The run closed September 26, 1982
- Opened
- September 23, 1982
- Closed
- September 26, 1982
- Performances
- 5
- Previews
- —
- Theatre
- Mark Hellinger Theatre
Of the 465 productions we hold that opened in the 1980s and record a performance count, this is the 399th longest. That is a rank within what we hold, not within everything that was staged.
Who was in it25 named
Diane Armistead
Gordon Bovinet
Willi Burke
John Corsaut
Teri Gill
David Cale Johnson
Norman A Large
Carol Lurie
Penny Orloff
Patricia Parker
Lisa Peters
David Seaman
Larry Small
Kimberly Stern
Paul Straney
Olga Talyn
David Vosburgh
Jim Wagg
7 of these 25 names have a person record behind them and link to one. The other 18 are set from the identifier in the cast list, which is a slug of the name — so hyphens and full stops are lost and a few come out wrong. We hold nothing else about them. Nobody here is matched to a character: the cast list records who was in the company and not what they played.
Creative team
- Director
- Harold Prince
- Choreographer
- Larry Fuller
- Orchestrations
- by
A producer is one string on this record, however many people or companies it names. Directors and choreographers are held both as text and as identifiers; where an identifier exists the name links to a page.
Tony Awards 0 from 1 nomination
| Best Musical | Nominated |
Around this production
A Doll's Life was a 1982 musical with music by Larry Grossman, and a book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. A sequel to the 1879 Henrik Ibsen play A Doll's House, it told the story of what happened to the lead character, Nora Helmer, after she left her husband and her old life behind to face the world on her own; in doing so, it examined several aspects of feminism and the ways in which women are treated. A Doll's Life opened on Broadway at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on September 23, 1982, in a production directed by Hal Prince and starring Betsy Joslyn, George Hearn and Peter Gallagher. It closed three days later, after a run of 18 previews and 5 performances.
- Prince continued to work through Broadway channels. But failing on Broadway again with two conceptually based pieces (A Doll's Life, 1982; Grind, 1985), he sought and found success by developing musicals outside the United States-notably in London (following the earlier success of Evita in 1978 with Phantom of the Oper… Showtime A History of the Broadway Musical Theatre Larry Stempel, p. 583
- One of Prince’s unsuccessful shows of the 1980s was A Doll's Life, a musical sequel to Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll's House. While it proved problematic, it contained many expectedly stunning stage pictures, an often beautiful score by Larry Grossman, and a valiant performance by the inexhaustible Betsy Joslyn (here with Geor… Broadway Musicals the 101 Greatest Shows of All Time Bloom Ken 1949 Vlastnik Fra, p. 335
- Prince stumbled by directing Merrily We Roll Along, A Doll's Life, Grind, and Roza. Critics and theatre columnists began to write about Prince's failures as if they were signs of terminal illness. Harold Prince A Director S Journey Carol Ilson, p. 6
- The successful book and lyric writing team would one day write the musicals On the Twentieth Century and A Doll's Life, with Prince as director. Harold Prince A Director S Journey Carol Ilson, p. 15
Passages naming this production, found by keyword across 178 books. Where it turns up in the literature, not curated notes about it.
What this page does not know
- No photograph of this staging. 48 of 13,459 productions hold one.
- No character names. We can say who was in the company and not who they played.
- No recording is held for A Doll's Life at all.
- No show page for A Doll's Life. The work is here as a title and a year, and nothing more has been gathered about it.
- Reviews, box office, running order, understudies and designers: none of it is held for any production.