Everything I Know I Learned from Musicals

Forever Plaid - 20th Anniversary Cinecast

A few weeks back, I wrote a rather dismissive post about the one-night-only 20th anniversary cinecast of Forever Plaid, which took place last night. I expressed skepticism as to whether this was the show that the movie-going public was really crying out to see. In response, the folks at NCM Fathom contacted me, inviting me to see the show and judge for myself.

Well, I went. And there were 17 people in the theater, including me and three friends, who had received comps. And this is in Boston, which is about as receptive a locale as any for a show such as this. I get the feeling that there were a lot of empty or near-empty theaters among the 500 or so that were part of the simulcast.

I had never seen Forever Plaid before; it just never really caught my interest. And now that I've seen the show, it still doesn't. On paper, the premise is promising: a four-part close-harmony men's group dies in a car crash, run off the road by a bus filled with Catholic school girls. But for some inscrutable reason, they're granted passage back to earth for one final performance, I guess to earn their place in heaven or some such reason. It really wasn't clear, and I'm frankly not moved to do any research to find out.

Overall, I found the show, created and directed by one Stuart Ross, to be a yawn-fest, repetitious beyond the limits of my patience. I guess I'm just not a fan of this category of song (e.g. "Three Coins in the Fountain," "Love is a Many Splendored Thing," "Matilda," "Rags to Riches" etc.) Perhaps if I were, I would have been more engaged. I was momentarily entertained during the sequence during which the Plaids pay tribute to "The Ed Sullivan Show," which contained some very fun moments, props, and performances. Original Plaid cast members Stan Chandler (Jinx) and David Engel (Smudge) were on hand, joined by Larry Raben (Sparky) and Daniel Reicherd (Frankie). A very talented foursome to be sure, but I found myself wishing I were seeing them in a show that gave them a chance to show what they can really do.

The cinecast included a pre-taped performance of the show, which again I found mostly dull, followed by a live segment featuring the cast members, with special guest star Carol Channing. During the after-show, the Plaids performed some doo-wop versions of "Memory" and "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" that I actually found quite enjoyable. Then, my beloved Carol came onstage and sang "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend," and even at the advanced age of 88, my girl Carol was an absolute delight. If they release the Forever Plaid movie on DVD, I'm hoping that they'll include the after-concert in the DVD extras. Because, although I can't imagine being in any hurry to watch Forver Plaid again, I would like to get another viewing of the doo-wop showtunes and Carol's star turn.

So, the night was not a total loss. Plus, I got to meet and spend time with my fellow bloggers Scot and Michael Colford (see their respective takes on Forbidden Plaid here and here) as well as my BGMC buddy Victor R-R-R-R-R-Ramos. But it makes me wonder what I'm going to think of The Marvelous Wonderettes when I see it next week, which strikes me as pretty darned similar to Forever Plaid. Oh well. It's all a part of my journey to offer as full a chronicle as possible of modern musical theater. The things I do for you, dear reader.

The Tin Pan Alley Rag - Berlin Meets Joplin

So, now that I've seen practically everything on Broadway, or at least anything that I have any interest in seeing, I've been turning my attention to Off Broadway and regional offerings.

I've been intrigued by The Tin Pan Alley Rag, which is being presented by the Roundabout at the Laura Pels Theater. I've heard virtually nothing about the show, other than the fact that it represents a fictional meeting between composers Scott Joplin and Irving Berlin. Here's an edited version of the Roundabout's publicity blurb:

Irving Berlin and Scott Joplin share an evening of fascinating stories and toe-tapping rhythms. The Tin Pan Alley Rag weaves their tales together, as two great icons discover they have more in common than they ever imagined.

Hmm. Seems like the sort of show that could either be very compelling or dreadfully academic. Librettist Mark Saltzman apparently interweaves songs from the Joplin and Berlin songbooks. I haven't come across Saltzman before, but it appears that he started writing for "Sesame Street," and contributed material to A...My Name is Alice. There's not much else on his resume that I recognize, so at this point Saltzman is a bit of an unknown variable.

One thing I noticed while researching TPAR was its top ticket price of $85. It got me thinking about the going rate for Off-Broadway musicals, so I did some poking around. Here's what I found:

• The Toxic Avenger: $71.50
• Altar Boyz: $75
• The Fantasticks: $76
• The Marvelous Wonderettes: $75
• Vanities: $75

It's interesting to note that the Roundabout recently announced a top ticket price for its upcoming Broadway revival of Bye Bye Birdie of $136.50. So the folks at the Roundabout seem to have no problem being on the cutting edge of ticket prices, even if they seem to be lagging somewhat in the show-quality department, at least of late. Will The Tin Pan Alley Rag be able to justify its $10 premium? I'll be seeing the show next week, along with Vanities, The Marvelous Wonderettes, and the second two plays in The Norman Conquests cycle. Watch this space for my reviews.

