Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals

Reviews - 2013 New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) - Part 2

A few days ago, I published my first of four batches of capsule reviews from the 2013 New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF). At this point, I have seen 13 NYMF shows in all, and I will be seeing another 5 shows this weekend, just before the end of the festival on Sunday.

As always with these new-works programs, the results have been mixed. Some of the shows are very ambitious, but don't have the creative chops to deliver on their vision. Others just want to have fun, but the creators have come smack up against that age-old theatrical truism: "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard."

As I've said many times, quality is always the exception. And out of the 13 shows I've seen so far, two of those shows have been of what I would regard as exceptional quality, or showing enough promise to expect exceptional quality once the shows are fully developed. That's 15%, which ain't all that bad when you think about it. One of those shows is represented in the reviews below. The other will featured in my next batch of reviews. Stay tuned for two more review roundups in the days to come.

Swiss Family Robinson - NYMF always seems to have a few family offerings in the mix. If you've never seen the movie or read the book, the eponymous Robinson family has just escaped by boat from Switzerland after the French have invaded. They run into a storm at sea, and are shipwrecked on an island, only to be confronted with a ship of French "pirates" and a mysterious group female naturalists. The show, with a book by Patrick Kennedy and John Kennedy, and music and lyrics by John Kennedy, clearly has ambitions of becoming a large-scale family musical, and while the show needs significant work, overall it felt worthy of additional development. The music has melodic appeal, and there are fun group numbers and some very touching moments, including a song for the Robinson mother and father with a yodeling motif. Some of the dialog feels artificial. One character exclaims, "This must be a deserted island," as soon as they've landed on a beach. Um, how would anyone know that it was even an island from simply landing on a beach, let alone conclude it was deserted? Much of the humor is rather groan-worthy, including a joke about becoming a cheese-maker: "I always thought your story was full of holes." There's also a joke brazenly stolen from Fiddler on the Roof: "May God bless and keep [the French]...far away from us." But perhaps most in need of fixing are the dramaturgical holes. The song motivations are often unclear, particularly for the act one finale. The amazons have captured the family and the French, and start singing something about jungle drums, which is supposed to somehow give us some information about why these mysterious women are there, but the song explains nothing. The act ends with a confusing thud involving one of the sons exclaiming he can explain the mystery. Then at the top of act two, everyone has escaped the amazons, but it's never explained how. The topic only briefly returns as a rather clumsy song cue, but then gets conveniently swept aside. But, again, there's enough promise here for the show to proceed through another draft or two.

Julian Po - Easily one of the best shows I've seen at NYMF so far, Julian Po has a great deal of ambition, and the creators seem to have the chops to deliver. It helps that the NYMF production had a superior cast of Broadway pros, including Chad Kimball, Malcolm Gets, Sean Cullen, and the delectable Luba Mason. But the piece itself is strong as well, with book and lyrics by Andrew Barrett, and music by Ira Antelis. (Full disclosure: Barrett graduated from the Boston Conservatory, but was never one of my students.) The residents of a very small town in Middle America become fascinated by the arrival of a saturnine stranger who plans to kill himself, but who then proceeds to transform all of their lives. That's a really tricky premise to pull off, but the authors are already tantalizingly close to success. The show features a series of quirky, complex characterizations, and depends upon a darkly humorous tone tinged with irony, and so far the authors are successfully achieving the proper balance. There's beautiful character work in both ballads and uptempo numbers. A few things that need ironing out: the Greek-chorus/singing-band-members conceit wasn't working, partly because the authors haven't yet fully committed to the idea, but also because the band members weren't very strong singers, which was distracting. The lyrics feature some unfortunate clichés, including the dreaded "strength to carry on." The denouement feels like something out of Shirley Jackson short story, which is fine, except there's a confusing tag at the very end of the show, which I still haven't quite figured out. But overall Julian Po is worth looking out for, particularly if the production can hold on to this stellar slate of performers.

Dizzy Miss Lizzie's Roadside Revue Presents 'The Brontës' - Again, dying is easy. Comedy is hard. Here's a show that illustrates both, as it is essentially about the early deaths of the four Brontë siblings: Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell. The show is apparently one in a series of would-be comic concerts from DC-based comedy troupe, Dizzy Miss Lizzie's Roadside Revue. With its concert setup and snarky tone, the show seems to be aiming for Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson or Passing Strange, but so far it's not nearly as smart or moving as either of those shows. Where's Alex Timbers when you need him? (Apparently working on every show in the current Broadway pipeline, but I digress...) The conceit: A band of gypsies visit the Brontë household to help the siblings "finish their stories." A promising setup. Unfortunately, the songs feel generic; many are only tangentially related to the story. Every once in a while, we get an integrated number, such as "Haughty Blue Bloods, Naughty Brats," which concerns the experience as a governess of one of the Brontë sisters. But most of the songs could just as easily be in another show, or no show at all. What's more, the quality of the singing was often wincingly bad, particularly when the songs involved vocal harmony. There were times when the intonation was so off that I wanted to plug my ears, but I was seated in the second row of a very small theater and didn't want to be rude. The show features some moving moments, and some humorous elements, but at present there's not enough of either to make for a satisfying show.

Feather - In my previous roundup, I felt guilty for dumping on a well-meaning but quality-deprived effort from a group of musical-theater students. This time, I'm afraid I need to rain on the parade of Feather, a show with extremely worthy intentions, but one for which ambition appears to exceed ability. Feather has a book and lyrics by Jeremy Culver, music by Charleene Closshey, and features additional songs by Nick Everett and Liesl Karlsson. One huge problem with the show it its current form is that the narrative remains opaque until some 25 minutes into the piece. During that time, we're treated to dance performances by young ethnically diverse performers, multimedia projections, a children's choir, and an artist creating a painting live on stage. What we don't get is any specific sense of the story. Shows need to make their point clear, or at least establish their general universe, within the first five minutes. You don't have to provide all the answers, but you at least need to make the question clear. We eventually discover that Feather will involve a very serious story about a married couple, one a photojournalist and one a human-rights lawyer, and the husband's efforts to provide aid for a group of young refugees from the current conflict in Syria. Again, praise-worthy stuff. The show even features a commercial of sorts for Save the Children, which is noble, albeit heavy-handed. But the authors so far haven't done justice to their admittedly worthy subject matter. Even after the plot becomes clear, the show features banal dialog, rudimentary music, and awkward, ponderous lyrics. Sample dialog: "Every day, as I walk down the street, a million dreams walk by each other." Sample lyric: "To who does it matter that I should be fulfilled? To who does it matter that I should choose to yield?" Forget the bad grammar, this is just awkward phrasing, and features a terrible attempt at rhyming. Feather wants to be both a moving love story and rousing agitprop, but unfortunately it succeeds at neither.

