When Exodus became Ari

It's the greatest feeling when someone comes across an old blog post in which you've asked a question - and answers it!

Yesterday I received a nice although, sadly, anonymous comment on a blog post I wrote about a musical based on the Leon Uris novel Exodus, titled Ari. The show opened on Broadway in January 1971 and closed a couple weeks later.

Uris adapted his 1958 bestseller for the stage and wrote the lyrics. I mentioned that I hadn't been able to find out anything about Walt Smith, who composed the music. Well, a reader filled me in.

"The man who composed the music for Ari, Walt Smith, is a jazz pianist currently living on the Western Slope of Colorado. He has received some national acclaim as a fine live jazz performer."

Smith and Uris were close friends and Ari was apparently the only musical theatre project he worked on. I did a little Googling and came up with an interview in which Smith briefly mentions the musical.

“In those days it was called ‘Ari’ — you didn’t call a musical by the same name as the novel.”

Wow, times have changed.

Today, everyone connected with the show wants to make sure you know their musical came from the novel or, more likely, the movie. So Ragtime the book is Ragtime the musical. They didn't change it to Coalhouse. (Good move!)

Sometimes the name change is an improvement: Oklahoma!, which opened on Broadway in 1943, was based on the play Green Grow the Lilacs.

My friend Kevin, the Theatre Aficionado at Large, told me about the short-lived 1966 Broadway musical A Time for Singing, based on the novel How Green Was My Valley. In my humble opinion, that name change was not an improvement.

Exodus - the musical

Thanks to Kevin at Theatre Aficionado at Large I've been browsing through a very cool collection of poster art from Broadway musicals.

I found one for the very short-lived musical Ari, based on the bestselling novel Exodus, by Leon Uris, about the founding of the State of Israel. (The Playbill is from eBay.)

I never knew there was a musical version of Exodus until I read Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies, by Ted Chapin, who mentions it briefly. With Passover starting tonight, what better show to write about!

Uris adapted his 1958 novel for the stage and wrote the lyrics. The music was composed by Walt Smith, about whom I haven't been able to find anything. Perhaps this was his first and only foray into musical theatre.

The musical takes place in Cyprus in 1947, so apparently it only covers the first part of the book, when Jewish refugees are trying to break the British blockade and reach Palestine.

In the show's cast were David Cryer as the handsome and fearless sabra Ari Ben Canaan, and Constance Towers as his love interest, the American Kitty Fremont.

(Their roles were played by Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint in the 1960 movie version of Exodus. Too bad they couldn't have gotten Jill Haworth, who was a young Jewish refugee in the movie and grew up to be Broadway's original Sally Bowles in Cabaret.)

After a tryout in Washington, D.C., Broadway previews began on Jan. 6, 1971, at the gorgeous Mark Hellinger Theatre, now the Times Square Church, which, thanks to Kevin, I had the great fortune to tour last fall. Ari opened on Jan. 15 and closed on Jan. 30.

Some musicals were just not meant to be, I guess.

This is hard to believe but the show's producers, Leonard Goldberg and Ken Gaston, had even worse luck with their next Broadway musical, Heathen!, set in Hawaii in 1819 and 1972. After six previews at the Billy Rose Theatre, the show opened - and closed - on May 21, 1972.

Now that there's a native of the Aloha State in the White House, maybe it's time for a revival!