Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals

Kern & Hammerstein's Sunny - A Staged Reading

Dear Reader: My humblest apologies for my extended absence from the blogosphere. I've been caught up in teaching, and the semester has really gone into high gear. But one of the things that has been keeping me busy might be of interest to some of you. Here's the director's note from my staged reading this semester. The shows are Thursday April 4th at 8:15 pm and Saturday April 6th at 8 pm. If you're in the Boston area and are interested in attending, drop me a line. --C.C.

Welcome to Sunny.

This is the ninth in a series of staged readings that I launched in the fall of 2009 as part of my course in the history of musical theater at the Boston Conservatory. The idea behind the series was to expose students to historically significant but underperformed musicals as part of their overall introduction to, and immersion in, the musical-theater form. In the past four years, we’ve covered a wide range of important yet forgotten musicals, and along the way the students have been able to roll up their sleeves and delve into the respective genres that the shows represent.

Here are the shows from the series so far: Little Johnny Jones, Very Good Eddie, As Thousands Cheer, Allegro, Bloomer Girl, The Cradle Will Rock, Something for the Boys, A Connecticut Yankee, and now Sunny.

Because we performed A Connecticut Yankee in the fall, which gave us a glimpse of Rodgers before Hammerstein, I wanted to do something in the spring that represented Hammerstein before Rodgers. And I knew that the best show to do that would be Sunny (1925), Hammerstein’s first collaboration with composer Jerome Kern, shortly before they would work together on the ground-breaking show, Show Boat (1927). Beyond that historic match-up of talent, Sunny also represents a significant subgenre of 1920s musical comedy: the rags-to-riches Cinderella story.

Sunny came to Broadway in 1925, a time when musicals were fast, fun, and forgettable. Creators usually only labored on these shows for a few months, and were frequently working on more than one show at the same time. The economics of the time allowed for producers to make a profit with as few as 100 performances, and then shows would close and make way for the next disposable musical.

Sunny ran for 507 performances, which is astonishing, at least based on the criteria of the day. But then, the show pretty much disappeared like most every other musical from the 1920s, with the exception of Show Boat, Good News, and No, No, Nanette. And even these shows have only survived after major and continuous revisions.

The era of frivolous, frothy, ephemeral musicals was undeniably fun while it lasted, particularly for fans of madcap comedy and high-toned operetta. The same week that Sunny opened in New York, Broadway also saw the debuts of the aforementioned No, No, Nanette , Rodgers and Hart’s Dearest Enemy, and Rudolph Friml’s The Vagabond King. These shows joined the already-running  Rose-Marie (Friml, Hammerstein), The Student Prince (Romberg), The Cocoanuts (Irving Berlin, writing for The Marx Brothers) and Tip-Toes (The Gershwins).

Sunny itself represents a case study of sorts that illuminates how the typical show was cobbled together at the time. Frequently the shows were cast before they were written, and each of the stars would typically have his or her demands, putting the writers in the awkward position of trying to accommodate everybody and still have a workable show.

For example, the star of Sunny was the radiant Marilyn Miller, a major stage star at the time, and a favorite of Florenz Ziegfeld. Miller had scored a triumph five years earlier with Jerome Kern’s Sally (1920), and had since become Broadway’s little darling.  Legend has it that, after Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein played the score to Sunny for Miller, she replied, “Never mind that, honey, when do I get to do my tap specialty?” (Miller’s dance numbers were choreographed by a young vaudeville and stage performer named Fred Astaire. Whatever happened to him?)

Miller’s contract also called for her to appear in jodhpurs (aka riding pants) at some point in the show, even before anyone involved knew what the show was going to be about. Why? Because Miller thought she looked rather fetching in a riding habit. The authors obliged by inserting a fun but gratuitous fox-hunt scene, although admittedly the scene does bring about the show’s denouement. 

Even more ridiculous, another performer in Sunny, Cliff Edwards (who many of you may know as the voice of Jiminy Cricket in Walt Disney’s “Pinocchio”) had a codicil in his contract guaranteeing that he would be alone on-stage between 10:00 and 10:15 p.m. performing his ukulele specialty. (In vaudeville, Edwards was also known as “Ukulele Ike.”) So, in the middle of act two, apropos of nothing whatsoever, Edwards would come on stage and sing “Paddlin’ Madeline Home,” which was written by Harry W. Woods rather than the Sunny team. When Edwards left the show, his bit was replaced by a harmonica specialty with Borrah Minevitch.

Somehow, the Sunny creators were able to fit everything together in workable, although uninspired, plot: an English circus performer, Sunny, encounters two American soldiers whom she befriended when she was entraining during World War I. She has fallen in love with Tom, one of the soldiers, so she stows away on the ocean liner that Tom and his friends are taking back home to America. When Sunny gets caught as a stowaway, she marries Tom’s best friend Jim for American citizenship so she won’t be deported.

And havoc ensues, as they say. In the American version of the show, Sunny divorces Jim and ends up with Tom at the end of the show. In other productions, she and Jim decide to stay with each other. (Which ending will we see tonight, I wonder…)

Sunny’s greatest and lasting significance lies in having brought about the first collaboration of Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern. What’s more, the experienced Otto Harbach acted as a mentor to the fledgling Hammerstein, setting the standard for mentorship that Hammerstein would famously continue with Stephen Sondheim. In fact, Hammerstein became more than just a mentor to Sondheim. He became a sort of surrogate father. Sondheim would then continue the cycle with Jonathan Larsen, Jason Robert Brown and others. In a way, we have Otto Harbach to thank for setting this vital mentorship cycle into motion.

Kern and Hammerstein would continue to collaborate together over the years, both on full-scale Broadway productions (Sweet Adeline, The Cat and The Fiddle, Music in the Air, Very Warm for May) as well as songs for Hollywood and the hit parade (“I Won’t Dance,” “The Last Time I Saw Paris,” etc.). 

Hearing the lyrics to the songs for Sunny, one gets the impression of a very promising but still developing young lyricist in Oscar Hammerstein. (Of course, Harbach and Hammerstein collaborated on the lyrics, so it’s difficult to discern which words belong to which man.) Some of the songs feature scansion that is slightly off. The song “D’Ye Love Me” contains a line that goes “Do you promise to love me always?” with the emphasis on the second syllable of “always.” (Actually the original lyric features the archaic word “alway,” which we have changed here for the sake of clarity.)

Similarly, in “When We Get Our Divorce,” the lyric includes the phrase “interlocutory decree” (which is simply a temporary judgment from a court of law). The rhythm of the music has the singer stressing the word as “in-TER-low-cue-TOR-ee,” whereas the actual pronunciation would be more likely to be “in-ter-LOC-you-tor-ee.” There, is however, a rather clever trick rhyme in the song, paring “testify” with “best if I,”  which together with the above produces a portrait of an ambitious artist trying new things and finding his feet in the form that he would eventually revolutionize.

Yet, despite its flaws, Sunny is a delight. It’s all a bit silly, but it’s really rather fun. The show also contains some of Jerome Kern’s sprightly yet forgotten tunes, and gives us a glimpse not merely into the carefree, madcap lifestyle of the 1920s, but also into the way in which that lifestyle was reflected in the musicals of the time. We can also witness one of the masters of the form cutting his teeth and moving towards a brand of musical theater that would bring the form from mere entertainment to actual art.

In the 1920s, neither the fizzy musical comedies nor the foppish operettas had succeeded in providing relevant, credible drama beyond the admittedly appealing attributes of each genre. It would take Oscar Hammerstein, a man who had received his apprenticeship in both musical comedy and operetta, to fuse the two together and thereby create the modern, integrated musical play. 

Welcome. And please enjoy Sunny.

The "Most Underrated" Musical - Fall 2012

Gee, you folks really like lists, don't you? Well, I'm more than happy to comply.

I recently posted this semester's list of the "most overrated" musicals, as selected and defended by my current crop of students in my musical-theater history course at the Boston Conservatory. Many of you commented on the selections -- some agog, some aghast -- and said that you were looking forward to their selections of the "most underrated" musicals.

As promised, here we go, with the usual caveats. Students typically discuss their choices with me before they sit down to write, and I try to steer them toward shows that lend themselves to the "underrated" treatment, and away from the shows that don't work as well. So the following list is decidedly unscientific, and heavily influenced by yours truly.

Why is it that some shows work for this paper and some don't? Well, essentially, I use this paper to give the students an opportunity to start spotting and analyzing the various innovations, techniques, devices, and other signs of a quality musical that we're exploring in the course. Of course, most of these innovations spring from our discussions of Rodgers and Hammerstein. (e.g. integrated songs, dramatically purposeful dance, extended musical scenes/sequences, effective character arcs, uses of leitmotif and the dramatic reprise, etc.) So shows that don't adhere to the R&H revolution (Mamma Mia, Jersey Boys), or shows that come later in the historical sequence and deliberately subvert the innovations (Chicago, Cabaret, Movin' Out, Contact, The Drowsy Chaperone) are much harder for the students to defend, at least at this point in the course.

