Flora the Red Menace opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre on May 11, 1965, produced by Hal Prince and directed by George Abbott. This was John Kander and Fred Ebb’s first Broadway show and starred a nineteen year old Liza Minnelli as Flora, the start of her long association with Kander and Ebb. Minnelli won a Tony award for her performance, the youngest recipient at that time but the show was not a success, closing after 87 performances. Maybe it was the light hearted look at communism that jarred with the US audiences or maybe it was the ‘leaden book, long since deceased’ as Hal Prince later put it.
The show was revived in off Broadway in December 1987 with a totally new book by David Thompson and the reinstatement of some of the original Kander and Ebb songs. Directed by Scott Ellis with choreography by Susan Stroman, it had a much reduced cast and it is this version that was produced at Hampton Hill Playhouse.