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.

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.

Reviews - New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) - Part 4

Here's the fourth and final installment of my capsule reviews from this year's New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF). Click here to read my first, second, and third installments. My sincere thanks to the good folks at NYMF for allowing me such open and ready access to all of the NYMF shows.

It's thanks to NYMF and the other new-works projects around the country that so many people who are interested in writing new musicals are able to find the support they need to bring their ideas to the stage. Whenever someone trots out that tired old bit about musical theater being dead, or on its last legs, I think of the hundreds upon hundreds of submissions to NYMF, the National Music Theater Conference at the O'Neill Theater Center, the New York International Fringe Festival, the Festival of New Artists at the Goodspeed, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT), not to mention the numerous regional and nonprofit companies that actively seek and nurture new works. The economic model may have changed since the "golden age" of musicals, but there's still plenty of interest not only in creating musical theater, but in attending it as well.

Sure, most of these shows won't make it to Broadway, or even anywhere close to it. But if it weren't for these programs, we might never have seen such interesting and entertaining new works as Urinetown, Next to Normal, [title of show], Altar Boyz, The Great American Trailer Park Musical, Gutenberg! The Musical, Yank!, Avenue Q, Nine, In the Heights, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Children of Eden, The Drowsy Chaperone, Songs for a New World, I Love You Because, and Striking 12.

I can't wait until next year's festival.

Zapata is a rather curious concoction with music and lyrics by Peter Edwards, book by Peter and Ana Edwards. The show attempts to draw a parallel between the revolutionary activities of Emiliano Zapata and the Occupy Wall Street movement. The result, while well-meaning, is strident, clumsy, and forced. It feels as though the show had been in development long before the Occupy protests, and then the authors, spying an opportunity to give the show modern resonance, tacked on a present-day prologue and epilogue. The connection seems tenuous: Zapata's story is one of violent uprising against brutal oppressors. At one point in the show, one of the characters says, "Violence is unavoidable. It's the only language these dogs understand." So, how exactly is the Occupy movement supposed to use Zapata's story as inspiration? The best that the writers can seem to come up with is the lame blandishment to "keep on fighting." The show even gives one of the characters a ludicrous "vision" of a future righteous struggle (i.e. Occupy), along with the exhortation that "our fight made it possible." Beyond the questionable nature of the message, the show itself is a bit of a mess. The story itself is compelling, but it gets mired in clunky expository dialog, manufactured drama, contrived resolutions, and plot threads that seemingly appear out of nowhere. The characters are mostly two-dimensional, and frequently make choices that have scant justification in the events as described. The lyrics are rife with cliches ("I'd rather die a thousand deaths than let my people down") and uninspired proclamations ("Children make this life worth living"). The show's music is not without merit, reflecting a stirring sense of the Mexican musical idiom, and the movement and battle sequences (choreographed by Luis Salgado) have a certain dramatic effectiveness, including the neat theatrical device of a rhythmic dancer who appears to portend significant moments of violence and death. But Zapata has quite a few rewrites ahead of it if the show is going to have any sort of commercial future.

Another NYMF show that has a rewrite or two ahead of it is The Groove Factory, with book by Chad Kessler and David James Boyd, music and lyrics by David James Boyd. The story involves a sort of Willy Wonka-inspired quest to win tickets to the big 1999 New Year's Eve party at the titular Groove Factory, a New York City dance club. The show's central character is Chazz Goodhart (groan), a young gay man who wants to escape from the trailer park and find fame and success as a club DJ. What really kills the buzz of The Groove Factory is the whiplash-inducing change of tone at the end of the show. The first 70 minutes or so seems to celebrate the drug-fueled, superficial club lifestyle, but then, as if to expiate its hedonistic sins, the show tries to shoehorn in a tragic, cautionary tale at the end. The Groove Factory wants to have its crystal meth and eat it, too. It starts as a sort of campy romp, which is not completely without humor or appeal, and there are some interesting characterizations along the way. But once we get to the club, the show degrades considerably. We then witness a tiresome parade of songs celebrating various drugs: ecstasy, methamphetamine, Special K, etc. The show then concludes with its baleful twist and some bland moralizing ("Music is the only drug I need"), followed by an artificially upbeat final number about this being the "best of times," despite the dire proceedings we've just witnessed. Let me be clear here: I'm not objecting to the apparent message of the show. I'm taking issue with the way the show is currently executed, which doesn't come near to doing its let's-get-high-on-life credo any justice.

One of the most powerful and promising shows to emerge from NYMF this year was Shelter, with book and lyrics by Brittany Bullen, music by Brittany Bullen and Newell Bullen. As the name might suggest, the show takes place in a women's homeless shelter and weaves together the stories of a number of different women, both those who populate the shelter and those who work there. At this stage in the show's development, its key assets are the passion and power of these women and their stories, and some dynamite character ballads. The story is strong and the characters are compelling, and there's a great deal of very real, very raw writing at the center of the show. Shelter definitely needs some shaping and streamlining: there are a few too many characters for the show to adequately develop, the dramatic intent of some of the songs is unclear, and the character motivations don't always make sense. There were also some significant tone problems in the NYMF version of the show, including the character of the shelter's cook, who seemed like an artificial attempt at comic relief. Also, the number that opened act two, in which a trio of two-dimensionally perky saleswomen try to recruit the shelter women into selling Avon-like cosmetics, wasn't working at all. (The authors tell me that both the cook character and the cosmetics song have been cut.) But there's a really powerful piece at the core of Shelter, and I'm very eager to see not only how the show develops, but also how the Bullens continue to develop as musical-theater artists.

 

Reviews - New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) - Part 2

Here's installment number two of my capsule reviews for the 2012 New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF). Click here to read my first set of reviews. Watch for at least one additional installment, probably two.

