Nefertiti the Musical (1977)
Since everyone is buzzing about what happened with the cancelled 2016 concert reading of “The Prince of Egypt”, I wanted to reflect on Nefertiti…the musical that coulda, woudla, and shoulda been a smash, but wasn’t.
The show featured Andrea Marcovicci as the titular queen and Robert LuPone, fresh off of his success in A CHORUS LINE as the pharaoh Akhenaten. The composers, Christopher Gore and David Spangler were fairly unknown at the time and remain so today, with the only other relevant credit among them being the lyricist’s earlier collaboration on VIA GALACTICA. I quite enjoy the album, it’s no great groundbreaker but based on the tagline “a musical romance” I don’t think that’s what they were going for. The score is helped tremendously by the excellent orchestrations, which give off a MAN OF LA MANCHA feel.
The premise is strong enough, “In 1364 BCE A headstrong Egyptian woman — Nefertiti sacrifices the relationship she has with Horemhab, a young general she loves to marry the Pharaoh Akhenaten. Together, the three form an unlikely alliance which enabled the royal couple to lead an artistic, spiritual and cultural revolution that for 17 years changed a society locked in orthodoxy.
Guided by her strong sense of duty and her kindness towards the Egyptian people, they work to change the old customs and build a new world until natural disasters and sinister political forces threaten to topple their new paradise and erase them from history.”
“Nefertiti” goes back to when Christopher Gore (Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of “Fame”) was a struggling writer in New York. He began writing a play about the Pharaoh Akhenaten, which he always viewed as a musical (going so far as writing lyrics for it).
He met composer David Spangler and shared his work, and soon they began collaborating on it. It was called “Brothers” at the time and concerned Pharaoh siblings.
The piece had a workshop production at La Mama Theatre in New York in 1976 and got the attention of Broadway producer Sherwin Goldman and director Jack O'Brien. After some intensive work sessions, the new musical had a new name: Nefertiti. When the show opened in Chicago there were members of a Black arts organization picketed the theatre, demanding a more diverse cast, as Jane White and Michael Smartt were the only non-white main cast members.
Even though Tony award-winning playwright Joe Masteroff was brought in to rewrite the book, the producers pulled the plug. They cancelled the scheduled November 1977 opening at the Minskoff.
A cast album was recorded, helping give the show a cult status. The musical has been reworked several times in hopes of it finally opening and being a smash on Broadway, but alas to no avail. Still, Nefertiti surely was what critic Ken Mandelbaum has termed a “don't” musical. You’ve heard of the “why?” musical. For instance: why turn the Meet Me in St. Louis movie into a musical when it already is one, and a perfect one at that? Nefertiti is a “don’t musical” It has very long, consonant heavy names, and the plot was very disjunctive at best; I can see why there are so many plays about Cleopatra, the names of those around her are easier on the Western tongue and have a clear linear plot.