Sondheim's Road Show on CD

A new recording of a Stephen Sondheim show is always a reason to, if not celebrate, at least pay attention. And when the show itself is new, or at least contains a significant amount of fresh material, even better. So, although Road Show could not, in the strictest sense of the word, be called new, it does represent a chance to witness the latest work by our greatest living composer and lyricist.

As you may know, Road Show is the most recent version of a musical that Sondheim and librettist John Weidman have been working on for years. In fact, the score has already been recorded, under the title Bounce. Which means that we musical-theater mavens now have a terrific opportunity to compare the two recordings and witness how the show has developed over time.

Of course, the experience would be that much better if the show itself were any good. Alas, it is not. In comparing the two recordings, it's clear that the show has improved greatly since its out-of-town tryouts in Chicago and Washington, DC. Most of the changes and cuts have been for the better. But ultimately Road Show will likely take its place alongside such fascinating Sondheim failures as Anyone Can Whistle and Merrily We Roll Along: musical works that have a tremendous amount going for them, but somehow never have, and never will, work as shows.

As is true with most Sondheim scores, repeated hearings of the Road Show recording have revealed a great deal of substance and subtext. I was particularly struck by Sondheim's use of leitmotif, or in this particular case contrafactum: the songs "Gold" and "Land Boom" share the same melody, as do a few other sections of the show that all connote some sort of persuasion or salesmanship. Although most of the show's ballads remain colorless and dull, Sondheim has tuned up considerably the show's uptempo musical sequences, including "Addison's Trip" and "I Love This Town," which here becomes the rousing "That Was a Year." There have also been a number of wisely excised numbers in the transition from Bounce to Road Show, including "Opportunity," "What's Your Rush," and "Next to You."

But I'm still left with the same overall impression I had when I saw the show at the Public Theater: that this is a show that must have seemed compelling on paper, but that fails to bring its characters and subject matter to sympathetic life. (Read my review) The key problem with Road Show is that we don't care about these people. I watched the show and listened to the CD with academic interest, but I never found myself actually feeling for anyone, despite the cast of theater pros, led by Alexander Gemignani and Michael Cerveris.

Of course, Stephen Sondheim could stop working entirely and still be the most important figure in musical theater of the past 50 years. His contributions to the form have been immeasurable, both in terms of his own professional output and his influence on other creators. How fortunate we would be if he could someday create another show on par with his best. If not, his rich and ample body of work remains to satisfy and inspire for generations to come.

With Voices Raised - Happy 4th

Ten years ago today, I sang with the Boston Pops on national TV. It was quite a thrill. I was invited, along with ten of my friends from the Boston Gay Men's Chorus, to sing in the world premiere of a new piece by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, of Ragtime fame, called "With Voices Raised." Guest performers included Broadway performers, and married couple, Jason Danieley and Marin Mazzie. Click here to see a Youtube video of the TV performance.

"With Voices Raised" was commissioned by the Pops as a celebration of the new century, told through the filter of the struggle for equal rights by women, African Americans, and gays and lesbians. To underscore the civil-rights angle, the Pops invited guest singers from a number of local choruses, including the BGMC and a community gospel choir. We also recorded "With Voices Raised" on the Pops CD A Splash of Pops, along with the beautiful and moving "Lift Every Voice and Sing," the African-American national anthem.

Ten years later, it's interesting to note the progress that we've made as a society, including an African-American president, and five states that allow same-sex marriage. But it's also sobering to contemplate how much further we need to go: Don't Ask Don't Tell, The Defense of Marriage Act, forty-five states that don't allow same-sex marriage. So, on this Independence Day, let us indeed celebrate those freedoms for which we fought and that we hold dear. But let us also develop a firmer resolve to work towards and demand those rights that are still denied to us, and the lack of which makes us all less free.

Musicals in Mufti - Knickerbocker Holiday

One of the key themes of my musical-theater history course at the Boston Conservatory is that art is a product of the time in which it is created. A great way to witness this notion is to look at the Broadway musicals of the 1920s and 1930s.

The '20s were a time of hedonism and frivolity in the U.S., and most of the musicals of the time reflected this fact. Then came the Great Depression, which changed so many aspects of American life, including musical theater. Of course, there were far fewer shows, and many of them were just as fluffy and forgettable as those of he '20s. But now the shows didn't so much reflect the world around them as offer viewers escape from their increasingly dismal lives. 

However, with the seeming collapse of capitalism came an increasingly satiric impulse on the part of the creators of musical theater. Such mordant book musicals as Of Thee I Sing and Strike Up the Band, and such ironic revues as Pins and Needles and As Thousands Cheer revealed a desire on the part of the likes of George S. Kaufman, Moss Hart, Irving Berlin, and George and Ira Gershwin to speak out about the world around them, and to set the goings on into caustic relief.

