{"id":715,"date":"2009-12-06T18:32:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-06T22:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/clients.chrisvanpatten.com\/theatreaficionado.com\/2009\/12\/patricia-routledge-talks-1600-pennsylvania-avenue.html"},"modified":"2009-12-06T18:32:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-06T22:32:00","slug":"patricia-routledge-talks-1600-pennsylvania-avenue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/?p=715","title":{"rendered":"Patricia Routledge Talks &quot;1600 Pennsylvania Avenue&quot;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Upon the premiere of <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">A White House Cantata <\/span>in 1997, Humphrey Burton wrote a detailed feature on the history of <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">1600 Pennsylvania Avenue <\/span>called &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/the-house-that-alan-and-leonard-built-1248992.html\">The House That Alan and Leonard Built<\/a>,&#8221; for July 5, 1997 issue of the British newspaper &#8220;The Independent.&#8221; The piece talks about the show&#8217;s short-lived chaos from Philadelphia to New York. For the article, Burton talked with original star Patricia Routledge about her experience on the show and she offered these words:<\/p>\n<p>Despite the heartache and the humiliation, the celebrated actress and comedienne Patricia Routledge says she wouldn&#8217;t have missed the opportunity to work with Bernstein for worlds. &#8220;Lenny gave you his respect if you knew your job. Wonderful to work with. Inspiring. But he was saddled with genius and genius can be monstrous. It was a heart-breaking tragedy, really. When we opened in Philly it was an impasse of the worst kind; nobody would cut a line of dialogue or a note of music. Basically you cannot write a musical about a house. A friend said it was like watching a great prehistoric animal lumbering across the stage but there were moments of dazzling light&#8230; When it really came to life was when the human element was allowed to emerge. `Take Care of This House&#8217;, for example, that&#8217;s a beautiful lyrical piece [sung by Mrs Abigail Adams, the first incumbent first lady]. And in the second act, there&#8217;s an absolutely genius number called `Duet for One&#8217; &#8211; two first ladies, the incumbent Julia Grant and the incoming Lucy Hayes, waiting for the presidential election result, a wonderful cliff- hanger presented in Busby Berkeley fashion, surrounded by lots of ladies with parasols.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Upon the premiere of A White House Cantata in 1997, Humphrey Burton wrote a detailed feature on the history of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue called &#8220;The House That Alan and Leonard Built,&#8221; for July 5, 1997 issue of the British newspaper &#8220;The Independent.&#8221; The piece talks about the show&#8217;s short-lived chaos from Philadelphia to New York. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/?p=715\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Patricia Routledge Talks &quot;1600 Pennsylvania Avenue&quot;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1614,1653,1703,1619],"class_list":["post-715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-1600-pennsylvania-avenue","tag-a-white-house-cantata","tag-leonard-bernstein","tag-patricia-routledge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}