The program note for Trouble promises "a show about love, finding it and loosing [sic] it." Yeah, not a very promising way to start. The show has a book by Michael Alvarez, music and lyrics by Ella Grace, and is as bland and unfocused as its title. Trouble comes off as a sort of low-rent Rent, but without the compelling drama or credible characterizations. Like Rent, Trouble wants to capture the voice of its generation. Unlike Rent, Trouble doesn't earn its pathos. Instead of life-and-death stakes, we just get hormones and personality flaws run amok. The show features four teenage couples, three straight and one gay. But these people aren't so much characters as characteristics, with manufactured plot turns to keep the them busy between power ballads. The songs are mostly generic, and often feature unclear dramatic intent, although there are a couple decent attempts at character numbers, one involving one of the gay characters who admits to stalking his class crush, and another about how one of the females sublimates her hostility though baking. The plot basically involves the four couples getting together and breaking up, or breaking up and getting together, and ultimately everything gets resolved in a forced, artificial manner. Characters far too easily forgive genuinely reprehensible acts on the part of their supposed loved ones, and make final choices that seem inconsistent with their character development and that are blissfully unconstrained by reality. In short, Trouble needs a lot of work if it's going to have any life after NYMF.

Stuck isn't quite the mess that Trouble is. The book and the songs by Riley Thomas reflect a lot more skill than those of Trouble, but the story for Stuck is forced and preachy. The show features six people stuck on a New York subway between stations. Over the course of the show, we discover essentially one big thing about each of the characters, with a lot of pseudo-spiritual mumbo jumbo along the way. Like Trouble, Stuck is populated with types rather than people, and before the end of the show, seemingly everyone makes a dark revelation: pregnancies, suicides, rotten childhoods, addiction, etc. These developments come off not so much as character motivation as they do convenient pieces of dramaturgical shorthand. There are certainly a few interesting songs and moments along the way, but the show reflects far too many tired tropes (including "Oh, isn't New York City dirty, smelly, and heartless?" and "Aren't we all a little crazy?") to be truly effective. Also, the pacing of the show is rather jarring. For instance, the drama peaks way too early with interactions and musical passages about the racism inherent in us all, even minorities. Then, immediately after, we have an upbeat comic number called "The Subway Samba" about the irritations and idiosyncrasies of the New York City subway system. The lyrics range from borderline inspired to trite, with such questionable aphorisms as "Strangers or lovers, the only difference is time." (Um...really? So, if I wait long enough, Jeremy Northam will eventually be mine?) Other lyrical groaners include exhortations to "listen not with your ears but with your heart" and inquiries as to "who completes your rhyme?" Then the show ends with pat resolutions and bromides, including the observation that "everyone wants what everyone wants." Um...OK...

He's Not Himself is easily the most promising NYMF show I've seen so far this year. (I still have seven more to go this weekend.) The show has book, music, and lyrics by Marc Silverberg, who also plays one of the five characters in this mostly amiable and madcap noir romp. The plot involves a male meter maid who dreams of the exciting life of a gangster. And whenever he gets hit on the head - which, of course, is frequently - he switches back and forth between his meek and malicious personalities. Yeah, the multiple personalities schtick is rather overused as a plot device, but Silverberg manages to find ways to keep it fresh. The Jekyll and Hyde scenario sets the stage for some rather raucous physical comedy, expertly staged by director Michael Pantone. The farcical set piece involving all five characters in a diamond heist from the local museum was downright masterful. The songs feature just a tad too much slant rhyme and faulty scansion for my taste, and I noticed at least one dangling modifier: "Dressed as a cop, she won't think something's wrong." In this scene, it's not the "she" who's dressed as a cop, but rather the "he" who is singing. But, with a little more development, He's Not Himself could become a comic gem.

Another promising show is Himself and Nora, with book, music, and lyrics by Jonathan Brielle. The piece concerns the relationship between James Joyce (played here by Matt Bogart) and his long-time lover and eventual wife, Nora Barnacle (Jessica Burrows). One of the primary plot devices involves Joyce's refusal to marry Barnacle as a protest against the Catholic church. "Marriage is a plot of the church to keep the spirit down," Joyce says at one point in the show. But the constant specter of Joyce's inner conflict with his religious indoctrination is represented by the character of a Catholic priest, visible only to Joyce. The priest provides contrapuntal commentary on Joyce's every move. But Himself and Nora is essentially a love story. Make that a lust story. Part of what makes this particular production engaging are the robust and bawdy performances from Bogart and Burrows, who bravely commit to the leering innuendo and outright vulgarity in Brielle's book and lyrics. The bawdiness gets a bit much after a while, but thankfully at that point we move on to Joyce's struggles with censorship and his sixteen-year quest to find a publisher for Ulysses. Brielle gives Bogart and Burrows reasonably vivid and compelling characters to embody, and the story flows in an engaging fashion with spirited, authentic-sounding dialog. The music is idiomatic Irish, percussive and vibrant, with a certain modern flair in the orchestrations. I was, however, unfortunately reminded of February House, another recent musical that adopts the superficial aspects of the lives of major literary figures without really giving them anything profound to say, although Himself and Nora is somewhat more successful in this respect. Even so, with a bit more work on some plot holes here and some tonal inconsistencies there, Himself and Nora could eventually make for a satisfying musical work.

Reviews - New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) - Part 1

It will probably come as a surprise to many of my readers that I have never been to the New York Musical Theatre Festival(NYMF) before this year. I mean, I've been almost singularly devoted to musical theater for well over 30 years. I've been teaching musical theater for almost ten years. And I've been blogging about it for over six years. It would seem like a natural fit for me, right?

Well, all I can say is, when I go to New York, it's usually for the purpose of seeing a particular show. I usually decide what I'm going to see before I make my travel plans, and the shows that I see are usually ones that are already on my radar, whether because they're opening on Broadway, or because the shows have people involved who pique my interest. And theater festivals, such as NYMF and the Fringe, are very frequently populated with shows by people who haven't quite made it onto my radar yet.

Plus, there are usually so many shows at these festivals that it's hard to get focused on one or a handful of works worth seeing. So the festivals have always seemed kind of overwhelming to me. And, since I live in Boston, it's kind of hard for me to pop into a show on impulse, as I would be able to do if I lived a little closer to New York.

But this year, I was invited by the good folks at NYMF to speak on a panel about theater criticism, and while I was in New York, I decided to grab a NYMF schedule and just dive right in. This was partly because I've seen everything I want to see on Broadway, and almost everything I could want to see Off Broadway. But I also wanted to cast a net for shows to consider as part of our new-works program at the Boston Conservatory. I was hoping to contribute to in a more meaningful way to this program by lining up some shows in development to consider for a workshop, staged reading, or even a full-blown production.

So, I picked two weekends and set about creating a schedule that would allow me to see as many shows as possible. I just returned from my first weekend, and will be headed back down two weekends hence. Below are capsule reviews of some of the shows that I've seen so far. I'm currently scheduled to see about 16 shows in total. Stay tuned for more batches later this month.

