50 YEARS OF THE FANTASTICKS To Premiere On PBS 7/30

"50 Years of The Fantasticks", a special episode of Theater Talk devoted to the world's longest-running musical, will premiere on PBS this Friday evening, July 30, 2010 at 12:30am. The program will feature an interview with Fantasticks lyricist and book writer Tom Jones and one of the show's original stars, Rita Gardner, who played Luisa in the 1960 cast. The interview will be punctuated with performances from The Fantasticks by Gardner and Edward Watts, Erik Altemus and Kimberly Whalen from the Off Broadway cast.

"50 years of The Fantasticks" will also air on CUNY TV on July 31 at 8:30pm, August 1 at 12:30pm, and August 2 at 7:30am, 1:30pm and 7:30pm. Michael Riedel is the host of Theater Talk. Susan Haskins in the executive producer and co-host. Robert Felstein is the musical accompanist for The Fantasticks.

The Fantasticks is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary year, having premiered on May 3, 1960 at The Sullivan Street Playhouse.

The Fantasticks (music by Harvey Schmidt, book/lyrics/direction by Tom Jones) is a captivating and simple romantic comedy about a boy and girl who fall in and out of love at the hands of their meddling fathers. The audience uses its imagination to follow the narrator, El Gallo, as he creates a world of moonlight and magic until the boy and girl find their way back to one other. The score, which includes the hit songs "Try To Remember," "They Were You" and "Soon It's Gonna Rain," is as timeless as the story itself. Having played a record-breaking 17,162 performances in its original run at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village, The Fantasticks is now playing in the heart of Times Square at The Snapple Theater Center.

Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt wrote The Fantasticks for a summer theater at Barnard College. After its Off Broadway opening in May 1960 it went on to become the longest-running production in the history of the American stage and one of the most frequently-produced musicals in the world. Their first Broadway show, 110 in the Shade, was revived on Broadway in a new production starring Audra McDonald. I Do! I Do!, their two-character musical starring Mary Martin and Robert Preston, was a success on Broadway and is frequently produced around the country and the world. (One production, in Minneapolis, played for 22 continuous years with the same two ac tors in the leading roles.) For several years Jones and Schmidt worked privately at their theater workshop, concentrating on small-scale musicals in new and often untried forms. The most notable of these efforts were Celebration, which moved to Broadway, and Philemon, which won an Outer Critics Circle Award. They contributed incidental music and lyrics to the Off Broadway play Colette starring Zoë Caldwell, then later did a full-scale musical version under the title Colette Collage. The Show Goes On, a musical revue featuring their theater songs and starring Jones and Schmidt, was presented at the York Theater, and Mirette, their musical based on the award-winning children's book, was premiered at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut. In addition to an Obie Award and the 1992 Tony Award for Excellence in the Theater for The Fantasticks, Jones and Schmidt were inducted into the Broadway Hall of Fame at the Gershwin Theatre, and on May 3, 1999 their stars were added to the Off Broadway Walk of Fame outside the Lucille Lortel Theater.

The Fantasticks company includes Edward Watts (Broadway's Finian's Rainbow), Erik Altemus (HBO's The Miraculous Year) Bill Bateman (Broadway's Gypsy starring Patti LuPone, Hello, Dolly!), MacIntyre Dixon (Broadway's Beauty and the Beast, A Funny Things Happened on the Way to the Forum, Gypsy starring Bernadette Peters, Sly Fox, 1776, Prelude to a Kiss), Tom Flagg (Broadway's Will Rogers Follies, How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Oklahoma), Gene Jones (Broadway's Big River, Joe Turner's Come and Gone; No Country for Old Men), Matt Leisy (St. Louis Rep's The History Boys), Michael Nostrand (A&E's Emmy Award-winning Peter Pan, national tours of Jelly's Last Jam, The Mystery of Edwin Drood), Evy Ortiz, Juliette Trafton (Christine in Phantom of the Opera nat'l tour) and Charles West (Broadway's The Scarlet Pimpernel, Show Boat, Cyrano the Musical).

The Fantasticks plays at The Snapple Theater Center's Jerry Orbach Theater, 210 West 50th Street at Broadway. The performance schedule is as follows: Mondays at 8PM, Tuesdays at 8PM, Wednesdays at 2PM and 8PM, Thursdays at 8PM, Saturdays at 8PM and Sundays at 3PM & 7:30PM.

Tickets for The Fantasticks are available by calling the box office at (212) 921-7862 or Ticketmaster.com at (212) 307-4100.

www.FantasticksOnStage.com