(10 of 10)
Next season Merrick intends to give theatergoers plenty to think about: 1) a new play by Peter Weiss (Marat/Sade); 2) a musical based on Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, written and directed by Abe Burrows; 3) a musical based on The Fourposter starring Mary Martin and directed by Gower Champion; 4) a new comedy by Bill Manhoff (The Owl and the Pussycat): 5) a new play by Brian Friel (Philadelphia, Here I Come!); 6) Hugh Wheeler's dramatization of the Shirley Jackson novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle; 7) a play by Cartoonist Mell Lazarus: 8) an Italian musical starring Marcello Mastroianni. For the season after that, he has already signed up several properties, including a repertory program by Britain's superlative Royal Shakespeare Company and, if negotiations work out, another by London's National Theater.
"It's going to go on, you know," he says in a cold, clear voice. "I've got it made. The plays I want, the people I want, are easier to get now. Every year I mean-to do more and better things. I keep having this fantasy. I'm walking through the theater district, and in every house I pass there is a David Merrick production. Whenever I doodle, I doodle only one word: SOON. I'll never stop working. It's the only thing I know. It's going to go on and on and on." And on, until the Dead-End Kid from St. Louis has kicked over the sign that says Broadway is a dead-end street.