 Showing at the VLT in the Winter of 1964, Damn Yankees is a musical comedy retelling of the legend of Faust.
Set during the 1950s in Washington, D.C., it was a time when the New York Yankees dominated Major League Baseball. Joe Boyd, a middle-aged baseball fan, is in the depths of despair. His favorite team, the Washington Senators, seem incapable of getting a winning stride. He sells his soul to the devil for "one good Long ball hitter" for his team. The devil, under the alias Mr. Applegate, grants him his wish, turning him into Joe Hardy, a 22 year old sports superstar. Now Joe must win the game and get back to his wife by 9:00 PM on the Final Game Day, or else his soul will forever be in the clutches of the malicious Mr. Applegate.
Damn Yankees marked the second musical comedy hit by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, who had collaborated previously that decade to create The Pajama Game. With two such resounding triumphs coming in rapid succession, Adler and Ross became one of the most promising song-and-words teams to hit Broadway since Rodgers and Hart. Tragically, this partnership came to an abrupt end when Jerry Ross died in 1955 of chronic bronchiectasis at the age of twenty-nine. |