Enter Kurt Weill, fresh from his productive but volatile collaborations with playwright Bertolt Brecht. Weill was no mere tunesmith, but rather a serious artist intent on using his gifts to illuminate the world around him. Before he went on to create such classics as Lady in the Dark and Lost in the Stars, Weill tested the Broadway waters with agitprop (Johnny Johnson) and allegory (Knickerbocker Holiday).

All of which is by way of introduction to the topic of today's lecture...er, I mean blog post, the York Theater Company's recent presentation of Knickerbocker Holiday as part of its "Musicals in Mufti" concert series. "Mufti" is a Middle Eastern word for "in plain clothes," which pretty much describes the atmosphere and purpose of the concert series: straightforward presentations of underrepresented shows without the frills. Think of it as Encores on a budget.

Knickerbocker Holiday was the first of two collaborations Weill had with poet and playwright Maxwell Anderson, the second being Lost in the Stars. Knickerbocker was not a major success, but it did run for 168 performances in 1938 and 1939, which at the time was enough for the show to make a modest profit. The score gave rise to two timeless classics, the plaintive "September Song," and the gorgeous "It Never Was You," one of my primary candidates for the most beautiful song ever written.

According to Stanley Green in his indispensable book, Broadway Musicals Show by Show, Knickerbocker Holiday was probably "the first musical to use [a] historical subject as the means by which views on contemporary matters could be expressed." The subject here was Peter Stuyvesant, autocratic governor of 1647 New Amsterdam, which we now know as New York. The theme is essentially totalitarianism versus democracy. Which makes sense, given that Weill was an expat from Nazi Germany, but the actual focus of the satire here is...Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Evidently, Maxwell and Weill were critics of FDR and the New Deal, and saw this show as a chance to comment on the president's supposedly dictatorial tendencies. Yeah, I don't get it either, and the muddled message of the show certainly doesn't make things plain.

The show, at least as presented here in Mufti form, was pretty static and unengaging, although I do give the folks at the York props for dusting off this rickety and nearly-forgotten show and giving it an airing. Much of Weill's score reflects the stand-and-sing tendencies of operetta, as do Maxwell's dense book and lyrics. The songs have little if any forward motion, and clearly reflect the influence of Brecht, telling seemingly unrelated stories and trafficking in pedantic aphorism. To be fair, Knickerbocker Holiday was written before the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, so it's a bit unfair to judge the show by modern standards. If the show is more akin to operetta than musical comedy, it's important to note that it arose at a time when a hybrid of the two was slowly emerging.

As for the satire, there are a few ham-handed jibes at political corruption, and some rather clumsy attempts to establish what it means to be an American. But there are quite a few elements of the show's message that have proved to be remarkably prescient: the notion that a leader is above the law (George W. Bush/Dick Cheney); the idea of profiteering by selling arms to the enemy (Iran/Contra); that imminent danger is a boon to government (9/11 and the Iraq War), that America grows fat and foolish without an enemy, so it's necessary for the government to create one (communism, terrorism), and the intolerance of legitimate opposition (The Iranian election). The moral of the show: all governments are stupid, incompetent, and corrupt, but at least democracy is efficiently corrupt.

Starting next semester, I'm adding staged readings of obscure but historically important musicals to my BoCo course. Seeing Knickerbocker Holiday in concert has helped me to lower my expectations as to the entertainment value of such an enterprise, although the primary value of the readings will be educational. The cast for Knickerbocker was about as good as you could hope for, comprising such seasoned professionals as Martin Vidnovic, Walter Charles, and William Parry. Also on hand were some admirable younger performers, such as Josh Grisetti, who starred in the York's hit production of Enter Laughing and will soon make his Broadway debut as Eugene Jerome in the upcoming revival of Neil Simon's Broadway Bound. If even this stellar cast of performers has a hard time bringing a creaky show to life, I think it's important for me and my students to modulate our expectations.

The Wiz at City Center

There aren't very many popular musicals that I haven't seen, even if it's just been a local production. But for some reason I had never seen The Wiz. I had read the script, heard the score, and seen snatches of the dreadful film version, but it wasn't until this past weekend that I actually saw The Wiz live on stage at City Center, under the auspices of Encores Summers Stars. 

I could have waited a bit longer.

Overall, I found The Wiz to be a yawn-fest. It would be far too easy to blame director Thomas Kail, but in truth there's only so much that he could do with this raw material, which is sorely lacking in so many respects. The culprits here are librettist William F. Brown and composer/lyricist Charlie Smalls. Because the main problems with the show are the paper-thin book, cardboard characters, and unremarkable score.