Rio bills itself as a sort of modern-day version of Oliver Twist. The show has book, music and lyrics by Mitch Magonet and Joey Miller, and is an ambitious, if still somewhat inchoate, musical set in Brazil. The show focuses on the street urchin Pipio in his search for his mother amid the hard and violent streets of Rio de Janeiro. The show starts on a bit of a fuzzy note with a maddeningly opaque opening number. In fact, it's not really until 2 to 3 numbers into the show that the story really kicks into gear. Once it does, the narrative is strong and compelling, although the book and lyrics vacillate between harsh truth and stilted cliché. The NYMF production features spirited and dynamic staging, and the show itself is not without talent or promise. The music has a certain buoyant appeal, although the tone of the show is inconsistent: it doesn't really know if it wants to be entertaining or hard-hitting. Perhaps most damning, the show currently features a rushed and pat resolution that ends the show on a falsely positive note that's inconsistent with the setting and tone of the rest of the piece. But there's enough promise here to warrant another draft or two.

 You'd never know it from reading the title, but How Deep is the Ocean is a would-be comedy that centers around a man who has been obsessed with chlorine and pool maintenance since childhood. When the beaches on the Jersey Shore have to close due to the pollution levels, our hero attempts to save the day by chlorinating the ocean. Yeah, kind of ridiculous, but intentionally so. The book here is by Pia Cincotti, and the music and lyrics are by Peter Cincotti, and the main problem with the show in its current form is that the score and the book seem to be from two very different shows. The book has a madcap tone, but the score is overly ballad-heavy and comes off far more earnest that the show seems to be aiming for. The situation has comic promise, but the book is only intermittently funny, and the songs rarely are. The show seems to want to be The Great American Trailer Park Musical, but the humor factor is nowhere near high enough to put in in league with that charmingly dotty little show. The essential structure of the story seems sound, although the second act drags on a bit. The show has a sweet disposition, reasonably strong characterizations, and many memorable melodies. But it needs a sure-handed comic director, like a Christopher Ashley or a Scott Schwartz to pump up the humor. (Oh, and the NYMF production features a surprise celebrity guest. I won't spoil the surprise; you can check below in the comments section if you want to know who it is. But, as fun as this moment was, it's unlikely to be sustainable. A guest star of this stature is unlikely to follow the show on its intended journey. This felt like a one-time stunt, and nothing more.)

Quite a few of the shows at NYMF this year seem to be aiming for the quirky-but-endearing mantle, and Flambé Dreams, with book and lyrics by Matthew Hardy and music by Randy Klein, is most assuredly both quirky and endearing. It's the story of a young man who want to become a maitre d' in honor of his father, who died in a freak Bananas Foster incident. For the most part in these NYMF reviews, I'm going to focus more on the works themselves than on the productions, but a lot of what made Flambé Dreams appealing was the extraordinary cast of Broadway pros: Jarrod Spector as the young man, Catherine Cox as his mother, and Jillian Louis, J. Elaine Marcos, and Kevin B. McGlynnas the various people who come in and out of the young man's life as he attempts to become a maitre d' who specializes in flaming desserts, like his father. The show provides strong and memorable characters for these able performers to embody, and gives them a number of genuine laughs and appealing songs. The show loses steam a bit at about 11 o'clock, as it were, but on the whole I'll be interested in watching how this show progresses, and what its creators produce in the future.

Most of the shows at NYMF that I've seen so far have been fairly conventional book shows. The main exception was Show Me Real, a sort of musical theater/dance/film hybrid conceived and choreographed by Clare Cook, and featuring music and lyrics by Amy Burgess, book and lyrics by Gena Oppenheim. The show concerns three female modern dancers as they work together on a dance piece, creating connections between these performers and three Ziegfeld Follies girls in the past. The result was refreshing in its execution, if a tad jejune in its conception. The themes that emerge are about how, despite the different eras that the women exist within, there are strong undercurrents of overlap regarding the struggle, the uncertainty, and the passion for performing. But what made this uninspired concept come to life were the freshness and honesty of the performers, the spirited and visually varied dance segments, and the sense of dramatic balance and closure that Cook brings to the piece. It also made me wonder why we don't see more of this kind of boundary-pushing work. Or, perhaps more to the point, why I don't seek more of it out. I guess that's what's so great about my expanding my focus beyond Broadway and Off-Broadway. Sure, the cream rises to the top. But there's a lot to be enjoyed beneath that commercial surface.

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.

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.

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 - Bells Are Ringing at Encores

I was a bit perplexed when I heard that Encores would be presenting Bells Are Ringing as part of its 2010-2011 lineup. Encores is supposedly devoted to presenting underrepresented musicals, shows that some people may have forgotten about. The other two shows in the current season certainly fit that bill: Where's Charley and Lost in the Stars.

But Bells Are Ringing? Didn't we just have a Broadway revival in 2001 with Faith Prince? Granted, the production only lasted two months, but it did yield a cast recording.

Well, it turns out there's a reason that production didn't last: the show isn't very good. Oh, sure, there's a handful of marvelous songs, but they're surrounded by the creakiest book this side of Oklahoma. The state and the musical. The original production of Bells Are Ringing ran 924 performances, but that was mostly on the strength of original star, the marvelous Judy Holliday.

With all due respect to Betty Comden and Adolph Green, their material simply hasn't aged very well. In fact, the stop-and-sing, scene/song/dance structure of Bells Are Ringing was antiquated even in 1956. Director/choreographer Kathleen Marshall, the talented sibling in the Marshall family, does what she can to bring the material to life, but she's irreparably hampered here by manufactured drama (e.g. The local police inspector really has nothing better to do than keep an eye on the supposed nefarious activities at Susaswerphone?) and forced coincidence (e.g. three male characters just happen to all show up at The Pyramid Club, bringing about the show's forced denouement?).

Granted, Bells Are Ringing features some of Jule Styne's most glorious melodies, including that of the enchanting "Long Before I Knew You." Plus, this song has one of the most charming excuses for a second verse I've ever heard. The female lead, Ella Peterson, is taking down dictation from Jeffrey Moss, each the object of the other's affection. Jeff starts with:

Long before I knew you,
Long before I met you,
I was sure I'd find you,
Someday, somewhere.

Jeff finishes the verse, then turns to Ella and says, "You haven't taken down a word." Ella replies, "I didn't have to," and sings the whole thing back to him. It's a delightful moment, right up there with "It Only Takes a Moment" from Hello, Dolly, in which the court reporter plays a very similar function.

