Thus is the case with CCM's Spring Workshop presentation of Stephen Sondheim's Saturday Night . Saturday Night , though written in the 1950s, received its world premiere only a few years ago. The musical likely would never have been produced if not for the fact that the score is by Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim. When the show's original producer died, and no one else stepped in to finance it, the piece was shelved for forty years until productions in London, Chicago, and New York within the past few years. The musical, with a book by Jules Epstein, follows a group of young Brooklyn adults trying to find love and success in the Spring of 1929.
Gene is the most ambitious of the bunch and dreams of striking it rich in the stock market.
He wants to have the nice things in life, instead of just pretending he does, as when he sneaks into fancy places dressed in tails. Most of his buddies are busy lamenting being alone on yet another Saturday evening. Gene meets Helen, who on this particular evening, is also trying to act her way into the Plaza, and a connection is made. Gene loses his friends' money, along with his cousin's car, when the stock he invested in flops. Saturday Night sounds as though it was written in the 1950s, and there are also many hints at the genius level of writing that the legend would eventually achieve.