A... My Name Is Alice


A... My Name Is Alice is a musical revue conceived by Joan Micklin Silver and Julianne Boyd, first produced in 1983. It won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Revue. It consists of some 21 songs by composers such as David Zippel, Doug Katsaros, Winnie Holzman, and Lucy Simon, along with scenes penned by Cassandra Medley, Marta Kauffman, Anne Meara, and others.

Production history

The revue, a production of The Women's Project, played at "The Top of the Gate" at The Village Gate, New York City, from November 2, 1983, through November 14, 1983, and then opened in the basement space of the American Place Theatre, New York City, on February 24, 1984, through March 11, 1984. The revue returned to the Top of the Gate in May 1984 and ran for 353 performances.
The original Top of the Gate cast and The American Place Theatre cast both featured Roo Brown, Randy Graff, Mary Gordon Murray, Alaina Reed, and Charlayne Woodard. The revue was directed by Silver and Boyd and choreographed by Yvonne Adrian /Edward Love.

Sequels

There are two sequels to this revue, both in the revue-sketch format, conceived and directed by Silver and Boyd:
The format is that of a musical revue of 20 or so songs and sketches performed by a five-member cast of women of different ages and types in a 'wide variety of situations and relationships with insight, empathy and self-deprecating humour.’ The women have names in some of the sketches and songs, in others they are simply named "first actress", etc.
Each of the cast members introduces herself by reciting an adult update on the children's ABC rhyme. One example: "A... my name is Alice, And my husband's name is Adam, And his girlfriend's name is Amy, And my lover's name is Abby, And her husband's name is Arnie, And his boyfriend's name is Allan, And my analyst's name is Arthur, And we're working on my anger".

Songs

;Act I
  • "All Girl Band" – Company
  • "A... My Name is Alice" – Company
  • "At My Age" – Vicky and Karen
  • "Trash" –
  • "For Women Only Poems" – Poetess
  • "Welcome to Kindergarten, Mrs. Johnson" –
  • "Pay Them No Mind" –
  • "I Sure Like the Boys" –
  • "Bluer Than You" –
  • "The Portrait" –
  • "Detroit Persons/Educated Feet" – Company

;ACT II
  • "Pretty Young Men" –
  • "Demigod" –
  • "The French Monologue & Song" –
  • "Hot Lunch" –
  • "Good Thing I Learned to Dance" – "Actress" and Mother
  • "Emily the M.B.A" –
  • "Sisters" –
  • "Honeypot" – "Honeypot Watkins" and "Therapist"
  • "Friends" –
  • "All Girl Band " – Company

    Critical response

, reviewing for The New York Times, calling the revue "delightful", wrote: "Many of the songs are theater songs in the best sense: The music and lyrics are so sophisticated that they can carry the weight of one-act plays. A song called Friends recounts the entire history of a friendship that sustains two women from high school through marriage and old age; another, titled Sisters, provides a similar account of two women whose lifelong sibling rivalry at last reaches a bittersweet resolution in a lonely apartment in Queens. But even the show's flat-out comic turns can gain in complexity as they go along...the veteran directors who conceived and staged the show, have given it a warm, spontaneous ambiance. Though the performers and the audience share close quarters, the intimacy never becomes oppressive. Michael Skloff's piano accompaniment is spirited, and so are the vestpocket dance routines choreographed by Edward Love. To be sure, A... My Name Is Alice is a small-scale entertainment, but you're likely to emerge from its underground home feeling a real lift."