But Styne's music here also features some genuine clunkers, such as "Independent" and "Better Than a Dream." Also, there are a number of songs here that are almost completely superfluous, including "Hello, Hello There" and "Mu-Cha-Cha." Yes, the first is meant to demonstrate that Ella has a wonderful way with people, but doesn't the rest of the book amply demonstrate that point? And the second seems as though it was just a chance to give co-choreographer Bob Fosse something to do.

As for the cast, I used to think that Kelli O'Hara was one of our most versatile actresses, excelling at both the subtle drama of Light in the Piazza to the brassy comedy of The Pajama Game. But based on this performance I'm beginning to have my doubts. Her accent seemed recycled from South Pacific. She fared perfectly well when she was singing, particularly on "The Party's Over," but her attempts at comedy fell surprisingly flat.

This may be my adoration for Judy Holliday talking here, but O'Hara doesn't seem to have anywhere near the flare for physical comedy or humorous impersonation to pull off the part of Ella Peterson. Holliday really must have kicked comedic ass. I usually avoid answering those questions that people post on Twitter about the one performance you'd want to go back in time to see. Well, I'd go back and see Judy Holliday in anything, even Hot Spot. (Especially Hot Spot.) But I would particularly love to go back and see her take the flimsy material in Bells Are Ringing and make it work.

The male cast is strong, particularly Will Chase as Jeff Moss. Chase once again demonstrates his remarkable versatility as a performer. He has such a rich and resonant voice, and an acting style that runs the gamut from Rent to The Story of My Life, from High Fidelty to Bells Are Ringing. Now that's range for you. (Matthew Morrison, eat your heart out.) The marvelous David Pittu is always a spark on stage, but Sandor's big number, "It's a Simple Little System," is rather one-joke, and not a very funny one at that. Bobby Cannavale, who showed such a knack for comedy on "Will & Grace," probably seemed a natural choice for the part of Blake Barton, the Brando-wannabe, but on the whole he seemed under-rehearsed.

If seeing Bells Are Ringing elicited any positive response, it was in my desire to break out the original cast recording and throw in my DVD of "Born Yesterday." Judy Holliday is a classic. Bells Are Ringing, not so much.

Review - The Roar of the Greasepaint in Mufti

It's not often we get a chance to see a production of The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd, which Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley wrote in 1965 as a follow-up to their 1962 hit Stop the World - I Want to Get Off. But thanks to the good folks at the York Theater, I was able to catch a reading of The Roar of the Greasepaint this past weekend as part of the York's Musicals in Mufti series.

I had always been moderately intrigued by the show's cast cast recording, in particular the jaunty "A Wonderful Day Like Today," one of those bouncy, classic 2/4 showtunes in the manner of "It's Today" or "Step to the Rear." The score features more than its share of enjoyable upbeat numbers, including "Where Would You Be Without Me?" and "Nothing can Stop Me Now," as well as a considerable dose of power ballads, like "Who Can I Turn To?" and "The Joker." 

Unfortunately, the show that gave rise to this delightful collection of tunes is a crashing, pretentious bore. My first indication that all was not well came during the always entertaining pre-show announcement from York artistic director James Morgan, who referred to The Roar of the Greasepaint as "absurdist theater plus a little English music hall." Uh-oh. Not exactly a match made in heaven, right?

The story of The Roar of the Greasepaint centers around what appears to be two male characters playing "The Game of Life," or some shit. Not the Milton Bradley version, mind you. Some metaphysical, nihilistic, phenomenological, navel-gazing, fortune cookie version. There's the large, overbearing "Sir," played in the original production by Cyril Ritchard, who lovingly tortures the supposedly adorable Cockney everyman "Cocky," played originally by co-author Newley. Sir makes up the rules of the game -- represented by an actual game board painted onto the stage -- as it goes along to suit his mercurial fancy, and rather predictably, Cocky eventually winds up standing up to Sir and asserting his individual freedom, and blah blah blah.

Rarely has there been such a bright and sprightly score with such a flat and irritating book. The songs seem only tangentially tied to the proceedings at hand, which is probably a mercy for the songs. The book provides only scant setup for most of the numbers, which tend to be detrimentally stop-and-sing. Something unfortunate will happy to Cocky and he'll proceed to sing, "Who can I turn to when you turn away?", but the authors seem to have been unconcerned that the "you" in the song has no logical antecedent in the show. Then, Cocky will have a sudden stroke of luck, and launch into "Nothing Can Stop Me Now," a catchy but generic song that does little to illuminate character or progress the threadbare plot.

Luckily for me, this particular production of The Roar of the Greasepaint featured two terrific performers in the lead roles: the prodigious Jim Brochu (Zero Hour) as Sir, and the irrepressible Josh Grisetti (Enter Laughing) as Cocky. Also on hand all-too-briefly was Quentin Earl Darrington as a character listed in the original Playbill as "The Negro," who winds up acting as a call to arms of sorts for Cocky in a moment of realization so patently predictable that I can't even be bothered to think of an appropriate simile. Darrington thankfully seemed much more comfortable on stage here than he was in Ragtime, giving a performance that was more animated and appealing than either time I saw that short-lived production. 

So, if I were you, I wouldn't be in any great hurry to see or produce The Roar of the Greasepaint/The Smell of the Crowd. From where I sit, this is one of those shows that deserves to be obscure, remembered only for its moderately enjoyable cast recording.

Review - Coco at The York Theater, Musicals in Mufti

My abject apologies, dear reader, for my prolonged absence from the blogosphere. The new semester at the Boston Conservatory has started up with a vengeance, and I've been like the magician in the Frosty cartoon: busy, busy, busy.

Fortunately, I was able to carve out some time last Saturday for a day trip to New York to catch Coco at the York Theater, presented as part of its marvelous Musicals in Mufti series.

As the Mufti program points out, Coco was "suggested by incidents from the life of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel." The original Broadway production of Coco has long been a guilty obsession of mine, partly because it was the only Broadway musical that the glorious Katharine Hepburn ever performed in. Yes, Katherine Hepburn did a musical. And, no, she can't really sing. But that doesn't matter. As Rex Harrison demonstrated in My Fair Lady and Richard Burton confirmed in Camelot, actors don't necessarily need to be strong singers to give convincing and affecting performances in musicals.

