The Last Sweet Days of Isaac

• Original Off-Broadway Production (1970)
  New York, NY
• Regional Production (1970)
  Washington, D.C.
• London Production (1971)
  London, England

Click on the title for info on the song.

Original score

• The Last Sweet Days of Isaac
• A Transparent Crystal Moment
• My Most Important Moments Go By
• Love, You Came to Me
• I Want to Walk to San Francisco
• Touching Your Hand is Like Touching Your Mind
• Yes, I Know That I'm Alive

Added after opening

• I Can't Live in Solitary
• Herein Lie the Seeds of Revolution
• Somebody Died Today

Two related one-act musicals.

"The Elevator" — Isaac Bernstein imagines himself on the brink of an untimely death and therefore sets about making every moment a perfect work of art. To heighten and record his existence, he carries with him a guitar, a trumpet, a dozen little instruments stuffed in his pockets, a tape recorder, a camera, and an orchestra in his head. On this fateful day in his 33rd year, he finds himself stuck in a stalled elevator with Ingrid, a secretary who has always wished to be a poet. In the hour that they are stuck in the elevator, Isaac tries to teach Ingrid to live life to the fullest.

"I Want to Walk to San Francisco" — Isaac is now 19. He and blond, beautiful Alice are locked away separately in solitary prison cells. They communicate with each other and with the world only through a television camera in each cell and a television screen. They try to make love to each other's images, but a newscast interrupts their tryst on the tube with an on-scene report of Isaac's death at a demonstration. The newscast ends, and Isaac and Alice are left with each other's images in their once-removed world, unsure if they are alive or dead.

(Adapted from the authors' synopses on the back jacket of the LP release of the cast recording.)

• This first act of this show was later revised to become the first act of The Last Sweet Days (1997).