Tom Jones, the lyricist, director and writer of The Fantasticks, the longest-running musical in history, has died. He was 95.
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Jones died on Friday at his home in Sharon, Connecticut, according to Dan Shaheen, a co-producer of The Fantasticks, who worked with Jones since the 1980s. The cause was cancer.
Jones, who teamed up with composer Harvey Schmidt on The Fantasticks and the Broadway shows 110 in the Shade and I Do! I Do!, was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1998.
The Fantasticks, based on an obscure play by Edmond Rostand, doesn't necessarily have the makings of a hit. The set is just a platform with poles, a curtain and a wooden box.
The tale, a mock version of Romeo and Juliet, concerns a young girl and boy, secretly brought together by their fathers, and an assortment of odd characters.
Scores of actors have appeared in the show, from the opening cast in 1960 that included Jerry Orbach and Rita Gardner, to stars such as Ricardo Montalban and Kristin Chenoweth, to Frozen star Santino Fontana.
The show was awarded Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre in 1991.
"So many people have come, and this thing stays the same - the platform, the wooden box, the cardboard moon," Jones told The Associated Press in 2013.
"We just come and do our little thing and then we pass on."
For nearly 42 years the show chugged along at the 153-seat Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village, finally closing in 2002 after 17,162 performances - a victim both of a destroyed downtown after 9/11 and a new post-terrorism, edgy mood.
In 2006, The Fantasticks found a new home in The Snapple Theater Center - later The Theater Center - an off-Broadway complex in the heart of Times Square.
In 2013, the show celebrated reaching 20,000 performances.
It closed in 2017, ending as the longest-running production of any kind in the history of American theatre with a total of an astonishing 21,552 performances.
"My mind doesn't grasp it, in a way," Jones said.
"It's like life itself - you get used to it and you don't notice how extraordinary it is. I'm grateful for it and I'm astonished by it."
Its best known song, Try To Remember, has been recorded by hundreds of artists over the decades, including Ed Ames, Harry Belafonte, Barbra Streisand and Placido Domingo.
Australian Associated Press
