The musical fable, employing a nearly bare stage, explores the contrasts between youth and old age, innocence and jaded corruption, love and ambition, and poverty and wealth.

"At the musical's core is the struggle between youth and old age, innocence and corruption, love and ambition, and poverty and wealth, as Angel tries to decide if she would be better served by her feelings for Orphan or Rich's willingness to fulfill her every dream.

"[3] Celebration opened on Broadway on January 22, 1969 at the Ambassador Theatre, and closed on April 26, 1969 after 109 performances and thirteen previews.

Directed by Jones and choreographed by Vernon Lusby, the cast featured Ted Thurston as Rich, Susan Watson as Angel and Keith Charles as Potemkin, with Michael Glenn-Smith as Orphan.

Celebration has occasionally been presented in university and community productions since then and was produced in 1997 at the Ritz Theatre in Oaklyn, New Jersey.

Potemkin, disguised as a tramp, befriends Orphan, who relates that his orphanage was purchased and eventually destroyed by a Mr. Rich.

Potemkin offers to be Orphan's guide and demonstrates how to cheat, steal, bow and scrape ("Survive").

Mr. Rich describes his life story, beginning as a penniless young man and eventually becoming a successful businessman, manufacturing products that replace real things with artificial ones such as wax fruit, glass eyes, paper flowers and falsies.

The scene gradually turns from cold and bleak to green and summerlike, as Potemkin acts as ring master and increases the pace of the revelry.

The partiers arrive, and Mr. Rich expresses his joy, dancing wildly with Angel ("It's You Who Makes Me Young").

Orphan halts the machines that are about to destroy the garden by holding up his glass amulet ("Fifty Million Years Ago").

The Revelers act out the conflict between age and youth in a stylized scene, portraying Mr. Rich as winter and Orphan as summer.

Potemkin, as Father Time, calls out the hours, one by one, as Mr. Rich ages and collapses at the stroke of twelve.

Vernon Lusby's choreography illustrated each sardonic turn of the fable, and the design was a visual marvel of symbolic scenery, costumes and gargoyle masks by Ed Wittstein. ...