On May 3, 1960, the musical The Fantasticks opened at the Sullivan Street Playhouse, a small theater in New York's Greenwich Village. The production ran for more than 41 years, making it the world's longest-running musical. The Fantasticks has had more than 11,000 productions in all 50 states and more than 65 countries, and has been translated into more than 20 languages.
Harvey Schmidt was the composer, and Tom Jones wrote the lyrics. The story was loosely based on the play Les Romanesques (The Romancers) by Edmond Rostand, better known as the author of Cyrano de Bergerac. From Rostand's play, Jones and Schmidt created a story of neighboring fathers who pretend to be feuding, hoping that the "feud" will drive their children to fall in love.
The show was designed to be produced on a very low budget. There were only eight actors, with no chorus of singers and dancers; the show's orchestra consisted of a piano and a harp (the harpist occasionally played a few percussion instruments). The total budget for sets and costumes was less than $1,500; a typical Broadway musical of the time would have spent $250,000. Those sets and costumes, along with the show's props and lighting, were all created by one designer, who was paid $24.48 a week for his work.
The original cast recording has never gone out of print. It stars Rita Gardner and Kenneth Nelson as the young lovers; the best-known member of the original cast is Jerry Orbach, as El Gallo, a professional bandit hired by the fathers to assist in their scheme.
It is El Gallo who sings the show's most popular song, "Try to Remember," in which he reflects with melancholy about the intense passion of young love. After a condensed version of The Fantasticks was broadcast on television in late 1964, "Try to Remember" became one of the most frequently recorded songs of the late 1960s. Three different versions made it into the lower part of the Billboard charts in 1965, recorded by the folk group The Brothers Four, pianist Roger Williams, and crooner Ed Ames. Had there been only one version, it would probably have been a much bigger hit.
The most popular version of "Try to Remember" would arrive a decade later, when Gladys Knight & the Pips took the song into the top 20 as part of a medley with "The Way We Were." A wide array of performers from all musical genres have also recorded the song, including Harry Belafonte, Patti Page, Mabel Mercer, Roy Orbison, Josh Groban, and Barbara Mandrell.
There has been controversy surrounding one of the musical's plot points. El Gallo is hired by the fathers to fake the abduction of the daughter, in order that the son may heroically "rescue" her. That abduction is repeatedly referred to as a "rape," a usage of the word that was already old-fashioned even in 1960. As the culture became more sensitive to issues of sexual assault, the use of "rape" became harder to defend. In 1990, Schmidt and Jones wrote alternate lyrics for one of the songs, and replaced a second musical number entirely.
Michael Ritchie directed a film adaptation (streaming | DVD) in 1995, though it was not released until 2000. The studio wasn't enthusiastic about the movie, and gave it the smallest possible release that would meet their legal obligation; its total box office was less than $50,000.
The original New York production of The Fantasticks closed on January 13, 2002, after 17,162 performances. That's the longest run for a musical anywhere in the world, and the longest run for a show of any kind in the United States. (The world's longest running play is the London production of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, which opened in 1952 and is currently more than 27,000 performances into its run.) It didn't take long for New York to start missing The Fantasticks; a revival opened off-Broadway in 2006, and ran until 2017.