That said, here are the shows that received multiple "votes":

Wicked 18
The Light in the Piazza 4
The Scottsboro Boys 4
In the Heights 3
The Last Five Years 3
Once on This Island 3
Ragtime 3
Urinetown 3
110 in the Shade 2
Aida 2
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels 2
Floyd Collins 2
Legally Blonde 2
Seussical 2
Titanic 2

And here are the shows that received one "vote" each:

Annie Get Your Gun, Assassins, Bat Boy, Camelot, Children of Eden, GreyGardens, Little Women, Merrily We Roll Along, Once Upon a Mattress, Sunday in the Park With George, Parade, Passion, Pippin, She Loves Me, SideShow, The Color Purple, The Great American Trailer Park Musical, The Phantom ofthe Opera, The Secret Garden, Thoroughly Modern Millie.

So, what exactly do we mean here by "underrated"? Well, essentially, there are two broad categories of underrated shows: hidden gems that don't get the attention they deserve, and big blockbusters that frequently get dismissed as being too frothy, too spectacular, too...well...popular.

Ergo, Wicked, clearly this year's winner, and by quite a hefty margin. I'm sure the fact that I consider Wicked underrated myself frees my students up to express their affection for the show, an affection that is often met with derision from their peers. I frequently receive comments on my own list of the most underrated musicals, particular as to how I could possibly consider Wicked to be underrated. The comments are sometimes impolitely incredulous. "Wicked!? UNDERRATED?! [scoff] How could you possibly consider Wicked underrated!? [sneer] It's, like, the most overrated show, like, EVER!!" (Actually, I should probably add some more egregiously capitalized words here, and maybe a dozen more exclamation points, but you get the point.)

Well, when I say that Wicked is underrated, I mean exactly that. And I think the intensity of the incredulity of some of my commenters only serves to reinforce the notion that people don't give Wicked enough credit for being more than just entertaining. It's also smart. The characters are complex. Glinda and Fiyero claim to be shallow, at least at first, but Stephen Schwartz gives them complex rhymes and clever wordplay to make their eventual evolutions more credible. "Don't be offended by my frank analysis/Think of it as personality dialysis/Now that I've offered to become a pal, a sis-ter and adviser, there's nobody wiser."

Schwartz also makes liberal use of leitmotif ("Unlimited...", "I'm limited...") and includes a really effective dramatically purposeful reprise. In fact, I include the following paragraph in the directions for the underrated paper to give the students a sense of what I'm looking for:

Wicked has a number of clever musical devices that help audience members understand what the characters are feeling. One particularly effective device is the use of the dramatic reprise. In the first act, Elphaba sings a song called “I’m Not That Girl,” in which she laments that she could never gain the hand of Fiyero, the show’s main male love interest. Elphaba sings, “Don't dream too far. Don't lose sight of who you are. Don't remember that rush of joy. He could be that boy, but I'm not that girl.” Composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz paints a heartbreaking picture with just a few lines, nicely evoking Elphaba’s loneliness and resignation. But the real payoff comes later, when Glinda sings a reprise of “I’m Not That Girl.” The simple device of using the same song but switching characters deftly demonstrates not only that the tables have turned for Elphaba, but for Glinda as well. Glinda sings almost the exact same refrain as Elphaba, and the reprise is only four lines long, but it nonetheless conveys both Glinda’s loss and Elphaba’s gain.

What's more, Wicked is a terrific example of a show that people can enjoy on multiple levels. If you're just looking for spectacle and screlting, the show has both in abundant supply. But if you're willing to take a closer look at the underlying message of the show, it's actually fairly savvy when it comes to social commentary. Take, for example, the sly political reference in "Popular":

Celebrated heads of state,
Or even great communicators.
Did they have brains or knowledge?
Don't make me laugh.

They were popular.
Please, it's all about popular.
It's not about aptitude,
It's the way you're viewed.
So it's very shrewd to be
Very, very popular, like me.

And who was the great communicator? Why, Ronald Reagan, of course. The idiot who ruled our country for eight years, not because he was bright ("Not just because you're bright..."), but rather because he was charming and had a way of saying genuinely horrendous things in a way that was palatable to far too many people in this country. ("Romney...cough, cough...Romney...")

Is Wicked a masterpiece? Hardly. I've never really been a fan of the bland power ballad that is "As Long As You're Mine." And there are a few minor songs that don't really serve much more purpose that they would if they were simply turned into dialog. ("A Sentimental Man" and "Something Ba-a-a-a-ad") But, overall, I'm genuinely thrilled that Wicked has become the seemingly unstoppable blockbuster that it is. Think of all the kids that get turned on by musical theater because of Wicked. I'd rather see them swoon over Wicked than The Lion King, Mary Poppins, or [shudder] Spider-Man.

But, then, the current list of underrated musicals doesn't completely conform to my personal preferences. I'm not really much of a fan of In the Heights, although it has its heart in the right place and contains many elements of genuine quality. [SPOILER ALERT] I just can't quite get past the deus ex machina plot resolution. Everything works out just fine because someone wins the lottery? Really? That's the message we're giving out to people seeking upward mobility? Play the lottery? Haven't lotteries done enough damage? Preying on the poor with false hope, exhorting them to divert huge portions of their income based on infinitesimal odds? How about making the plot resolution based on someone making a decision to effect a major change in his or her life through personal initiative?

But enough of my tirades and encomiums. What do you think of this year's list, dear reader? Surprises? Omissions? I'm all ears. (Unless you use all caps and/or exclamation points. In which case, my ears shut down.)

The "Most Overrated" Musical - Fall 2012

"Oh, my God. That show is soooooo overrated."

One thing that musical-theater majors are never short on is attitude. And when I started teaching musical-theater history at the Boston Conservatory, I decided I wanted to tap into that attitude. So, I developed two introductory writing assignments to help me develop a sense of what my students were capable of, as well as to give students a chance to figure out what I was looking for on the midterm and the final.

As regular readers will recall, this led to The Most Overrated Musical^TM and The Most Underrated Musical^TM, in which students choose, develop and support their candidates, all while developing a stronger sense of what makes for a quality show, using themes, structures, techniques and innovations that we discuss during the course.

Of course, the students' actual choices are just a conceit to get them thinking. It really doesn't matter, ultimately, which show they choose, so long as they're developing their analytical writing skills. Nonetheless, I always like to share the lists of shows with my readers, because the lists serve as a sort of unscientific barometer of the MT zeitgeist. 

A few caveats: this list is heavily influenced by the discussions that students have with me before they write their papers. There are certain shows that I steer students away from, and other shows that I point students toward. So, again, this list is anything but scientific. Also, students can only write about shows for which they have direct access to the libretto. Between my own collection and that of the Boston Conservatory library, the students have access to hundreds of scripts. But, for instance, neither I nor the library has a copy of the script to The Lion King, which comes up a lot as a candidate.

So, after much ado, here's this year's list, with my attendant comments, harangues, dogmas, digressions, and miscellany. These are the shows that received more than one "vote" (i.e. the number of students who chose to write about that show as being "overrated"):  

Legally Blonde 9
Phantom of the Opera 8
Annie 6
Anything Goes 5
Bye Bye Birdie 5
Les Miserables 5
Hair 4
Rent 4
Spring Awakening 4
Memphis 3
Pippin 2
The Wild Party (Lippa) 2
Sweet Charity 2
South Pacific 2

And here are the shows that received one "vote" each:

Evita, Annie Get Your Gun, The Music Man, Funny Girl, Children of Eden, Ragtime, Big River, Promises Promises, In the Heights, Miss Saigon, Beauty and the Beast, The Sound of Music, Damn Yankees, We Will Rock You

So, whaddya, think? Some pretty clear trends here. First, I tell students that there are essentially two classes of overrated shows: the "bloated blockbuster" versus the "shows that make MTs swoon." Clearly, The Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables fit into the former category, while The Wild Party and Children of Eden fit into the latter. In terms of sub-categories, there are the high-school perennials like Bye Bye Birdie and Anything Goes, and the modern-day power weepies like Rent and Spring Awakening.

And then there's Legally Blonde, which appears to be well on its way to becoming a high-school perennial. The show ran about 600 performances on Broadway, and as far as I can tell didn't recoup its original investment. The show received a much better reception in London, however, and recently ended a three-year run followed by a UK tour. It even won the Olivier Award for best musical. And yet my students clearly reflect the American attitude toward the show: not so much.

I must confess that, although I found Legally Blonde unbearably shrill when I first saw it, the cast recording is really starting to grow on me, mostly because of the work of composer/lyricist married couple Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin. (It's really no surprise that O'Keefe's work would become richer to me over time, since he's responsible for the score to one of my favorite shows of the last 15 years, Bat Boy.)