Sure, there's "Ease on Down the Road" and "Everybody Rejoice (Brand New Day)," the latter of which was written not by Smalls but by Luther Vandross. But few, if any, of the other songs really stick, nor do they especially illuminate anything interesting within the context of the show. Particularly pointless are "The Feeling We Once Had" and "A Rested Body is a Rested Mind," both sung here to little effect by the otherwise wonderful LaChanze. To be fair, the underwhelming impact she makes in this show is likely to be a function of the underwritten nature of the roles she plays (Aunt Em and Glinda).

Then again, all the parts in The Wiz are underwritten. Act one is merely a perfunctory succession of uninspired numbers introducing the various iconic characters, with precious little development in between. There are quite a few strong performances in the City Center production, particularly from James Monroe Iglehart as the Lion, Joshua Henry as the Tin Man, Dawnn Lewis as Addaperle, and Tichina Arnold as Evillene, all of whom do their best to inject life into what is essentially a moribund property. Not doing the material any favors was Orlando Jones in the title role. I would much rather have seen the phenomenal Colman Domingo, who has replaced Jones for the last week of the run. The admittedly talented Jones tries gamely, but to little lasting effect.

Since I pay virtually no attention to popular music, I had never before heard of Ashanti, who plays Dorothy. From the crowd reaction, I guess she must be pretty popular, but I found her singing here bland. Plus, her acting skills and stage presence were negligible, made all the more obvious by the pros surrounding her. Of course, the character of Dorothy in this show is merely a cipher, a thin pretext for the goings on surrounding her. At the end of the show, with the song "Home," Ashanti finally gets to show why she was cast in the first place: to sing long, loud notes. But along the way, the thinly drawn character, combined with her lack of presence, make for a rather anonymous leading lady.

There were certainly some highlights to the production, including Andy Blankenbuehler's vigorous choreography. Blankenbuehler is much more in his idiom here than he was in 9 to 5, the choreography to which I found laughably inappropriate. And there were some rather colorful and ingenious costumes and set pieces, particularly during "Brand New Day." Plus, it was rather eerie to see this show two days after the death of Michael Jackson. Of course, there's the fact that he starred in the lamentable movie version, but there were also numerous references to him in the choreography, although it's not clear whether those had been there prior to Jackson's death.

The Wiz plays at City Center through July 5th. I wouldn't be in any overwhelming hurry, if I were you. But if you happen to be in the city, and have nothing else that you would rather see, and someone hands you a free ticket, and offers to drive you to and from the theater, and promises to simonize your car while you're watching the show...

The Little Mermaid Will Close August 30th

In a bit of a surprise move, Disney has announced that it will close down the Broadway production of The Little Mermaid on August 30th. (This is a particular bummer for Boston Conservatory folk, since BoCo alum Chelsea Morgan Stock just took over the lead after understudying the part, and performing in the chorus, since the show opened.) When the The Little Mermaid closes, it will have played 50 previews and 685 performances. That admittedly disappointing run will at least put it past Tarzan, which closed after 486 performances.

Why is this surprising? To be sure, The Little Mermaid opened to some pretty dismal reviews, and was completely shut out at the 2007 Tony Awards. But the show really hasn't been doing that badly at the box office. The weekly grosses have been consistently over $600,000 since March, and lately have been coming in at about $800,000. If that level of weekly income isn't covering the show's nut, then that's just bad producing on Disney's part. What's more, Mary Poppins hasn't been doing all that much better at the box office. Perhaps we'll hear another closing announcement from Disney sometime soon?

In their announcement about closing The Little Mermaid, the folks at Disney acknowledge that the show has been having, and will likely to continue to have, a good summer. But then there's the fall:

We are tremendously proud of the show and are confident we'll have an excellent summer but it would be fiscally irresponsible to our shareholders to risk operating losses with such a big show in the historically challenging fall months. We are closing the Broadway production to concentrate on the long future life of this title...

That's actually some remarkably frank language from a company not known for its glasnost. As for the "future" of The Little Mermaid, the show will launch a national tour in 2010. The show is likely to do well in the provinces, where people don't necessarily read Broadway reviews, and will be attracted to both the Disney brand and the name-recognition from the original movie. And there will probably be international productions as well. Tarzan, it turns out, has become quite a popular show in the Netherlands and Germany.

The closure of The Little Mermaid frees up the hideously decorated but conveniently located Lunt-Fontanne Theater. Playbill.com reports that there are rumors that the theater's next tenant will be the upcoming musical version of The Addams Family. (The cast of which is looking pretty darned fabulous: Nathan Lane, Bebe Neuwirth, Kevin Chamberlin, Jackie Hoffman, Terrence Mann, Carolee Carmello, and Wesley Taylor.) Watch this space for more details.