Two By Two is a Broadway musical with a book by Peter Stone, lyrics by Martin Charnin, and music by Richard Rodgers. Based on Clifford Odets's play The Flowering Peach, it tells the story of Noah's preparations for the Great Flood and its aftermath. Directed by Joe Layton, the production opened on November 10, 1970 at the Imperial Theatre, where it ran for ten months. The opening night cast included Danny Kaye, Marilyn Cooper, Joan Copeland, Harry Goz, Madeline Kahn, Michael Karm, Tricia O'Neil, and Walter Willison. Production Reviews were mixed, but positive for the score and cast. A couple months into the run Kaye became bored and began to improvise on a nightly basis. He ad-libbed shtick and comic asides to the audience. Improvising a dance one night, to impress Dick Cavett in the audience, he slipped and tore a tendon in his leg. Kaye continued with the show, appearing at each performance on crutches as young 90 year old Noah, and as Noah at 600 in wheelchair "He appeared with his leg in a cast and either rode around the stage in a wheelchair — in which he sometimes would try to run down the other actors — or hobbled around the stage on a crutch — which he used to goose the girls," wrote Rodgers in his autobiography Musical Stages. "In addition, he began improvising his own lines and singing in the wrong tempos. He even made a curtain speech after the performances in which he said, 'I'm glad you're here, but I'm glad the authors aren't.' Apparently there was a certain curiosity value to all this, because people actually went to see Two by Two because of Danny's one-by-one vaudeville act. Others, of course, were appalled and expressed their irritation in letters to the [New York] Times." The show is frequently performed by community theatre and church groups, and there have been a few noteworthy revivals over the years. Milton Berle headed a production at the St. Louis Municipal Opera (The Muny) in 1971. Shelley Berman headed the show's National Touring company in 1972–73, co-starring Taina Elg as Esther. More recently, Tom Bosley sang Noah's role for a soundtrack slated for a (canceled) 2001 U.S. national tour of the show. Jason Alexander has been seen in the role in Los Angeles' "Reprise" production as well in New York's York Theatre "Musicals-in-Mufti" production directed by Martin Charnin.