The run closed September 10, 1978
- Opened
- March 1, 1978
- Closed
- September 10, 1978
- Performances
- 243
- Previews
- —
- Theatre
- Mark Hellinger Theatre
Of the 589 productions we hold that opened in the 1970s and record a performance count, this is the 91st longest. That is a rank within what we hold, not within everything that was staged.
Who was in it31 named
Daniel Barton
Ira Hawkins
Bruce A Hubbard
Eleanor Mccoy
Gregg Baker
Deborah K Brown
Tony Carroll
Sharon Cuff
Cheryl Cummings
Luther Fontaine
Michael F Harrison
Dyane Harvey
Marzetta Jones
Jimmy Justice
Eugene Little
Patricia Lumpkin
Joe Lynn
Tony Ndogo
Harold Pierson
Ray Pollard
Shezwae Powell
Ronald Richardson
Vanessa Shaw
Louis Tucker
Deborah Waller
Renee Warren
5 of these 31 names have a person record behind them and link to one. The other 26 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.
Characters11 roles recorded
Eartha Kitt Sahleem-La-Lume
Melba Moore Marsinah
Gilbert Price The Mansa of Mali
Ira Hawkins Hadji
Miguel Godreau Munshi
George Bell The Wazir
Bruce Hubbard Chief Policeman
Eleanor McCoy Najua
Daniel Barton M'Ballah of the River
Vanessa Shaw Zubbediya
Obba Babatundé The Orange Merchant
Only 512 of 13,459 productions carry role names, and these came out of a wiki table — the names arrived with the table's own cell markup on them and have been stripped back. They are not linked to person records because the identifiers in that table do not resolve to ours.
Creative team
- Director
- Geoffrey Holder
- Choreographer
- Geoffrey Holder
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.
Around this production
Geoffrey Holder directed, choreographed, and designed the costumes. Eartha Kitt earned a Tony nomination for her star turn as the seductive wife of the Wazir.
- The two-CD set by That’s Entertainment (# CDTER2-1170) includes “Bored,” “In the Beginning, Woman,” “Golden Land, Golden Life,” “My Magic Lamp,” and “Power” (the latter written for, but not used in, Timbuktu! ). Complete Book of 1950s Broadway Musicals the Dan Dietz, p. 355
- Kismet made its way back to Broadway renamed Timbuktu! Broadway Musicals the 101 Greatest Shows of All Time Bloom Ken 1949 Vlastnik Fra, p. 263
- She starred as Marsinah in Timbuktu! (1978). Historical Dictionary of the Broadway Musical Volume 22 William A Everett Paul R, p. 266
- Timbuktu! a pale Kismet indeed. (Drake, in 53, also had Doretta Morrow, Joan Diener, and Richard Kiley in support, giving the show four strong-voiced personalities.) What Timbuktu! did have was Eartha Kitt and a bunch of near-naked musclemen prancing about—not enough for most audiences. (“Timbuktu-tu-much,” reported Va… More Opening Nights On Broadway Steven Suskin, p. 935
- Timbuktu!, a musical revamp of Kismet with Eartha Kitt, was not much better in 1978. At This Theatre 100 Years of Broadway Shows Stories and Botto Louis Viagas Rober, p. 314
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 recording is held for Timbuktu! at all.
- Reviews, box office, running order, understudies and designers: none of it is held for any production.