Lucy Simon

From the Center Theatre Group blog:

How the Tony Award-nominated composer of The Secret Garden lives on through music, gardens, and cake

A new production of The Secret Garden opened at Center Theatre Group this week, one of the first major productions of the Tony Award-winning show since its Broadway premiere in 1991 and the passing of the musical’s composer, Lucy Simon. She was a Grammy Award-winning and Tony Award-nominated composer for Broadway, Folk, and Children’s music.

Lucy passed away in October 2022 from metastatic breast cancer—just a day after her sister, Opera Singer Joanna Simon, passed away from thyroid cancer. The two sisters were not the only musical members of the family—they are survived by their sister Carly Simon, who is also a musician and played with Lucy in a duo known as The Simon Sisters in the 1960s. Singing runs in the family as well. One of Julie’s favorite memories was singing with her mother.             read entire article

from BEACHWOOD BUZZ MAGAZINE
July 2018 Edition
By June Scharf

“I don’t know how 18-year-olds are supposed to know what they want to do in life,” says Fred Sternfeld, a 61-year-old Beachwood resident and avid local theater director. He clearly identifies with this issue since a direct career path eluded him early in his adult life. What he’d like to share with others who are experiencing this quandary is that it’ll be okay. He offers his own professional journey as a testament to his belief.

Producer-Director Fred Sternfeld

The latest and very noteworthy development in his life devoted to theater involves a producing role in the first Broadway revival of the 1991 musical The Secret Garden. It will be directed and choreographed by Tony Award winner Warren Carlyle for an opening in the 2018-19 Broadway season. Well-known New York producers, Gerald Goehring and Michael F. Mitri of Patriot Productions, picked up the show’s option in 2017.

Goerhring, who has guest lectured in town at Baldwin Wallace University, notes that what he sees in Sternfeld is someone who “has a sensibility for what stories need and what artists and the creative team require to stage a play.” For this reason and others, he involved Sternfeld in the entire creative process for The Secret Garden, beginning with casting and employing many of his insightful notes.

“They (Fred and co-producer/wife Randi) understand what each department needs, and they have the theater experience and background that make them very good at this work,” Goerhring adds.

During a recent staging without sets or costumes for an audience of theater owners, producers, investors and tour operators, the show received two standing ovations, which is typically unheard of during this process, according to Sternfeld.

THERE’S MUCH MORE! 
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Sierra Boggess, Clifton Duncan, Drew Gehling to Lead The Secret Garden Lab

Warren Carlyle directs the presentation in anticipation of a forthcoming Broadway revival.

Sierra Boggess will star in a lab presentation of The Secret Garden. (© David Gordon)

Bob Abelman | CJN Columnist

“Another op’nin’ of another show.”  ~ Lyric from “Kiss Me, Kate”

Not long ago, the backstage of the Longacre Theatre on W. 48th St. in midtown Manhattan was cleared out after “Nerds” – a musical about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs – abruptly cancelled its Broadway run less than a month before its first preview performance.

It happened so fast that the theater marquee still promoted its previous tenant, “Allegiance,” a musical about the internment of Japanese-Americans in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor that closed after just four months on stage.

 Actors and designers were released.

The dreams of the show’s creators were dashed.

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