“Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” features a central plot twist that makes the story problematic for contemporary audiences: A group of ill-mannered brothers kidnaps the women they have been eyeing.
The plot device goes back all the way to ancient times, when it was the theme of a Roman legend called “The Rape of the Sabine Women.” That story inspired paintings (Rubens, et al.), a short story (“The Sobbin’ Women”) and a 1954 musical film later adapted into a 1982 stage musical, which closed on Broadway three days after it opened.
Now, an effort to modernize the story to make it palatable for today’s theatergoers has landed in court.
The dispute centers on a version of the show that was staged in 2021 in St. Louis at the Muny, one of the nation’s biggest musical theater venues. For that staging, David Landay, the only one of the 1982 show’s four writers who is alive, added a prologue and revised the plot so that the women foil the kidnapping attempt but, bored with life in their small town, opt to flee voluntarily with their would-be abductors.
Landay hoped there would be more productions to breathe new life into a tired title.
But according to a lawsuit filed this week in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, the heirs of his deceased collaborators, Al Kasha, Lawrence Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn, would not agree to productions beyond the one at the Muny. Landay, represented by Lita Beth Wright, argues in the lawsuit that the heirs are breaching their contract with him by unreasonably withholding their consent.
Although it was a flop on Broadway, the original musical is admired by some for a few songs and its exuberant dance numbers. An outdoor production in London in 2015 received mostly positive reviews, although with qualifiers, like the one in The Standard: “some of the most dubious gender politics — and there’s a lot to choose from — in musical theater.”
So when Mike Isaacson, the Muny’s artistic director and executive producer, thought about staging the show during a pandemic summer (the Muny’s shows are outdoors), he was clear about the conditions. The story would have to be revised.
“The criteria I have is that if there’s a woman sitting there with her daughter, what is it that they’re receiving,” he said in an interview, adding that the female characters in the original version were “guileless and passive.”
He added: “It’s one of those shows that audiences love and have great affection for, but when you look at it, it’s really challenging to do now — in the original version, there are not a lot of good choices being made. The music is gorgeous, and the barn dancing is epic, and there’s a decent love story for the two leading characters, but it’s one of those shows that belongs to another era.”
In the lawsuit, Landay, who wrote the original book with Lawrence Kasha, is seeking at least $250,000 in damages as well as the right to pursue future productions of the revised version.
“Because of #MeToo it had become outdated,” he said in an interview. “Before that, it was done all over the world.” He added, “The version I came up with, now I want to get it out there so people can enjoy it.”
The defendants could not be reached for comment.