Plus you have that score by André Previn, set to lyrics by the occasionally great Alan Jay Lerner. Sure, it's no My Fair Lady, but it's full of its own share of wonders and fascinations. Previn's music is a lot more tuneful than people give it credit for, and Lerner's lyrics are sometimes clever, sometimes heartfelt, and sometimes painfully forced. My particular favorite in the clever department comes from "The World Belongs to the Young," and has Coco Chanel declaring "I want Paree to wake and see/without me there's a vacancy." Lerner also grinds out some genuine groaners. In "The Money Rings Out Like Freedom," Coco relates an anecdote regarding her invention of slacks for women, and in the process is forced to sing: "Soon all the sisters and the cousins and the aunts/Were calling we The Pirate of Men's Pants." (Get it? Gilbert & Sullivan? "Poor Wandering One" and all that?)

Well, despite my abiding love for the cast recording, Coco wasn't holding may attention in its Mufti presentation. When Hepburn left Coco after some nine months, the producers brought in French actress Danielle Darrieux to replace her. The show only lasted two more months. The reason: it's not very good. The score has its individual charms, but on the whole Coco really doesn't work, at least not without La Hepburn and Michael Bennett's original staging, which apparently was dazzling.

Alan Jay Lerner's book for Coco is jokey when it should be heartfelt, and includes a rather inert subplot about Chanel taking on a young modeling protege, in a relationship that's meant to be maternal but comes off as Sapphic. Plus, the book and songs exhibit just a bit too much of Lerner's condescension towards women. (It's no surprise that he was married 8 times.) "A Woman is How She Loves" is a particularly bizarre and misogynistic anti-fashion screed. (e.g. "But who cares where the hems are if dismal the stems are?")

Other than the show itself, the main attraction at this Coco was cabaret star Andrea Marcovicci in the title role. Marcovicci has played Coco before, as part of a staged concert at 42nd Street Moon in San Francisco in 2008. At first, Marcovicci wasn't faring well with the comedy, but she eventually got a handle on it when she let it flow from character rather than from forced line readings.

Marcovicci was more consistent, and effective, in her dramatic acting. In fact, at times she was immensely moving, particularly during "Gabrielle/Coco" and "Always Mademoiselle." Her singing was surprisingly thin, given her reputation in the cabaret world, but that may have been because most of the score seemed to take place on the break between her head and chest voice. Since there was only piano accompaniment, it makes me wonder why the York didn't have the music transposed for her, or find a pianist who could transpose on sight.

The rest of the cast was serviceable, at times inspired. The clear-voiced Lewis Cleale fared especially well in the role of Coco's absent father, played by Jon Cypher in the original production. David Turner was an admirable model of restraint as the fey Sebastian Baye, at least compared to the embarrassingly over-the-top René Auberjonois, who surprisingly won a Tony Award for originating the role. (Then again, perhaps it's not so surprising: it was a very slow year, and Auberjonois only had two competitors: Brandon Maggart in Applause and the late George Rose, his Coco costar.) In the George Rose role of Coco's long-time attorney and confidante, Charles Kimbrough didn't seem to have a clear handle on humor, which got lost amid some rather bizarre mannerisms, prompting ruminations among my cohorts and me as to whether he might be ailing physically.

Overall, I have to say cheers to the York for their mission of bringing us these forgotten little gems. For the most part, there's a reason they've been forgotten, but it's always a pleasure to experience something neglected from the past. I already have my ticket to the next Mufti show: The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd. Watch for my review in the coming weeks.

My Blogging Vacation - The National Critics Institute

Just a heads-up to all of you wonderful people out there in the dark. I'll be taking a two-week hiatus from blogging, but thankfully not from theater. From July 5th to the 19th, I'll be participating in the National Critics Institute, an annual event sponsored by the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. For the next two weeks, I'll be hobnobbing with my fellow wizards, watching shows, discussing same, writing reviews, providing feedback on same, attending rehearsals, and just generally immersing myself in all things theatrical. I'm genuinely thrilled at the prospect.

For those of you unfamiliar with the O'Neill Center, it sits on a lovely spot in New London, Conn. overlooking the ocean, on the site of the actual O'Neill homestead, the spot where Eugene O'Neill and his family spent many of their summers. Of course, if you're at all familiar with Long Day's Journey Into Night, you doubtless know that these family summers were anything but homey and tranquil. The house is now a museum, dubbed Monte Cristo Cottage (see photo below) in honor of the role and the play that made O'Neill's father, James O'Neill, rich and famous. 

As part of my preparation for the event, I've been re-reading Long Day's Journey, as well as watching two of the filmed versions of the play: the 1962 version with Katherine Hepburn and Jason Robards, and the 1987 version with Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey. Each take is stellar in its own way, but, I mean, c'mon Kate Hepburn as Mary Tyrone? To die.

I also watched a filmed version of Ah, Wilderness!, which likewise takes place in New London, but is only autobiographical insomuch as it represented an idealized version of O'Neill's family background, what he in fact would have preferred his family to be like. 

As for the O'Neill Center, it was established in 1964, and has since become the home to numerous theater-development programs, including the National Playwrights Conference. Among the plays developed at the O'Neill are Agnes of God, Uncommon Women and Others, and a number of August Wilson's plays, including Fences, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and Joe Turner's Come and Gone. Under the auspices of the National Musical Theater Conference, many significant tuners received workshops at the O'Neill Center, including Avenue Q, Nine, In the Heights, Take Flight, The Wild Party (Lippa), Violet, Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin, and the upcoming Tales of the City. (The Story of My Life and title of show also had readings at the O'Neill, but as part of the Cabaret and Performance Conference.) In recognition of all the work the Center has done, it was awarded the 2010 Regional Theater Tony Award.

Expect a full report when I get back. I'm not allowed to write about any of the workshops that I'll be seeing at the O'Neill, but I'll be sure to report back to you about the experience, as well as on any non-O'Neill shows I may see as part of the bargain. (The critics "boot camp" includes field trips to local theaters, including the Ivoryton Playhouse and the Goodspeed Opera House.) Will I return with my analytical faculties sharpened to a finely honed edge? Or will the entire experience produce a sense of existential angst and ennui, prompting me to throw up my critical hands at the sheer pointlessness of it all? Tune in late July to find out.

Very Good Eddie - The Princess Musicals

Every semester, my students are typically surprised to discover that, for much of musical-theater history, shows weren't very integrated or cohesive. In other words, the songs and dances often had nothing to do with the plot of the show, if there even was a plot.

The example I always like to give is the original Broadway production of The Wizard of Oz in 1903. Fans of the 1939 movie are frequently unaware that there was a previous musical version, one with a book by L. Frank Baum himself, and which at various points throughout its run contained such irrelevant ditties as "Budweiser's a Friend of Mine" and such racist gems as "The Bullfrog and the Coon." The songs and scenes changed to accommodate a succession of stars, many of whom would bring along random "specialties" from their vaudeville routines.

