Hello Again

Hello Again is a musical with music, lyrics and book by Michael John LaChiusa. It is based on the 1897 play La Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler (also titled Reigen). It focuses on a series of love affairs among ten characters during the ten different decades of the 20th century. The musical premiered Off-Broadway in 1993, directed and choreographed by Graciela Daniele. Since then it has been performed in London, Sweden, Australia, Germany, The Netherlands and New York. Adaptation and plot LaChuisa's musical adaptation follows the structure of Schnitzler's original material closely, often replicating fragments of his dialogue, detailing a daisy chain of sexual encounters and love affairs among ten characters in ten scenes. His innovation, however, was to set each scene of the musical in a different decade of the 20th century and in a non-chronological order, allowing for a huge variety of musical style and pastische ranging from opera to 1970s disco while simultaneously introducing musical and lyrical echoes throughout to tie all the characters and their experiences together. He also altered the gender of Schnitzler's "Little Miss" to the sexually ambiguous "Young Thing" to introduce a homosexual element into his century of sexual congress. Highlights of the score include "I Got A Little Time", "Tom", "Safe", "The One I Love", "Mistress of the Senator" and "The Bed Was Not My Own".