the show’s accountants

the show’s accountants“Money has never been incidental, especially earlier in ourHydraulic Hosecareers, but I certainly didn’t expect to have a steadyPVC Tarpaulinlifetime stream of income from ‘The Fantasticks,’ ” said Donald Farber, 86, who handled legal matters for the 1960 production and helped recruit investors. (He and his wife Anne, 85, invested as well.)

“A lot of times during that first summer of the show, there would only be two or three people sitting in the audience. People kept telling us to close. Annie and I would go to the playhouse and drink five scotches apiece just to deal with our nerves about this show that we fell in love with,” said Mr. Farber, who had never invested in theater before.

The tale of young lovers torn apart by warring families, perhaps most identified with the bittersweet song “Try to Remember,” “The Fantasticks” opened on May 3, 1960, and ran for a record-setting 17,162 performances before closing in 2002. With music by Harvey Schmidt and a book and lyrics by Tom Jones, the show remains the longest-running musical in the world; the New York production of “Phantom” is not quite half its age.

Many of the original investors in the show were not experienced theaterPVC Tarpaulinhands but rather friends and neighbors of some of the artists and executives involved in the show. (Neither Mr. Farber, the lawyer, nor the show’s accountants could say precisely how many of the show’s 52 original investors are still alive.)

It was a struggle for those “Fantasticks” executives to recruit investors for the no-name show. They held several “backer’s auditions” in New York City and on Long Island (including at the Farbers’ former home in Merrick) to raise money for the show’s $16,500 budget. A typical Off Broadway musical today, by contrast, costs more than $1 million to mount.

Ira Kapp, 86, said he became an investor out of guilt: he attended a late-night run-through rehearsal in 1960 and quickly fell asleep. The next day he told his wife, June, that he felt bad for nodding off and that the least they could do was invest.

“That’s the luckiest investment I ever made in my life,” said Mr. Kapp, who receives three checks of “Fantasticks” money each year. “I’ve made more money overall from stocks, certainly,Hydraulic Hosebut noPVC Tarpaulininvestment return of ours has ever approached ‘The Fantasticks’ percentage-wise.”