Death Takes a Holiday is a musical with music and lyrics by Maury Yeston and a book by Peter Stone and Thomas Meehan. The story is adapted from the 1924 Italian play La Morte in Vacanza by Alberto Casella, which was adapted in English for Broadway in 1929 by Walter Ferris. That play was made into a 1934 film of the same name starring Fredric March, which was remade in 1998 as Meet Joe Black, starring Brad Pitt. The story of the musical is about lonely Death, who takes the form of a handsome young prince to understand human emotion. He falls in love with an engaged young woman and learns about love and sacrifice.
The show played off-Broadway for a limited run in the summer of 2011 in a production by Roundabout Theatre Company and received eleven nominations for the 2011–12 Drama Desk Awards, though it did not win any. It was listed by Time magazine as one of the Top Ten Musicals of the season. The production garnered mixed reviews. An off West End production played in 2017.
Background
Maury Yeston and Peter Stone began work on the musical in 1997, immediately after their success with Titanic. Titanic was a large-scale show, and Yeston and Stone decided to turn to a smaller-scale work for their next piece. They felt that the Cassella play, a story celebrating the joy and humor of love, was both universal and moving, and that with its recent adaptation as Meet Joe Black, it was a good time to musicalize the story. Yeston said, "it seemed to me that the piece screamed to be sung." Since the story is set in Northern Italy during the Roaring Twenties, Yeston incorporated jazz, the Shimmy, and other period styles into his contemporary score "to achieve a modern sensibility within the Period flavor of the score." Yeston had lived in Northern Italy for a time, which informed his writing. He further explained that Casella wrote the story "in response to the overwhelming killing in World War One and the pandemic that followed. ... [Death] collects souls. Exhausted from the recent scale of killing ... resolves that he needs to know why people ... cling to life, why is that important? ... [He takes] a few days off ... then he falls in love and discovers that what makes life so precious is that it's not endless".
Following Stone's death in 2003, Thomas Meehan took over writing the book.
Productions
Death Takes a Holiday premiered off-Broadway at the Laura Pels Theatre on June 10, 2011 (in previews) and officially on July 14, for a limited run through September 4, 2011, in a production by Roundabout Theatre Company. The musical was directed by Doug Hughes, with choreography by Peter Pucci, set design by Derek McLane, and costumes by Catherine Zuber. The cast included Linda Balgord (Contessa Danielli), Matt Cavenaugh (Major Fenton), Mara Davi (Alice), Kevin Earley (Death/Sirki), Simon Jones, Rebecca Luker (Duchess Stephanie), Jill Paice (Grazia), Michael Siberry (Duke Vittorio Lamberti), Alexandra Socha, Don Stephenson, Joy Hermalyn and Max von Essen (Corrado Montelli). Jim Walton was an understudy. British actor Julian Ovenden, left the show due to vocal trouble and was replaced by his understudy, Kevin Earley. The original cast recording was released in October 2011, by PS Classics, with Earley in the role of Death.
The production received mixed reviews and The New York Times called it a "gorgeously sung but fusty musical". Similarly, Steven Suskin, in reviewing the original cast album, wrote that "Maury Yeston has given us a liltingly romantic and lovely operetta-like score. ... Book and score do not complement each other, at least not as presented at the Pels. ... The entire show – not only on the CD but in the theatre – was lifted by the presence of a fine group of singing actors." Time magazine ranked the show among the Top Ten of the year and commented on the brief run: "Death deserved to live on." It was nominated for eleven 2011–12 Drama Desk Awards, but it did not win any.
An off West End production opened in January 2017 at London's Charing Cross Theatre with a limited run ending in March 2017. Zoë Doano starred as Grazia, with Chris Peluso as Death and Gay Soper as the Contessa. Thom Southerland directed. A review in the Sunday Express commented: "The presiding genius of this musical adaptation is composer/lyricist Maury Yeston whose lush, operetta-like scores make him the heir to Jerome Kern's crown among the current crop of Broadway writers. As in previous works such as Grand Hotel and Titanic, he displays a rare ability to give voice to a wide range of characters, often within a single song. Thom Sutherland, renewing his collaboration with Yeston after the recent Titanic, directs this gentler piece with delicacy and elegance."