school of fine arts eastern illinois university 1 CHARLESTON, ILLINOIS 61920 217/ 581 -3110 DEPAR TMENT OF THEATRE ARTS FOR IMMEDIATE RELASE •• ••••• "Candide," the musical comedy version of Voltaire's satire on Pollyanna-like optimists, will be the next attraction at Eastern Illinois University's Fine Arts Center, where the New York hit will have its mid-west premiere. "Candide" will open on Friday, June 2$ at 8 p.m. in the Playroom and continue June 26, July 2 & 3 at 8 with one Sunday matinee, June 27 at 2 p.m. The show has a musical score by Leonard Bernstein, composer of "West Side Story" and former conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and his music is set to lyrics by Richard Wilbur, Pulitzer Prize winning poet and author of this century's most applauded verse translations of Moliere plays. Votaire's sardonic story, a classic since he wrote it in 1758, has been adapted for song-and-dance purposes by Hugh Wheeler, adaptor of the musical success "A Little Night Music." "Candide" was originally, and remains in this musical version, a "picaresque novel" in reverse. In picaresque novels a hero fearlessly rushes from one hazardous adventure to another, rescuing lovely damsels from wicked villains by his audacity and the skill of his swordsmanship. Candide is no such dashing fellow. He is kidnapped, shanghaied and dragged unwillingly from one horrifying adventure to the next, and he wins no battles. When in one episode he vanquishes an opponent with a sword he unwillingly has picked up, he is overwhelmed with remorse, mournfully crying out "Alas that I, a harmless fellow, have killed a man." Having been taught by the learned Dr. Pangloss that this is "the best of all possible worlds," Candide is continually being surprised by the frightful injustices and miseries he encounters. These range from the mass rape of his sweetheart, Cunegonde, by a regiment of Bulgarian soldiers, to theif being engulfed in wars and enslaved by pirates who capture their ship on the high seas, from oppressi6n n by high officials of the Inquisition, to nature's massive attacks on the happiness of humanity, such as the Lisbon earthquake. Candide goes from one kind of mass slaughter and vicious enslavement to another -- always bouncing back from these disasters with his master's assurance that this is really "the best of all possible worlds." He remains an indefatigable optimist, or just plain fool, in the face of the evidence. Wolcott Gibbs called Candide