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This is the chronicle of the theatrical producing career of Richard Barr, one of the premier producers of new plays from 1960 to 1989. He began his career with Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre, produced most of Edward Albee's major plays including The Zoo Story, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Delicate Balance, and Seascape, capping his career by producing Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Review Quotes:
"Thank you, David Crespy, for turning a brilliant and long overdue spotlight on the life and career of Richard Barr, one of the seminal figures of twentieth-century theater. Crespy reminds us how much of today's theater finds its roots in Barr's work as a discoverer, nurturer, and producer of new work, as a man who restructured a sclerotic commercial theater, as a man who changed the rules--in short, all the daring he learned as Orson Welles's assistant in the legendary Mercury Theatre. Everyone working in theater today owes a debt to the remarkable Richard Barr."--John Guare, playwright
"David Crespy's book is a stellar parade and a fascinating portrait of a producer as a young, then mature, man. Richard Barr is a 'present at the birth' character, as he crosses our theatre's history in too many ways to count. Now, thanks to Professor Crespy, we can be present too. We're with him on his opening nights, including the joyous bloodlettings of Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Sondheim's Sweeney Todd on Broadway. We can stumble upon an intrepid line of gay men waiting for tickets to the pre-Stonewall run of The Boys in the Band and grieve a community decimated by AIDS. We can witness the passion of a man who would hock his house to put a play up. If you care about the American theatre, Barr is a man to know."--Todd London, artistic director, New Dramatists