As I mentioned earlier, there are certain shows I steer students away from and others that I encourage them to consider for their papers. Over the ten years I've been teaching this course, I have found that, with certain shows, it's easier for students (generally freshmen in college) to figure out what's wrong and to provide specific support. With other shows, it's a lot harder to capture what's wrong. In fact, based on my life-long love of skiing, I've organized the usual suspects for the overrated paper into categories based on the trail-marking system that ski resorts use to steer skiers to slopes that match their level of ability. To wit:

GREEN CIRCLE (Easiest)
- Legally Blonde
- Annie
- Bye Bye Birdie
- The Sound of Music
- Spring Awakening
- The Phantom of the Opera
- Oliver
- Billy Elliot
- Anything Goes
- Newsies
- In the Heights
- Big River
- Sweet Charity
- Funny Girl

BLUE SQUARE (Harder)
- South Pacific
- Man of La Mancha
- Hair
- Les Miserables
- Thoroughly Modern Millie
- Mary Poppins
- Promises Promises
- 42nd Street
- Wicked
- Beauty and the Beast
- Rent
- Memphis
- The Music Man
- Pippin
- Miss Saigon
- The Wild Party (Lippa)
- Children of Eden
- Ragtime
- Evita

BLACK DIAMOND (Hardest)
- Cats
- Mamma Mia
- Passion
- Spamalot
- How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
- Grease
- The Drowsy Chaperone
- West Side Story
- Next to Normal
- Chicago
- Cabaret
- Gypsy
- Godspell
- Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
- Movin' Out

Bear in mind that these three lists have nothing to do with whether I personally find the shows in question good or bad. Some of these shows I love, others I despise. I'm just saying that, in terms of the criteria that we establish in my course (meaningful integration of song, demonstrable character arc, musical sophistication, etc.), it's a lot easier for my students to find something to criticize in Bye Bye Birdie or Spring Awakening than in Gypsy or Chicago.

Some of the more difficult shows are challenging because they represent some sort of satire or parody that the students have a more difficult time wrapping their minds around (e.g. How to Succeed or Grease). Others represent a sort of post-modern or meta show structure (e.g. Chicago, Cabaret, The Drowsy Chaperone) that we won't really get around to addressing until later in the course.

And then there's Cats. It might surprise some readers that I find Cats to be a black-diamond show, but consider this: What exactly is wrong with Cats? Is it bad because it has no plot? Well, it has about as much plot as Company. And it pretty much has the some plot as A Chorus Line. (A bunch of dancing performers get together to compete for a certain honor. They all get their moment in the sun, and at the end the sentimental favorite wins.)

I've only ever had one student who came close to capturing what is really wrong with Cats. She focused on the fact that Andrew Lloyd Webber stuck too close to the original T.S. Eliot poems, which are mostly written in the third person. As a result, we rarely hear any of the cats singing about themselves, rather we hear about them from a third party. So, we never develop a bond with anyone on-stage, with the exception of Grizabella, who sings one of the few songs in the show that wasn't based directly on one of Eliot's poems. Pretty savvy, huh?

So, what do you make of the list, dear reader? Any surprises here? Any glaring omissions? Gimme a holler.

Rodgers and Hart's A Connecticut Yankee - A Staged Reading

Dear Reader: As part of my course on the history of musical theater at the Boston Conservatory, I'm currently directing a staged reading of the Rodgers and Hart musical A Connecticut Yankee. What follows is my director's note from the show's program. The performances are this Friday, October 12th and Saturday, October 13th, both at 8 pm. If you're in the Boston area and would like to attend, call 617-912-9222 for reservations. Admission is free, but seating is limited, so reservations are recommended. --C.C.

When the Rodgers and Hart musical A Connecticut Yankee first appeared in New York City in 1927, the production ran a thoroughly respectable 421 performances. The economics of putting on musicals in the 1920s allowed shows to make a profit in as little as 100 performances, so this was more than enough of a run for the show to be considered successful. However, when A Connecticut Yankee was revived in 1943, the production was only able to eke out 135 performances, this despite two new Rodgers and Hart songs: “Can’t You Do a Friend a Favor?” and “To Keep My Love Alive.”

Why was the reception for the revival so much less welcoming? It helps to recall that Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s Show Boat made its maiden voyage in 1927, and that 1943 heralded the arrival of Oklahoma!, the iconic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. In 1927, A Connecticut Yankee reflected the typical show on Broadway at the time: flippant, frothy, forgettable, but nonetheless fun. Show Boat would, of course, change the course of musical theater, but it would take a good sixteen years for the innovations to fully take hold. By 1943, A Connecticut Yankee was a bit of a dinosaur, a fact made all the more apparent by Oklahoma! and the arrival of the fully integrated musical.

The irony here, of course, is that Richard Rodgers would be largely responsible for making the shows that he created with Lorenz Hart, including A Connecticut Yankee, a thing of the past. When Rodgers changed writing partners, from Hart to Hammerstein, he became part of the single most important partnership in musical-theater history, one that would reinvent the form and lay the foundation for the innovations of the future.

A Connecticut Yankee has since pretty much disappeared from the theatrical landscape, apart from a television production in the 1950s and a 2001 concert staging as part of the Encores! series at New York City Center. On the one hand, it’s a shame: the score represents Richard Rodgers at his most hummably melodic, Larry Hart at his most playfully inventive, and librettist Herbert Fields at his quip-master best.

But the show’s disappearance also makes perfect sense: the book is overly jokey, the songs are only partially integrated into the story, and the script contains numerous references to “specialties,” which in this case were essentially stand-alone dances that were intended to showcase particular performers, not further the plot.

The three men who created A Connecticut Yankee all grew up in the same part of New York City, within blocks of each other, in fact. Hart and Fields were slightly older than Rodgers, but they all went to the same summer camps, where they got their first experience at putting on stage shows and writing songs. Fields, of course, was the brother of now-famed lyricist Dorothy Fields, but he was also the son of Lew Fields, a hugely successful vaudeville performer, comedian, and eventually theater manager and producer. The elder Fields would become instrumental in providing opportunities for the three young men to get their work on stage.

Very early in their association together, the trio had the idea to turn Mark Twain’s satirical novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court into a musical. In fact, the Twain estate gave them the rights free of charge, if only for a year. It would take them years to actually write the show, and by that time they were already established writers and had to pay a premium for the stage rights to the novel.

In the 1920s, the songs for musicals were very often crafted not so much to serve a dramatic purpose as to become hits. A Connecticut Yankee certainly had its share of hits, including “Thou Swell” and “My Heart Stood Still.” The latter song has quite an interesting backstory, although the story of the song’s genesis is possibly apocryphal. The story goes that Rodgers and Hart were working in London and took a side trip to Paris. During a cab ride through the city, the taxi they were riding in was nearly involved in an accident. One of the young women who were riding with them apparently remarked, “Oh, my heart stood still!” Inspiration struck, and – voilà – a hit song.

What was definitely true is that Rodgers and Hart originally wrote “My Heart Stood Still” for London theater impresario C. B. Cochran, who was sort of the British counterpart to America’s Florenz Ziegfeld. Cochran included the song in his London Pavilion Revue in 1927. When Edward, the Prince of Wales (the same Edward who would later become King Edward VII, only to abdicate in order to marry Wallis Simpson), attended the show, he became an immediate fan of the song, and it went on to become a huge hit in Britain.

In fact, at one point, the legendary Beatrice Lillie wanted to include “My Heart Stood Still” in one of her stage shows. Both Rodgers and Hart felt that Lillie’s ironic performance style would be all wrong for the decidedly un-ironic song, so they claimed that they needed the song for the show that they were currently working on, which happened to be A Connecticut Yankee. However, in order to prevent Lillie from performing their song, they needed to purchase the rights back from C. B. Cochran, which set them back a reported $10,000 (roughly $127,000 in 2012 dollars).

The fact that Rodgers and Hart could take a song that was written for an entirely different production and insert it into A Connecticut Yankee is a fairly strong indication of how marginally integrated most of the songs in the show are. To be fair, this was 1927, and very few musical-theater practitioners were concerned about integration. (Show Boat and Oklahoma!, would change that.) And there are some genuine, albeit fledgling, attempts at integration in A Connecticut Yankee, including the show’s opening sequence, the opening of act 2, as well as a sequence introducing the audience to the court at Camelot.

But most of the remaining numbers in the show are virtually interchangeable. The secondary characters of Sir Galahad and Evelyn, his love interest, sing two songs that bear scant relation to the rest of the goings on in the show: “I Feel at Home With You” and “On a Desert Island With Thee,” although the latter gets points for at least throwing the idiomatic “thee” into the title. In fact, both numbers – and, indeed both characters – were excised from the 1955 television production of the show, without much effect to the plot.

