinyl cast recording but luckily my techno-savvy friend John Bartolotta was able to transfer it to CD for me. Just last year Playbill campaigned for re-issues of shows on CD that have thus far been ignored and Riverwind was one of them. (Another was Man With a Load of Mischief which I will tell you about at a later date) . . . Riverwind is set in a dilapidated cabins-only motel along the Wabash in Indiana run by a widowed mother (Blount) and her daughter who is adored by the young handyman. Two couples are patrons: a pair “living in sin” for seven years and an older couple whose marriage is failing; they have returned here because this was a stop on their honeymoon. Essentially it is a story of people “finding themselves” and of course it all works out. There are some very good tunes, some innovative for their day . . . As good as the show was, that is not the most memorable thing about the New York production. Here we are in rural Indiana, crickets chirping and frogs croaking. So-o-o-o bucolic! But the venue was a couple of flights down into the depths of the building, and—would you believe—every so often the subway would rumble through right under our feet! Talk about breaking the mood . . . I think one of our local theater companies ought to consider scheduling this. My research suggests that it is inexpensive to license and mount . . . You can hear thirty seconds of each song from the original cast recording here: http://www.mtishows.com/show_detail.asp?showid=000104 . . .