The Robber Bridegroom is based on the 1942 novella by Eudora Welty, which, in turn, was itself inspired by, and loosely based on, the Grimm fairy tale, The Robber Bridegroom.
The Robber Bridegroom is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alfred Uhry and music by Robert Waldman. The story is based on the 1942 Eudora Welty novella of the same name, with a Robin Hood-like hero; the adaptation placed it in a late-eighteenth-century American setting.
The Robber Bridegroom started with an early 1970s production in producer Stuart Ostrow's Musical Theatre Lab, which invented the now-standard concept of the "workshop" development process for musicals. The show was further developed in 1975 by John Houseman's group, The Acting Company, a touring group of acting students at the Juilliard School. They took the show to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, New York, with Kevin Kline as Lockhart, Patti LuPone as Rosamund and Mary Lou Rosato as Salome. It was then staged at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago in the Summer of 1975.
Following the Chicago production, The Robber Bridegroom then made the leap back to New York. The first Broadway production, with the same Ravinia cast, directed by Gerald Freedman and choreographed by Donald Saddler, opened in a limited Broadway engagement on October 7, 1975, at the Harkness Theatre. It ran for fourteen performances and one preview before setting out on a one-year U.S. national tour. Success on the road then convinced the producers to mount a revamped Broadway production with an extended book and expanded, heavily bluegrass-tinged score.
The second Broadway production opened on October 9, 1976, at the Biltmore Theatre, again under Freedman's direction and Saddler's choreography but with a largely different cast. In the shadow of breakout musical A Chorus Line, The Robber Bridegroom ran for a modest 145 performances and twelve previews, closing on February 13, 1977.
Since its debut,The Robber Bridegroom has gone on to be a popular regional production. As Broadway historian Peter Filichia puts it, "This is a favorite show of many people who hate musicals, because it eschews the more obvious conventions and has no trouble being its unpretentious self."