One admittedly integrated song in the show’s score is “Thou Swell,” although the lyric is so dense it can be difficult to understand the song upon first hearing. When Hart was on his game, there were few lyricists who could surpass him in terms of verbal inventiveness (e.g. “I Wish I Were in Love Again” from Babes in Arms) and heartfelt simplicity (e.g. “My Funny Valentine” also from Babes in Arms). But Hart also displayed a strong tendency to write lyrics that were overly clever, calling attention to the wit of the lyricist rather than the plight of the character singing the song.

“Thou Swell” is arguably one of those songs. When A Connecticut Yankee was in production in 1927, many of those working on the show felt that the song’s lyric was perhaps a bit too dense and that the show might benefit from a new song in its place. But the song stayed, the audience response was very positive, and “Thou Swell” eventually made its way into the Great American Songbook, although this could be more due to Rodgers’ jaunty melody that Hart’s impenetrable lyric.

As for the Rodgers and Hart partnership, it was decidedly on the wane in 1943. In fact, while Rodgers and Hart were writing new songs for the revival of A Connecticut Yankee, Rodgers was also working with Oscar Hammerstein on Oklahoma!, the first of 9 stage shows the duo create together. Hart passed on Oklahoma!, reportedly because the rural setting didn’t really suit his writing style, but also because his famously dissolute lifestyle, including a significant dependency on and abuse of alcohol, was catching up with him. The last lyric Hart wrote was that of A Connecticut Yankee’s “To Keep My Love Alive,” a scathingly comic list song that represents Hart at his most clever, playful, and deeply sardonic.

The Bestest Musical Ever - Fall 2012

I love the fall. I've always been the type of nerd who couldn't wait to get back to school. And now that I teach full-time, that nerd-liness continues unabated.

Of course, one of the things that I look forward to the most is teaching my musical-theater history course, and this year I had something extra exciting to look forward to. For this academic year, my course is two-semesters long. Previously, it was only one semester for my freshmen sections, although last year I did get a chance to teach two semesters to the grad students for the first time.

And more students means more work, naturally, but for you, dear reader, it also means more robust lists. Every year, I start my course by asking students to write down the three best musicals of all time. We then make a list on the board of the shows that people have voted for, and then we start a discussion about what makes good shows good.

This year, I had 75 students in total voting, and here are their choices, as well as the number of students who chose that show as one of their top three:

West Side Story 25
Les Miserables 20
Ragtime 15
Into the Woods 14
Oklahoma 12
Hair 9
The Phantom of the Opera 8
Sweeney Todd 8
Rent 5
South Pacific 5
A Chorus Line 4
Carousel 4
In the Heights 4
My Fair Lady 4
Next to Normal 4
Singin' in the Rain 4
Spring Awakening 4
Sunday in the Park with George 4
Wicked 4
Anything Goes 3
The Light in the Piazza 3
The Music Man 3
Once 3
Parade 3
Porgy and Bess 3
Show Boat 3
The Sound of Music 3
Aida 2
Cabaret 2
Chicago 2
Gypsy 2
Hairspray 2
Kiss Me Kate 2
The Lion King 2
Miss Saigon 2

Here are the shows that received one vote each:

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Cinderella, Company, Crazy for You, Damn Yankees, Follies, Fosse, Good News, Grey Gardens, Guys and Dolls, Jersey Boys, Jesus Christ Superstar, Little Shop of Horrors, Mary Poppins, Memphis, Passion, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Songs for a New World, Spamalot, The Fantasticks, The Producers, The Rocky Horror Show, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Scottsboro Boys, The Wild Party (Lippa), The Wizard of Oz, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Urinetown

So, what do we see here? Well, as always, the students' choices are partly governed by which shows are currently, or were recently, playing on Broadway and/or touring the country. The presence of West Side Story at the top of the list was no doubt influenced by the national tour, which recently ended its trans-continental traverse. The similarly high ranking of Les Miserables and Into the Woods is likely related to the number of regional and high-school productions of those shows.

Rent is ranking much lower than it has in the past. Not sure what to make of that, other than the fact that more people are getting a chance to see it regionally, and it's possible that the show seems less impressive without professionals performing the vocally challenging score.

Spring Awakening also seems to have slipped in recent years. I'm thinking this is because the show needs a very strong directorial concept to work, and even though the show has been getting a lot of regional play, it's possible that in the absence of a strong director, people are noticing that the show itself isn't really that strong.

Wicked is ranking a lot lower than it has in the past. Perhaps the Future Show Queens of America (FSQA) have finally moved beyond the whole "Wicked is Like the Fiercest Show That Ever Was" (WILFSTEW) stage and started including other shows in their general barometer of fierce-osity. (Don't get me wrong. I love Wicked. But I also love when show queens broaden their horizons beyond Elphaba worship.)

It's wonderful to see Ragtime place so highly on this list. For years, I was concerned that Ragtime would sort of fade from the national consciousness, mostly under the presumption that not many local theaters would put the show on because of the controversial subject matter as well as because of the need for large numbers of African Americans, who traditionally haven't been as involved in community and regional theater. Thankfully, that seems to be changing, which gives more people a chance to see this powerful and challenging show.

So many classic shows placed relatively strongly on this year's list, including a big thumbs-up for Rodgers and Hammerstein shows, including Oklahoma, Carousel and South Pacific. Regular readers will recall my deep and abiding esteem for the first two of these shows, and my relative disdain for the last.

Among the new shows, Next to Normal has been holding fast over the past few semesters. This will likely continue as the show continues to catch on regionally. Regular readers will also recall my ambivalence about Next to Normal: I admire the craft of the show, but have significant problems with its apparent message regarding psychiatry. One lovely new addition to the list is Once, the big winner this year at the Tony Awards -- and rightly so -- and a significant financial success, having recently recouped its investment, and continuing to perform strongly at the box office, even in the traditional post-Labor Day drop-off.

There are always a few oddballs and aberrations on the list each year. Who'd a thunk Gypsy would rank so low? And after the wonderful revival of Follies last season, you'd think the show would get more than one vote, right? Also, why are Singin' in the Rain and The Wizard of Oz even on the list? I guess I should have specified that we would be focusing on stage musicals as opposed to movie musicals. (Sure, both shows have been done on the stage, but never very well, at least IMHO.)

How about you, dear reader? What do you notice in the list year's list? Any surprises, pleasant or otherwise? Any glaring omissions, from where you sit? Any shows included here that warm the cockles of your heart? Do the choices of these FSQAs give you hope for the future, or do they make you wish ever more strongly for a musical-theater time machine? Lemme know, m'kay?

 

Something for the Boys - A Staged Reading

What’s so special about Oklahoma!?

Seventy years ago when Oklahoma! premiered on the New York stage, it singlehandedly changed musical theater forever. Well, I say “singlehandedly,” but in fact composer Richard Rodgers and librettist/lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II didn’t so much innovate as bring the innovations together.

These two gentlemen had worked for decades prior to Oklahoma! to bring dramatic integrity to musical theater, and when they joined up as a team, their work became a culmination of years of experimentation, both in their own work and from the work of others.

Today, however, when some people see Oklahoma!, they often find it quaint, almost hokey, in its seemingly simple tale of a young woman and her momentous decision about who’s going to take her to the box social. People dismiss the show as old-fashioned, the songs as corny, and the creators themselves as hopelessly mired in the picturesque, and consequently of little relevance to our modern sensibilities.

What these people fail to realize is what a genuine revolution Oklahoma! represented to the development of musical theater. All you have to do is look at the typical show of the time – the early 1940s – to see how transformative Oklahoma! truly was.

And that’s why I decided that, as part of the staged-reading series for the musical-theater history course at the Boston Conservatory, I wanted to do Something for the Boys (1943), which was put together by legendary producer Mike Todd, who was famous for a certain kind of Broadway show. That type of show is perhaps best summarized by the famous quote that is often attributed to Todd (but is very likely apocryphal) when he supposedly walked out on Oklahoma! during the show’s intermission when the show was playing its out-of-town tryout engagement in New Haven:

“No legs, no jokes, no chance.”

This quip, whatever its actual source, pretty much sums up the appeal of most Broadway musicals prior to and concurrent with the run of Oklahoma!. The shows were typically empty-headed star vehicles with plenty of pretty girls and lots of corny topical jokes. The score often comprised a random list of songs usually only partially connected to the proceedings at hand. At the time, Broadway music and American popular music were pretty much synonymous, and show songs were often written not so much for character or context but rather to create hit records. Quite frequently, producers would throw in random novelty acts or include a song just to shine a spotlight on an up-and-coming performer (perhaps someone with whom the producer was romantically involved). Whatever dance occurred in the shows was usually mere decoration.

