"The Wild Party by Joseph Moncure March was published as a narrative poem in 1928. The poem tells the story of Queenie and her actor lover Burrs, who decide to have a party, complete with illegal bathtub gin and the couple’s colorful, eccentric and egocentric friends. But the party unfolds with more tumultuous goings-on than planned. Art Spiegelman revived interest in the poem when he published a newly illustrated version in 1999. Around the same time, two musical productions were in the works. Andrew Lippa wrote the book, music and lyrics for a 2000 off-Broadway version while Michael John LaChiusa and George C. Wolfe launched another musical starring Toni Collette in her Broadway debut. Producer Jeffrey Seller planned on bringing the award-winning off-Broadway production uptown to the Great White Way. He contacted Drew Hodges and Mark Burdett of SpotCo, creator of posters for RENT, Avenue Q, In The Heights and more, to do the graphic design. The ambitious result, art directed by Kevin Brainard and photographed in luscious black and white by Ellen von Unwerth, involved showing the entire cast acting out the debauchery of the poem. “It was the best photoshoot Spot has ever done,” said Hodges. It was “the sexist Broadway cast shoot that never saw the light of day,” added Brainard, who has made an online archive of the full set of 29 images. "
The Daily Heller: One Helluva Wild Party
