Timbuktu!

About the show

Timbuktu! is a musical, with lyrics by George Forrest and Robert Wright, set to music by Borodin, Forrest and Wright. The book is by Luther Davis. It is a resetting of Forrest and Wright's musical Kismet (which also had a book co-written by Davis), and the majority of the play's songs are reused from Kismet. The musical is set in 1361 in Timbuktu, in the Empire of Mali, West Africa. For the 1978 Tony Awards, the play was considered a revival rather than a new work, and was nominated for a Tony in the Best Revival category.