All of this was true of Something for the Boys, which premiered on Broadway in 1943, a mere two months before Oklahoma! hit the stage. The show had everything that was supposed to make a show a hit, at least at the time: a big-name star (Ethel Merman at the height of her box-office power), a score by one of the biggest names in the business (Cole Porter, almost twenty years into a long and successful career), and a book by two of the most reliable quipsters available at the time, brother and sister Herbert Fields and Dorothy Fields. The show also had plenty of opportunities for showing off female pulchritude, and a list of random interpolated “specialty” numbers.

Plus, the show took place on and outside an Army base near San Antonio, and thus tapped into the patriotic impulses of the ticket-buying public. The show even ends with a tribute to our fighting boys:

For we’ll all be doing something for the boys
While they’re doing so much for us

So, the show had everything, at least by the standards of musical theater in the early 1940s. And it certainly became a modest hit, running for just about a year, which was more than enough in the day for a show to turn a profit.  But then, Something for the Boys just disappeared, as did most of the shows prior to and concurrent with Oklahoma! and its Broadway run. Why?

In a word: integration. At the start of my history course, I write that word on the board and tell students that it will essentially become the theme of the entire course. In the context of musical theater, integration essentially means the extent to which the various elements of a show – musical, lyrics, dance, etc. – serve a dramatic purpose in the larger context of the show. Integrated songs progress the plot, reveal character, or establish time and place, with many elements serving a number of or even all of these functions.

Once the critics and the theater-going public got a taste of Oklahoma! and the integrative possibilities that the show reflected, they became less and less patient with the typical Broadway show that Something for the Boys so aptly represented. So the shows that lasted, the shows that we continue to perform and attend today, are mostly the shows that caught on to the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution.

The plot for Something for the Boys is particularly emblematic of the typical show of its time: three distant cousins jointly inherit a ramshackle Texas ranch. They renovate the house and open it up to servicemen’s wives from the local Army base. A jealous rival insinuates that the place is actually a bordello, so the commanding officer declares the house off limits. All is well at the end when the Blossom Hart, the Ethel Merman character, discovers that she can pick up radio signals through the carborundum in the fillings of her teeth. Yup, her teeth. This creates a classic deus ex machina plot resolution, and all is well with the world.

To hear the score to Something for the Boys by itself, you would have no idea what the story was, which is one of the surest signs of a non-integrated show. My personal favorite in this regard is “By the Mississinewah,” a racially insensitive (by today’s standards) duet in which Blossom and her cousin Chiquita perform a non-contextual number to entertain the troops at a graduation ceremony.  Now, admittedly, Rodgers and Hammerstein were certainly capable of including songs in their shows that were there for pure entertainment’s sake. (“Honey Bun” from South Pacific being a notable example.)

Don’t get me wrong: the songs for Something for the Boys are terrific, although none of them really became pop standards, as so many of Cole Porter’s other show songs were able to do. But one of the striking things about Something for the Boys is that you could conceivably take all of the songs out of the show, and the story would still work. As musical theater would progress, this would become less and less possible, to the point at which songs and dances have become such an essential part of the story-telling process that we have numerous examples of shows that are all-sung (Les Miserables, Once on This Island) or even all or mostly danced (Movin’ Out, Contact).

Next year, the Boston Conservatory will be putting on a production of Oklahoma!. This production of Something for the Boys is a chance for students and audience members to appreciate that show for the milestone it is.

If you're in the Boston area tonight or tomorrow night, and would like to see Something for the Boys, you can call 617-912-9144 for reservations. The shows are at 8 pm both nights in the Zack Box Theater. Admission is free, and seating is general admission.

The Cradle Will Rock - A Staged Reading

Dear Reader: As you may know, I, your humble blogger, teach musical-theater history at The Boston Conservatory. As part of my course, I direct a series of staged readings of historically important but underperformed shows. This weekend, my graduate students are performing The Cradle Will Rock. What follows is an excerpt from the director's note in the show's program. See the poster to the right for performance details. --C.C.

When was the last time a musical made history? The point is no doubt arguable, as there have certainly been many shows over the years that have reflected history and perhaps even influenced the course of human events, as it were.

But to find a show that actually made the history books -- and not just the musical-theater history books -- you'd probably have to go back to 1937 and The Cradle Will Rock. Here's a show that was so angry, so strident, so pointed in its satiric intent that people in high places actually considered it dangerous.

That's right. A musical, dangerous.

The Cradle Will Rock was the only significant musical-theater piece to emerge from the Federal Theater Project (FTP). The FTP was part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program, which included the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a program designed to get Americans in a wide variety of industries back to work during the Great Depression.The FTP was specifically designed to fund theater works and other performing-arts presentations, and was responsible for providing early employment to such later artistic greats as Arthur Miller, Orson Welles, John Houseman, Martin Ritt, Elia Kazan, and Marc Blitzstein.

Welles and Houseman, who at the time were in charge of the Federal Theater Project, chose The Cradle Will Rock -- with book music and lyrics by Marc Blitzstein -- for its 1937 season, with Houseman producing and Welles directing. Blitzstein's show is a savage satire of big business, as well as those who were all too willing to sell out to the rich and powerful, and showed no mercy in painting a broad and unflattering portrait of industrialists, the press, the clergy, medical professionals, academics, artists, and the military.

When Blitzstein was working on The Cradle Will Rock, he played the song "Nickel Under the Foot" for friend and mentor Bertolt Brecht. The song is sung by Moll, the prostitute and symbolic heart of the show, and is a heartbreaking lament on the caustic effects of poverty: 

And if you're sweet, then you'll grow rotten,
Your pretty heart covered over with soot.

The song also decries the actions of the supposedly upstanding people who surround Moll, and the ruthlessness with which they pursue personal gain:

Go stand on someone's neck while you're takin'
Cut into somebody's throat as you put.
For every dream and scheme's depending on whether
All through the storm, you've kept it warm.
The nickel under your foot.

Upon hearing the song, Brecht urged Blitzstein to use it as the central conceit of the show: prostitution, only not in the literal but rather the figurative sense. The stunning irony at the heart of The Cradle Will Rock is that the prostitute Moll is one of the only characters who doesn't sell out, who hasn't compromised her values, her talent, her dignity.

The Welles production was apparently going to be rather lavish, which was very in keeping with Welles' more-is-more style of directing, but which irked Blitzstein, who feared that his message might get lost amid the hoopla.

What happened next depends on which side you choose to believe. The political dynamic at the time was not unlike the one we see in Washington today, with Democrats pushing for jobs-creating spending initiatives, and Republicans pushing just as hard for spending cuts. When word came from Washington that The Cradle Will Rock would have to shut down, the official line was that Congress had put a freeze on arts spending. But it's also quite possible that even darker forces were at work: specifically the very wealthy industrialists that Blitzstein was attempting to savage in his piece were placing pressure on the government to shut down a production that might prove very embarrassing for a lot of influential people.

When Houseman, Welles, Blitzstein and the cast showed up to work one day, the theater had been padlocked and armed guards were on duty, supposedly to prevent anyone from absconding with the props and sets, which were technically government property.

Undeterred, the production staff secured another theater and a piano, and marched the entire cast and their ticket-bearing audience 20 blocks north in New York City to put on the show in their new location.

Meanwhile, Actors' Equity, the labor union representing actors, issued a ruling barring anyone from the cast from appearing on stage in this production, possibly as a result of pressure from outside forces. (The irony here is that the show essentially deals with attempts to unionize steelworkers in fictional Steeltown, USA and the powerful forces that attempt to stop the union from forming.)

At first, Blitzstein was going to perform the entire show solo, accompanying himself on the piano; since he wasn't an Equity member, the ruling didn't affect him. But as Blitzstein began to sing through the show, something magical and inspiring started to happen: the actors, one by one, began to sing and perform their parts from the audience, thus both defying the Equity edict and adhering to the letter, if not the spirit, of the law. (After all, no union member was actually appearing "on stage.")

This compelling scenario was made into the well-meaning but lackluster movie "Cradle Will Rock," written and directed by Tim Robbins. The movie attempts to bring these dramatic events to life, but is marred by Robbins' overly strident screenplay. The movie has a sensational cast (including Hank Azaria, Jack Black, Ruben Blades, Victoria Clark, Joan Cusack, John Cusack, Cary Elwes, Paul Giamatti, Cherry Jones, Bill Murray, Vanessa Redgrave, Susan Sarandon, John Turturro, and Emily Watson), but all that talent was unfortunately wasted amid Robbins' ham-fisted direction. 

As for the show itself, the score reflects Blitzstein at his most inventive, with haunting dissonant melodies alongside jaunty anxious anthems. Blitzstein was a serious composer who studied with such notable composers as Nadia Boulanger and Arnold Schoenberg. Although many have compared Blitzstein's compositional style to that of Kurt Weill, Blitzstein was openly critical of Weill, as well as other composers whom he felt were compromising their ambition in order to court popularity.

