Here's Where I Belong is a musical

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 with a book by Alex Gordon and Terrence McNally

Terrence McNally

Terrence McNally is an American playwright who has received four Tony Awards, an Emmy, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Hull-Warriner Award, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been a member of the Council of the...

, lyrics by Alfred Uhry

Alfred Uhry

Alfred Fox Uhry is an American playwright, screenwriter, and member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He is one of very few writers to receive an Academy Award, Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize for dramatic writing....

, and music by Robert Waldman

Robert Waldman

Robert Waldman is an American composer, musical arranger, and orchestrator.Waldman has collaborated with Alfred Uhry twice, on Here's Where I Belong, the disastrous 1968 adaptation of John Steinbeck's East of Eden that closed on opening night, and the considerably more successful The Robber...

.

Based on John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck

John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...

's classic novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 East of Eden

East of Eden

East of Eden is a novel by Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck, published in September 1952.Often described as Steinbeck's most ambitious novel, East of Eden brings to life the intricate details of two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, and their interwoven stories. The novel was originally...

, the allegorical

Allegory

Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...

 tale centers on the Trasks and the Hamiltons, two families drawn to the rich farmlands of Salinas, California

Salinas, California

Salinas is the county seat and the largest municipality of Monterey County, California. Salinas is located east-southeast of the mouth of the Salinas River, at an elevation of about 52 feet above sea level. The population was 150,441 at the 2010 census...

 in the early 20th Century. While Steinbeck traced the two clans through three generations, the musical limits the action to the period between 1915 and 1917 and focuses primarily on the Cain and Abel aspects of the work.

McNally asked that his name be removed from the credits prior to opening night.

After twenty previews, the Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 production, directed by Michael Kahn

Michael Kahn (theatre director)

Michael Kahn is the Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., USA. He held the position of Richard Rodgers Director of the Drama Division of the Juilliard School from 1992 to 2006....

 and choreographed  by Tony Mordente

Tony Mordente

Tony Mordente is an American dancer, choreographer, and television director.Born in New York City, Mordente attended the High School of Performing Arts and made his professional dance debut at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts...

, opened on March 3, 1968 at the Billy Rose Theatre, where it closed after one performance. The cast included James Coco

James Coco

James Coco was an American character actor.- Early life and career :Born James Emil Coco in New York City, son of Feliche Coco, a shoemaker and Ida Detestes Coco, James began acting straight out of high school. As an overweight and prematurely balding adult, he found himself relegated to character...

, Graciela Daniele

Graciela Daniele

Graciela Daniele is an Argentine-American dancer, choreographer, and theatre director.-Biography:Born at Buenos Aires, Daniele began her dance training at the age of seven at Teatro Colón, Argentina's equivalent of Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre...

, and Ken Kercheval

Ken Kercheval

Ken Kercheval is an American actor, best known for his role as Cliff Barnes on the television series Dallas....

.

Song list

Act I

• We Are What We Are
• Cal Gets By
• Raising Cain
• Soft Is the Sparrow
• Where Have I Been
• No Time
• Progress
• Good Boy
• Ballet
• Act Like a Lady
• The Send-Off
• Top of the Train
• Waking Up Sun

Act II

• Pulverize the Kaiser
• Where Have I Been (Reprise)
• Good Boy (Reprise)
• You're Momma's
• Here's Where I Belong
• We're a Home

Recordings

"We're A Home" was recorded by The Ray Conniff Singers

Ray Conniff

Joseph Raymond Conniff was an American bandleader and arranger best known for his Ray Conniff Singers during the 1960s.-Biography:...

 in 1967 and released as a single (Columbia

Columbia Records

Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...

 4-44422). The recording was reissued in stereo on a Ray Conniff compilation CD "The Singles Collection, Vol. 1" (Collectables

Collectables Records

Collectables is a reissue record label founded in 1980 by Jerry Greene. Greene was previously associated with New York City's Times Square Record Shop, Philadelphia's Record Museum retail chain, and the Lost Nite and Crimson record labels....

7697) in 2005.