Green & Weill's Unexpected Song For Peace

Based on Jaraslav Hašek's 1921 satiric novel The Good Soldier Šveyk, the musical focuses on a naive and idealistic young man who, despite his pacifist views, leaves his sweetheart Minny Belle Tompkins to go fight in Europe in World War I. Johnny tries a series of ways to stop the war, and eventually manages to bring the skirmish to a temporary halt by incapacitating a meeting of the generals with laughing gas. Johnny finds himself committed to an asylum for ten years. He returns home to discover Minny Belle has married a capitalist, and he settles down as a toymaker who will create anything except tin soldiers, his personal gesture of peace in an increasingly warlike society.
The musical was written and composed by Paul Green and Kurt Weill in 1936. Its title was inspired by the fact the name Johnny Johnson appeared on United States casualty rolls more often than any other. Its debut on Broadway featured members of the socially conscious Group Theatre, and was directed by Lee Strasberg. The cast included, among others, Russell Collins as Johnny, Phoebe Brand, Luther Adler, Morris Carnovsky, Lee J. Cobb, John Garfield, Elia Kazan, and Sandy Meisner. The 1956 studio recording features Burgess Meredith as Johnny as well as Lotte Lenya.
Randall Stuart's lifelong dream to direct this theatre piece came to fruition when he was asked by the Southern Oregon University's Drama Dpt. to propose a musical about peace. The result was an epic undertaking thanks to the remarkable design team, and the deeply committed ensemble of students: 30 actors playing more than 80 roles, and a breathtaking score by Kurt Weill which included three formerly cut songs. Theatre at its best exalts narrative and engenders empathy, and this opportunity was just such an experience: to follow Johnny Johnson, a carver of tombstones and toys, through fields of war and waters of hope.
A message to my SOU students, from Randall Stuart, should you stumble upon this page, I want you to know this:
In both Johnny Johnson, and in Urinetown two years before, you were completely and utterly amazing. You trusted the process and we thrilled our audiences. Fifteen years later, in 2024, I returned to the SOU Concert Hall stage for an event to celebrate another SOU teacher/director Jim Edmondson, in an evening called Squire. At that event, so many people brought-up in conversation these two productions of ours, their eyes wide and twinkling. That's the power of sculpting an indelible memory, y'see.