The characters in The Cradle Will Rock might appear to be no more than straw men and women. And, to a large extent, that's true. Blitzstein wasn't interested in portraying fully fledged humans, but rather exaggerated cartoons decrying the venality and hypocrisy that he saw around him. The show does have its tender moments, particularly those involving Moll and the sad druggist she encounters upon her arrest. And the strident, insolent, angry anthem "Joe Worker" ranks among the most powerful and effective songs in musical-theater history.

Given the modern resonance the show has, what with all this talk about the 99%, efforts on the part of certain billionaires to control the media, to influence policy, to create even more privileges for the privileged, it's really quite surprising that the show hasn't received a major New York production in almost 30 years. (Anyone out there care to remedy the situation?)

Care to discover what all the fuss was about back in 1937? Why some people felt that this show was so provocative that it had to be stopped? I'm directing a staged reading of The Cradle Will Rock this weekend at the Boston Conservatory. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 pm in the Zack Box Theater. If you'd like to attend, email me for details.

Bloomer Girl - A Staged Reading

I hated history in high school. At the time, I thought this was simply because the subject didn't interest me, but I eventually came to understand that it was because my history teachers were somewhat perfunctory and uninspired in the way they presented the subject matter.

In college, I was "forced" to take a full year of world history, and wound up being rather pleasantly surprised by this rather delightful professor who related everything in the course to the art and music of the time periods in question. Want to know what Louis XIV was thinking? Take a look at some baroque architecture or listen to some Bach, he said. Interested in what the mindset was after the French Revolution? Check out a Delacroix painting or The Red and the Black.

As a result of that experience, I firmly believe in teaching history, and musical-theater history in particular, not merely as a series of dates and events, but in terms of the progression of ideas and the cultural, social, and political influences on those ideas. One of the most important themes in my musical-theater history course at the Boston Conservatory is the evolution in the portrayal of certain societal subgroups: African Americans, women, and members of the LGBT community. In researching the course syllabus, I was really struck by how many of the shows that I was hoping to cover reflected the changing attitudes toward -- and treatment of -- women, blacks, and gays, and how the shows presented in their way a sort of cultural history of each of those groups.

I was particularly struck when I came across Bloomer Girl, a show that I honestly hadn't really been familiar with prior to researching this course. But as soon as I started reading about the show, I knew I wanted to include it in the course. Bloomer Girl concerns itself with Amelia Bloomer, the inventor, naturally enough, of "bloomers," and her efforts to bring about women's suffrage in particular and women's rights in general. But the show also takes on the parallel struggle to abolish slavery and the workings of the Underground Railroad. Here was a show that addressed, dead on, two of the key themes that were emerging for my course, so two years ago when I initiated the series of staged readings that supplement my course, I knew that Bloomer Girl would be on my short list of shows that I wanted to present. But Bloomer Girl is more than just a history lesson: it's also a delightfully witty and tuneful reminder of musicals from a bygone era.

Given the personnel behind Bloomer Girl, it's really no surprise that the show would have such a strong social conscience. The show features a score by the glorious Harold Arlen, whom many people simply know as the composer of the glorious songs to the 1939 film, "The Wizard of Oz." But Arlen also created the scores to about a dozen Broadway shows, including quite a few shows with all-or-mostly-black casts, including St. Louis Woman, House of Flowers, and Jamaica. E.Y. "Yip" Harburg, Arlen's lyricist for Bloomer Girl, not to mention "The Wizard of Oz," had a similar history of contributing shows with inclusive content, including lyrics for the lighthearted sardonic revue Life Begins at 8:40 (which he also wrote with Arlen), book and lyrics for the scathingly funny social satire Finian's Rainbow (with Bloomer Girl librettist Fred Saidy), and book and lyrics to the outrageously bizarre but fascinating send-up of big business, Flahooley (also with Fred Saidy).

The original cast of Bloomer Girl (1944) featured Celeste Holm in the lead female role of Evalina. Holm was fresh off her star-making role as Ado Annie in Oklahoma, and Joan McCracken (the future ex-Mrs. Bob Fosse), who practically stole Bloomer Girl out from under Holm as the maid Daisy, was fresh out of Oklahoma as well. Also making the trip from Oklahoma to Cicero Falls, New York, was choreographer Agnes de Mille. The reviews and historical accounts of Bloomer Girl point to de Mille's choreography, in particular her legendary Civil War ballet, as being one of many highlights from the show, which ran an impressive 657 performances, or about 18 months.

Because we have only 4 days of rehearsal for these staged readings, my cast will, alas, not be performing the ballet, or any of the de Mille dances for that matter, but if you click on the link above, you can watch a video of the ballet, which comes from a 1956 television broadcast of Bloomer Girl, starring Barbara Cook and Keith Andes. Bloomer Girl has since all but vanished from view, save for a 2001 concert production by Encores, but the somewhat truncated cast recording serves to remind us of Arlen's eclectic score, Harburg's witty and evocative lyrics, and the dynamic performances of Holm, McCracken, and their able supporting cast.

(An interesting footnote: Bloomer Girl features a dramatically purposeful and symbolic performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin during the second act of the show. This was some six years before the Jerome Robbins ballet, "Small House of Uncle Thomas" in The King and I. As I always say to my students, there's really no such thing as an original idea. What matters is the quality of the execution.) 

Bloomer Girl performances at the Boston Conservatory are December 7th and December 8th at 8 pm in the Zack Box Theater. Admission is free. Seating is on a first come-first served basis. Email me for more details.

Review - Show Boat at the Goodspeed Opera House

How can a show be a masterpiece if it has no official version? That's the question I always pose to my students when we cover Show Boat. There's no question that the show is historically significant. With Show Boat, librettist and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, along with composer Jerome Kern, introduced credible drama, three-dimensional characters, ambitious musical sequences, dramatically purposeful dance, and a host of other innovations to the musical stage.

But Show Boat has changed significantly since its 1927 premiere, with every subsequent stage version and movie treatment. Songs and scenes have come and gone. Depending on the version you happen to catch, the entire second act might look completely different from that of any previous production you may have seen. 

And the tinkering continues to this day with the current production at the Goodspeed Opera House, which opened this past Wednesday. The good folks at the Goodspeed set for themselves two primary challenges with this production: to find a way to make this sweeping pageant of a show work in the diminutive Opera House space, and to streamline the show to make the whole event clock in at around two and a half hours. I'm very happy to report that the Goodspeed production succeeds splendidly in its first goal, but as for hitting the mark on the second, well, the production is certainly swift and efficient, but at the expense of the human drama that's crucial to the overall effectiveness of the piece.

It's difficult to imagine that the Goodspeed has never done Show Boat before. The setting is perfect: the theater is perched on a scenic riverfront, and the building itself is a charming slice of Americana. Take a look at the photo to the right: doesn't it just look like the boat pictured above might pull up at the dock at any moment? Also, the Goodspeed auditorium looks as though it could be the actual hall from the titular show boat.

And this last point becomes one of the key elements in making Show Boat work in this compact house. The scenic design by Michael Schweikardt is both attractive and ingenious. In addition to designing a stunning set piece for the actual on-stage boat -- which places the audience on the ship rather than staring at the side of the boat, as many productions do -- Schweikardt takes full advantage of the Goodspeed auditorium, with its brass railings and horseshoe-shaped balcony, to create the illusion that the audience is actually in the hall of the show boat itself. It's simple but ingenious. I never got the sense that the show needed a bigger playing space. Not once. That's effective design. Director Rob Ruggiero shrewdly places performers throughout the hall throughout the show, and has cast members make many of their entrances and exits through the house to emphasize the atmospheric design of the show.

But whereas the design and direction make an asset out of the performance space, this script and score for this particular version of the show were somewhat less successful. The production staff have made what the press materials call "adjustments, edits, and changes," with the full knowledge and approval of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization. The result is streamlined and brisk, but emotionally a bit cold. Part of this might be the breakneck pacing. Even the song tempos seem accelerated, particularly in "Make Believe" and "Why Do I Love You?" I got the impression that Ruggiero was at the back of the house with a stopwatch, watching every song and scene with an eye toward efficiency.

But the real problem seemed to be that the staff have removed too much material that develops the central relationship, between Magnolia Hawks and Gaylord Ravenal. The role of Gaylord seems particularly pared down. As a result, the show hits all the important plot points, but doesn't give us time to stop and care about these people. Casting may be partly to blame here. Ben Davis as Ravenal has a terrific voice, but he doesn't have the physical countenance to give the role the larger-than-life quality it needs. Davis was never less than professional, but he wasn't dashing or charming, or full of the kind of dangerous appeal that Gaylord really needs to have to make the audience believe that Magnolia would fall for him at first sight. As Magnolia, Sarah Uriarte Berry started off a bit overly childish, but developed greater balance as the show progressed. She fared far better in act two, the events of which seem more suitable to a performer of Berry's experience.