And that's really what American musical theater was like, at least until the beginning of the 20th century. It wasn't until George M. Cohan came along with Little Johnny Jones (1905) that the long, slow slog toward integration really began. When I decided to add staged readings of important but obscure shows to my musical-theater history course at the Boston Conservatory, I knew that I wanted to start with a Cohan show. So, last semester, my students put on a rousing production of the aforementioned Little Johnny Jones. Many history books point to the "Princess musicals" as the start of the evolution of the modern American musical, when in fact Cohan was making strides towards integration about a decade prior.

What's that, you say? "Princess musicals? What are the 'Princess musicals?'" Yeah, they're not very well known, and truth be told they're actually not very good. But in historical context, they were a significant step in the development of the musical form, and served as both training ground and inspiration for some of the most influential people in the history of musical theater.

The "Princess musicals" are so named because most of them appeared at the now-defunct Princess Theatre, a 299-seat house with a mere 14 rows, plus two in the balcony. The theater's manager brought in composer Jerome Kern and librettist Guy Bolton, who were later joined by lyricist P. G. Wodehouse, to create a series of intimate musicals for this diminutive space. The shows needed to compete with the overblown, star-laden spectacles that the rest of Broadway was putting on, but there was neither the money nor the physical space to vie on those levels. Bolton referred to the shows as "midget musical comedy," and by comparison the shows were indeed minuscule: there was one unit set for each act, a comparatively minimal supporting cast, and very little in the way of dancing or production values.

Because the Princess productions couldn't afford flashy sets or big-named stars, the shows themselves had to make sense. The series represented one of the first genuine attempts to offer musicals with modern, cohesive stories, and with songs that grew out of the story and fit the characters and situations. The story lines, while slight, represented a transition from European operetta to the more contemporary, realistic stories to come. (See Show Boat.) The first hit of the series was Very Good Eddie (1915), which featured two physically mismatched couples are on their honeymoon cruise. The tall ones get left behind on the dock, and the short ones predictably wind up falling for each other on the cruise. Mayhem and hilarity ensue. Very Good Eddie was a palpable hit, indeed, and was quickly followed by Oh, Boy! (1917), Leave It to Jane! (1917), and Oh, Lady! Lady! (1918), although Leave It to Jane! didn't actually play the Princess Theatre, but rather the venerable Longacre.

The Princess trio would each go on to even greater things: Jerome Kern would join up with Oscar Hammerstein to create one of the most important musicals of all time, Show Boat. Guy Bolton would continue to write musicals for another half century, including more shows with Kern (Sally), as well as Cole Porter (Anything Goes), and George Gershwin (Lady Be Good, Tip-Toes, Oh, Kay!). P.G. Wodehouse would enjoy a prolonged and prolific career as a novelist, including a famed series involving the now iconic butler Jeeves.

But, as I mentioned, the Princess series also served as inspiration for quite a few future heavyweights:  Richard Rodgers saw Very Good Eddie a dozen times in order to study this invigorating new style of writing shows. Larry Hart was also quite taken with the Princess shows, and later himself elevated the breezy, charming style that they embodied to even greater heights. And a 16-year-old George Gershwin heard one of the Jerome Kern's Princess melodies and resolved to emulate Kern's career path. 

When I was planning the staged-reading series for my history course, the Princess shows were of course high on the list of production possibilities. And the Princess show to start with seemed pretty clear: Very Good Eddie, which is the only one of the Princess series to have made it back to Broadway, albeit in significantly revised form. After a successful run at the Goodspeed Opera House, a revamped Very Good Eddie played the better part of 1976 at the Booth Theatre. Our run at the BoCo will be decidedly more modest: two performances at the beginning of April. If you're in the Boston area, you're more than welcome to drop by. Watch this space for details.

Review - Fanny at Encores City Center

It's been about 32 years that I've been almost exclusively obsessed with musical theater. Oh, there's been the odd diversion along the way: a college degree over here, a career in business writing over there. But even given all that time of near single-minded devotion, there occasionally arises the odd show that I'm not intimately familiar with. 

Until recently, Fanny was one of those shows. I had certainly heard of it, and knew a few of the songs, mostly because they would pop up now and then on my iPod. I knew it was based on Marcel Pagnol's trilogy of plays-cum-films, and that the original cast included Ezio Pinza, Walter Slezak, and a youthful Florence Henderson in the title role.

But opportunities to see Fanny are scarce indeed. The show played in New York in 1954, and then in London in 1956, and then sort of dropped from view. The 1961 film version of "Fanny" removed all of the songs, and is consequently of little interest to me.

Fortunately, the folks at Encores saw fit to include the show as part of their current season, and the production, which played the weekend of February 4th through 7th at City Center, was a delight. The show's book, by S. N. Behrman and Joshua Logan, is actually a tad scandalous, at least for 1954, featuring impulsive sexual encounters, illegitimate pregnancy, and a marriage of convenience.

Despite the sauciness, the show features the sort of honest, everyday interactions that we really don't see a lot of anymore in Broadway musicals. Fanny is more along the lines of She Loves Me than South Pacific. No arching social agenda, just an appealing group of people dealing with love and loss in a French seaport town. (I'd say, "They don't write 'em like that anymore," but in fact they do: A Catered Affair. The financial failure of that show would seem to indicate that, even if they do write 'em like that anymore, that doesn't mean they're gonna make money.)

But the show's main attraction is the lovely score by Harold Rome. Rome is perhaps best remembered for his biggest hit, the 1937 revue Pins and Needles, and for penning the score to the 1962 book show I Can Get It for You Wholesale, in which a certain Miss Barbra Streisand made her Broadway debut. Rome was a remarkably talented man, gifted as both composer and lyricist. Unfortunately, few of his shows have found a lasting legacy. The 1946 revue Call Me Mister is hopelessly dated, as the subject matter is rather specific to the end of World War II. Wish You Were Here (1952) and Destry Rides Again (1959) have their respective charms, particularly the haunting "I Say Hello" from Destry. But, on the whole, they're simply not very good.

Fanny may be Rome's most accomplished score, featuring straightforward, heartfelt lyrics and a seemingly endless stream of bright, fresh melodies, particularly that of the song "To My Wife," which is just gorgeous. What's more, most of Rome's songs seem to be of a piece, with the possible exception of "Be Kind to Your Parents," which is just a bit too twee and cutesy.

