Amour (musical)

Amour
2002 Broadway Playbill
Music	Michel Legrand
Lyrics	Didier Van Cauwelaert
Book	Jeremy Sams
Basis	1943 short story Le Passe-Muraille by Marcel Aymé
Productions	1997 Paris 2002 Broadway

Amour is a musical fantasy with an English book by Jeremy Sams, music by Michel Legrand, and lyrics by Didier Van Cauwelaert, who wrote the original French libretto.

The musical is adapted from the 1943 short story Le Passe-Muraille by Marcel Aymé and set in Paris shortly after World War II. It centers on a shy, unassuming clerk who develops the ability to walk through walls, and who challenges himself to stick to his moral center and change others' lives, and his own, as a result.

In 1997, Legrand, a noted film composer and jazz musician, and a newcomer to stage musicals at age 65, brought the musical (under its original title, Le Passe Muraille) to Paris where it won the Prix Molière for Best Musical.

The Broadway production, directed by James Lapine and presented without intermission, opened on October 20, 2002 at the Music Box Theatre. The show closed after 17 performances and 31 previews. The cast included Malcolm Gets and Melissa Errico.

The musical received mostly negative reviews in America, although Errico, Gets and the score were praised. Ben Brantley, in his review for The New York Times, wrote: "Even charming is too weighty a word to describe the wispy appeal of Amour" The Talkin' Broadway reviewer, however, wrote: "Broadway's Music Box Theatre may have found its most ideal tenant in quite a while. The delightful little jewel box of a musical, Amour, ...deserves a lengthy stay there, where it may enchant audiences for a long time to come." Cary Wong in filmscoremonthly wrote: "The lyrics are mostly pedestrian and uninvolving, and they make the already stock characters even more one-dimensional." He does note that "...while there is a lot to admire in this musical, it's too much of a chamber operetta to compete with the likes of 'Hairspray' and 'La Boheme'."