[SPOILER ALERT: I reveal the final tag of the show in the last paragraph]

The rest of the cast was almost universally strong. Lenny Wolpe was flat-out adorable as Captain Andy Hawks, with a delightful sense of mischief and playfulness that made him the heart and soul of the show. Karen Murphy made for one of the most imposing, but ultimately charming, Parthys I've ever seen. David Aron Damane as Joe gave a positively stirring rendition of "Old Man River." The only significant hole in the supporting cast was Lesli Margherita as Julie, whose "Can't Help Loving That Man" was marred by histrionic, Elphaba-esque vocal affectations. And her "Bill" was somewhat bizarre. I'm not sure what she was going for here, but she came off a bit more wild-eyed than the role would seem to demand. (A special shout-out to three of my favorite students, making their professional acting debut in this production: Elizabeth Ann Berg, Robert Lance Mooney, and Adam Fenton Goddu. Remember, guys and dolls: Show...Boat = Two...Words. Embrace the space!)

One change that the production staff made to the show that worked extremely well here came at the very end of the show. Depending on the version of Show Boat you may have seen previously, the show probably ended with Magnolia and Ravenal seeing each other for the first time in 20 years. Often, the final tag of the show has Magnolia and Ravenal fondly watching their now-adult daughter Kim from afar as the music swells and the curtain falls. But here, Ravenal approaches Kim, who recognizes her father, and rushes to his embrace. For me, it was the most emotionally stirring moment in a show that ideally would have provided a whole lot more.

Rodgers & Hammerstein's Allegro - A Staged Reading

Each semester for the past two school years, I've used the students in my musical-theater history class as academic guinea pigs, as it were, and put on a staged reading of a historically important but relatively obscure musical. Past shows in this series have been George M. Cohan's Little Johnny Jones, Irving Berlin's As Thousands Cheer, and Very Good Eddie, one of the seminal "Princess" musicals.

This semester, I wanted to put on a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, and I knew that show had to be Allegro (1947). The gentlemen certainly had their share of hits, but they did produce a few not-so-hits along the way, including Pipe Dream and Me & Juliet. These shows are not without their charms, but they can hardly be considered revolutionary. Allegro was.

For the uninitiated, Allegro was R&H's third stage show, after Oklahoma and Carousel, and came out shortly after their only musical written directly for the movies, "State Fair," which won them an Oscar for best song ("It Might as Well Be Spring"). And Allegro is one of the most important musicals that most people have never even heard of.

Allegro is nothing if not ambitious. The show represented a serious attempt on Oscar Hammerstein's part to craft an original story, rather than an adaptation, and reflected numerous innovations in the musical-theater form. Allegro was the first of what we now consider the "concept" musicals, shows that explore a particular idea rather than tell a specific A-to-Z story. (Other concept musicals include Love Life, Cabaret, Chicago, Company, and The Scottsboro Boys.) The concept for Allegro was originally a cradle-to-grave story of a certain earnest everyman, and how modern life presents challenges to his integrity. The birth-to-death idea proved untenable, so Allegro wound up being the cradle-to-midlife-crisis story of one Joseph Taylor, Jr.

Because the story had a rather ambitious temporal arc, Hammerstein made significant use of an omniscient Greek chorus, which comments on the action to both the actors and the audience. The show's physical production concept - an open playing area with a cyclorama for projections, and small set pieces that moved in and out of the playing area - represented a break from the literal realism of musicals at the time. Allegro also heralded the rise of the director/choreographer, in this case, Agnes de Mille. When we think of director/choreographers, we typically think of the men: Bob Fosse, Michael Bennett, Jerome Robbins, etc. But Agnes de Mille took on this dual role before any of those guys did. 

So, Allegro is unquestionably a significant show. But is it any good?

Despite the biggest advance sale of any musical up to that time, Allegro sharply divided audience members and critics when it premiered in 1947. While some thought it sublime and appreciated the sheer ambition and scope of the show, others found it pretentious, preachy, and boring. Until my experience of actually directing the show, I fell into the latter camp. In his libretto, Hammerstein expresses the dangers of social climbing and rampant materialism, and on the printed page, and on its two extant recordings, the show comes off as cold, humorless, and didactic. But the show really comes alive on stage, thanks in no small part to Oscar Hammerstein's warm and three-dimensional characterizations and Richard Rodgers' thrilling and tuneful score.

Another potential problem with the show is that the central love story seems at first to be cynical and empty. That was by design, but it can make for an unsatisfying experience. Joe grows up to wed his childhood sweetheart, Jenny. Act 1 ends with their wedding, in which everyone onstage seems to question whether this is really a good idea. It's the sort of thing Stephen Sondheim could have pulled off with alacrity, but Hammerstein seems have had a hard time making it compelling. (Sondheim actually served as a production assistant during Allegro's tryout period, and points to Allegro as providing inspiration for much of his later work.) One of the things I've tried to do with this production is make Jenny a believable and sympathetic person, someone who simply has her own ideas about what she wants from life, and not a heartless, calculating monster.

One of most important influences that the shows of Rodgers and Hammerstein had on musical-theater history was the integration of dance into the dramatic fabric of the shows they produced. This began with Oklahoma, which contains numerous examples of dramatically purposeful dance, including "Kansas City," "Many a New Day," "The Farmer and the Cowman," and of course the famous dream ballet, AKA "Laurey Makes up Her Mind." Following this, we had Carousel, which includes a stunning opening pantomime set to some of Rodgers' most compelling and evocative music, the "Carousel Waltz," as well as an alternately raucous and heartfelt ballet that shows the central character, Billy Bigelow, the full extent of the damage he's done to the life of his daughter. And perhaps most thrilling of all is the glorious "Small House of Uncle Thomas" in The King & I, one of the best examples of dance that serves a central and thematic narrative purpose.

Perhaps not surprisingly, since Agnes de Mille was at the helm, Allegro originally had quite a bit of dance, including four separate ballets. Because I only have 5 rehearsals for these staged readings, it's really not possible for me to choreograph any complicated numbers, so I had to cut most, if not all, of the dance. But I think it's really interesting to note that the show's story still works without the dance, which probably means that, with all due respect to Agnes de Mille and her collaborators, the dance for Allegro isn't really all that central to the message of the show. Additive, yes, but not requisite.

Allegro has performances this Monday, April 11th and Tuesday, April 12th, both at 8 PM at The Boston Conservatory's Zack Box Theater. Admission is free, and seating is unreserved, general admission. If you're in the Boston area and would like to attend, shoot me a message. Remember that these are bare-bones productions, produced on less than a shoestring, and designed to showcase the work itself. Come experience some terrific young performers, and the glory of some of Rodgers and Hammerstein's best but least-known work.

The Most Underrated Musical - Spring 2011

Ah, spring break. Time for me to catch up on some long-overdue blogging.

Towards the start of each semester, the students in my musical-theater history course at the Boston Conservatory embark upon two writing projects: the Most Overrated Musical and the Most Underrated Musical. See below for the results to the former. Herein lie the results to the latter.

Major caveat: my students are unquestionably influenced in their choice of shows by my impassioned in-class rhetoric, as well as my previous posts and lists on the subject on this very blog. So this is a decidedly skewed sampling, one that doesn't even begin to approach scientific validity. Nonetheless, I like to post the results to give my readers a glimpse into what the theater queens of tomorrow are thinking with regard to overall show quality.

Here are the shows that received more than one "vote" each:

8 Wicked
4 The Wedding Singer
3 She Loves Me
2 Grey Gardens
2 Ragtime
2 Sunday in the Park With George
2 Titanic

And here are the shows that received one vote a piece:

Annie, Beauty and the Beast, Brigadoon, Bye Bye Birdie, Footloose, The Last Five Years, Legally Blonde, Les Miserables, The Light in the Piazza, The Most Happy Fella, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Secret Garden, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Tick Tick Boom, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Wicked?! How could anyone call Wicked underrated? It's one of the biggest hit shows in the history of ever!" Well, I offer my students a number of essential categories into which an "underrated" show might fall: an undiscovered or forgotten gem (She Loves Me, 110 in the Shade), a financially unsuccessful show that may have deserved a longer run (The Wedding Singer, A Catered Affair) or an overblown spectacle that doesn't get the credit it deserves (Wicked, Les Miserables). The idea isn't for students to make a watertight, unassailable case for the show in question. It's to get them thinking more analytically about the artistic value of the shows that they see and perform in.

I've always been a big fan of Wicked. I happen to think that it has a whole lot more going for it than simply a spectacular production and flying green witches. It also reflects a lot of the topics, tactics, and techniques that I cover in my musical-theater history course, including believable and compelling character arcs (Elphaba, Glinda, Fiyero, and Nessa Rose), ambitious extended musical sequences ("No One Mourns the Wicked," "Dancing Through Life"), dramatically motivated reprises ("I'm Not That Girl"), political allegory ("Popular," "Wonderful"), as well as leitmotifs ("...unlimited...," "...I'm limited..."). To me, Wicked is very similar to Cabaret or Chicago in the sense that you can enjoy the show purely for its entertainment value, or you could listen more closely and maybe learn something.

I'm also totally on board with The Wedding Singer. It was one of the first shows I ever reviewed on this blog, and at the time I thought it was fairly mediocre. But in the years since the show bowed (and bowed out) on Broadway, the cast recording has made me a genuine fan. There's some really smart writing in the book and the lyrics, the songs are tuneful, and the orchestrations instantly transport me back to my distant youth in the 1980s. It also employs contrafactum ("Letter From Linda," "Letter From Grandma"), extended musical sequences ("Not That Kind of Thing," "Saturday Night in the City"), and leitmotifs ("...tell the night to save its moonlight..."). Plus, the show has its heart in the right place, and it seems to be catching on in regional and high school theaters. I know I'd much rather see The Wedding Singer proliferate than, say, Fame or Footloose. High schools need more than just Grease and Bye Bye Birdie in their repertoire.

So, whaddya think, dear reader? Any of my students choices surprise? Appall? Anything missing that you'd add to the list?

As Thousands Cheer and the 1930s Revue

Yes, folks, it's that time of the semester again: staged-reading madness!

Regular readers will likely recall that, as part of my musical-theater history course at the Boston Conservatory, my students take part in a staged reading of a historically significant but relatively unknown or even forgotten musical. The idea is to expose them to shows that they otherwise might not have a chance to perform in, or even see. I usually like to say that if I tell people the name of the show I'm directing, and that person has actually heard of it, then I have failed.

Now, this isn't entirely true, but it conveys the essence of my goal. The inaugural show in this series, in the fall of 2009, was the George M. Cohan musical Little Johnny Jones (1905). Last semester we did Very Good Eddie (1915), one of the influential "Princess musicals," with scores by Jerome Kern. Not exactly top-of-mind theater fare, but nonetheless historically significant in the development of the musical-theater form.

This semester, I wanted to do a topical revue, a very common genre in the 1920s and 1930s, although the form has since virtually disappeared. These shows essentially grew out of the lavish Broadway revues that sprang up between the two world wars, the most famous being those of Florenz Ziegfeld. Other entrants in this genre included Earl Carroll’s Vanities, George White’s Scandals, and the Shubert brothers’ Passing Show series. The revues of the '20s were mostly escapist fare, although they did contain the occasional nod to topicality and social relevance.

The 1930s were a time when the Broadway revue would reach both its maturity and ultimate decline. The standard formula featured marquee-value stars, tuneful scores, and copious dance. Add in plenty of vaudevillian-style humor and some stunning visuals – in the form of lavish sets and costumes, and a brace of pulchritudinous showgirls – and the stage was set for a grand night at the theater. The least interesting revues of the ’30s were little more than variety shows. But the most compelling were an art form in themselves, reflecting a cohesion that brought all the elements together into a unique experience, often one with a lot more on its mind than mere entertainment.

In the transition from the '20s to the '30s, the tone of shows on Broadway changed a great deal, and the revue form followed suit. With the advent of the Depression, left-leaning creators co-opted the musical art form to decry, lament, and otherwise comment on the seeming collapse of capitalism. Among the more satiric revue offerings were Pins and Needles, Life Begins at 8:40, and As Thousands Cheer, the last of which the students of my musical-theater history class will be presenting this Saturday and Sunday at the Boston Conservatory.

Fresh from the success of their well-received Face the Music (which features an unscrupulous producer who wants to deliberately produce a flop show - sound familiar?), composer/lyricist Irving Berlin and librettist Moss Hart turned their satiric eye to the events of the day. They chose as their framing device the daily newspaper. Each of the scenes and songs in the show was preceded by a newspaper headline, with sketches that poked fun at wide variety of subjects, from the marital woes of Barbara Hutton ("Barbara Hutton to Marry Prince Mdvani") and Joan Crawford ("Joan Crawford and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Announce Divorce"), to Gandhi and Aimee Semple McPherson ("Gandhi Goes on New Hunger Strike"), to an embittered President and Mrs. Hoover leaving the White House ("Franklin Delano Roosevelt Inaugurated Tomorrow"). The score featured what would become some of Berlin's most popular songs, including "Easter Parade" (The Rotogravure Section) and "Heat Wave" ("Heat Wave Hits New York City").

But the most memorable, and heartbreaking moment in the show comes in the second act. An African-American woman sings what initially seems to be yet another "He Done Me Wrong" torch song, but at the end of the song the headline reveals the stark truth: "Unknown Negro Lynched by Angry Mob in Mississippi." The song is the simple but stunning "Supper Time," and we have the great fortune of having BoCo junior Lori Tishfield to perform it. (Mark that name my friends. Some day soon you will see it in lights.) As Thousands Cheer was the first Broadway show to give an African-American star, in this case the legendary Ethel Waters, equal billing with whites.

The original 1933 production also featured Marilyn Miller, in her final stage appearance before her premature death, as well as Clifton Webb and Helen Broderick. The show ran at Irving Berlin's Music Box Theatre for some 400 performances, which was pretty impressive for a show that opened in the heart of the Depression. The show has had only one significant revival, in 1998 at New York's Drama Department. That production was directed by Christopher Ashley and featured musical staging by Kathleen Marshall. The cast included Kevin Chamberlin, Judy Kuhn, Howard McGillin, Paula Newsome, Mary Beth Peil and B. D. Wong, and it produced the show's only original cast recording. (Cast recordings didn't really catch on until the 1940s with Oklahoma, although both Pins and Needles and The Cradle Will Rock were recorded prior to that.)

So, hey, if you're in the 'hood, and want to see a show that you otherwise might not have a chance to catch, why not head down to the Boston Conservatory. The show is this Saturday at 9PM and Sunday at 7PM, both in the Zack Box Theater at 8 The Fenway. We'd love to see you there.

Review - Freckleface Strawberry the Musical Off Broadway

Recent visitors to Off Broadway's New World Stages could be forgiven for concluding that they had stumbled upon a sort of specialty children's theater. The shows currently playing at this venue include such kiddie fare as The Gazillion Bubble Show, John Tartaglia's Imaginocean, and the new children's musical Freckleface Strawberry. (More and this last show later.)

The casual observer might be excused for thinking that Avenue Q was aimed at children as well, but anyone who's seen this show can certainly attest to the contrary. And, of course, the NWS complex also serves as landlord to the Naked Boys Singing, and I must confess that, as I was descending into the underground bunker that is the New World Stages, I had to wonder how many parents have had to answer embarrassing questions from precocious tots about that little piece of theatrical salaciousness.

But anyway, back to the show at hand, which is based on the popular children's book FreckleFace Strawberry by the fabulously talented actress Julianne Moore. The show recently opened to very positive reviews, but I must confess that I am not among the show's seemingly legion fans. I usually try to see as many musicals as possible, both on Broadway and off, but I frankly might have given Freckleface a miss if it hadn't been for the presence of two of my former students in the cast, the very lovely and talented Hayley Podschun and Kimiko Glenn. I'm happy to report that both Ms. Podschun and Ms. Glenn are in fine and entertaining form, but I really wish the show were more worthy of their considerable talents.

Freckeface Strawberry was written by Gary Kupper (music/lyrics/book) and Rose Caiola (book), neither of whom I have encountered before, nor did I recognize any of their credits in the show's Playbill. All I can think is that they must be friends of Ms. Moore (Ms. Caiola is also a co-producer), because they clearly didn't get the gig based on the quality of their music or words. The direction by Buddy Crutchfield and choreography by Gail Pennington Crutchfield, who I assume are married to each other, are certainly serviceable and energetic, although they rarely rise above the commonplace.

The main problem with the show is that it doesn't really have a sense of forward motion, nor any dramatic cohesiveness. For instance, early in the show, before we've even had a chance to discover who this Freckleface Strawberry is as a character, we get an "I want" song from the character Emily, called "I Like Danny." A more seasoned writing team would have used this spot to tell us more about the title character, as opposed to a secondary player who then proceeds to fade into the ensemble for the rest of the show. Toward the end of the show, we get a song called "Basketball," which is every bit as generic as its title, and represents pointless padding for the boys in the cast. This dramatic fragmentation might be somewhat forgivable if the songs themselves represented anything of lyrical or musical distinction, which alas they do not.

I suppose it might seem churlish to carp about dramatic integrity in a children's show. But shouldn't children's shows be held to the same artistic standards as adult shows? Perhaps even higher standards? Isn't it, instead, rather condescending to assume that kids' shows don't need to be cohesive or make structural sense? All I know is I wasn't the only one squirming in my seat at this particular 11 AM showing of Freckleface Strawberry. About 2/3 of the way through the 70-minute show, the kids started getting really restless. And when it comes to kids' shows, that's where the rubber hits the road: if the pint-size butts are fidgeting in the seats, then the show itself isn't working.