I've sometimes heard people dismiss Fanny because of the repetition in the lyrics: the young Marius's stirring wanting song, "Restless Heart," ends with the lines "My restless heart. My restless, restless, restless, restless, restless, restless heart." And the title song, which Marius sings with the title character, repeats the name "Fanny" no fewer than 24 times, not counting the reprise. But I'm inclined to think of these as character choices on Rome's part. Fanny and Marius aren't very educated or erudite people: they feel more than they think, and this is reflected in the lyrics. Rome certainly proves himself a nimble wordsmith in some of his other shows, but here he seems to be deliberately writing to suit the characters rather than to impress.

The Encores production staff featured two names previously unknown to me: Marc Bruni as director and Lorin Latarro as choreographer, and both did a solid, professional job with the show. Bruni doesn't appear to have any major projects to his directing credit, but he was assistant or associate director on numerous brand-name shows, including the recent revivals of Wonderful Town and The Pajama Game. Lotarro's work was fluid and graceful, particularly for the charming "Why Be Afraid to Dance." Worth keeping an eye on both of these seemingly talented players, I think. 

In addition to Rome's lovely score, the appeal of this production of Fanny lay in its cast of veteran performers, most especially the wonderful Fred Applegate as Panisse. Applegate exhibited both here and in the otherwise dreadful Young Frankenstein the restraint and subtlety that most of the cast of Mamma Mia, the show I saw earlier that day, were missing. Applegate seems to fully comprehend that the key to engaging audience members lies in making them come to you, rather than pushing everything out to them. Sure, we're talking wildly different shows here, but good acting transcends genre.

Tony winner George Hearn as Cesar was nearly Applegate's match in the professionalism department, although I do have to say that, in the many Encores shows I've attended, Hearn was the first actor I've ever seen actually reading from the script that Encores performers are required to carry. (Equity rules, you know.) Yeah, sure, it's technically a staged reading/concert version of the show, and the scripts are supposed to there for a reason, but it was really jarring seeing Hearn with his face in his script while all the other performers seemed to be off book. 

Although Fanny was ostensibly written to showcase the talents of Pinza and Slezak in the Cesar and Panisse roles, the main movers of the plot are the Fanny and Marius characters, played splendidly here by Elena Shaddow and James Snyder, respectively. The strong-voiced Snyder deftly underscored Marius's idealism and passion. Clearly, his starring role in the short-lived Cry-Baby didn't quite show us what this talented man is capable of. His rendition of the show's title number was particularly heartfelt and urgent. Shaddow was sweet and appealing as Fanny, and made me all the more interested in seeing the upcoming revival of La Cage aux Folles, in which Shaddow plays Anne, Jean-Michel's intended. 

So, Fanny may have settled in as a musical-theater footnote, but fortunately the show lives on through its cast recording, the CD of which has been in and out of print for years. Although the CD is again out of print, the songs and full cast recording are available for MP3 download on Amazon. I highly recommend what may indeed be Harold Rome's masterwork.

Tales of the City - The Musical

In the past, I've run into trouble when my passions have intersected. Obviously, I'm obsessed with musical theater, but I do have a few other overriding interests in life. I'm a complete Monty Python fanatic, for instance, and was initially thrilled to hear about Spamalot, only to be significantly disappointed in the actual quality of the show.

So, it was with a measured sense of caution that I approached The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Conn. this past Saturday for a staged reading of the musical version of Tales of the City. I've been an ardent fan of Armistead Maupin's series of books back from the early '80s, and have pored through them numerous times since then. As with any musical from a beloved source, the creators of the Tales musical have quite a formidable task ahead of them.

Fortunately, those creators are themselves formidable in their own right, including Tony-winning librettist Jeff Whitty and director Jason Moore, both Avenue Q alums. The score is by some musical-theater newcomers: Scissor Sisters front man Jake Shears and keyboardist John Garden. In addition, the reading took place under the auspices of the National Musical Theater Conference which has seen quite a few notable shows emerge from its workshop process, including Nine, Violet, In the Heights, The Wild Party (Lippa), The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin, [title of show], The Story of My Life, and the aforementioned Avenue Q.

Obviously, Tales the musical is still under development, but I found much to enjoy and appreciate in the O'Neill's admittedly low-key production. The show's key asset thus far is Whitty's nimble book, which ably compresses the Tales story and cleverly intermingles its sprawling cast of characters. Whitty and director Moore also display sharp instincts for character parallels and song placement.

Would that the songs themselves were worthy of the setup that Whitty's book provides. So far, they're not, although there are some really terrific pieces in the second act. On the whole, there are currently too many bland, undifferentiated ballads, including "Don't Rush the Seasons," between Anna Madrigal (played here by the marvelous Candy Buckey) and Mona (the spitfire Mary Birdsong). The uptempo numbers are a bit more distinct and memorable, including "Welcome Home," a number for the society sissies that Michael (Christopher J. Hanke) and Jon (Josh Breckenridge) encounter at a party, as well as the act one finale, in which the characters exhort Mary Ann not to go back to Cleveland.

Most of the show comes from the first Tales book, but there are a few elements from the second book, More Tales of the City, including the pivotal character Mother Mucca (who gets the show-stoppingly profane number "Ride 'Em Hard," performed here with great gusto by Kristine Zbornik), as well as Michael's iconic "Letter to Mama," which receives a stirring rendition here from Chris Hanke.

With such a large number of important characters to flesh out, it seems inevitable that at this point in the show's development there would be some holes. In particular need of beefing up are Michael and Brian Hawkins (played here by my old friend Steve Kazee, showing a great deal more charisma and heart than in certain recent outings). This is especially true in the second act, which spends a bit too much time on the whole Norman Neal Williams plot. (Does NNW really need a song?) But here's the challenge that lies before Whitty, Moore, and their colleagues: the show is already running at about three hours. How can they cut the show down but solidify the story at the same time? Well, there are at least three or four boring ballads that could go: that would save at least 15 minutes right there.

But, from where I sit, the challenge of getting the show down to a manageable length while creating stronger characterizations is eminently surmountable. I'm not so sure about the score. It's not clear that Shears and Garden are really up to the task. It makes me wish that Moore and Whitty had gone with composer/lyricists with a bit more MT experience. Of course, it's quite possible that the barn at the O'Neill wasn't the ideal place to experience the score; although I was in the second row, I found myself straining at times to understand the lyrics because of the acoustics.

On the whole, Tales of the City shows great promise, and is already a fitting tribute to its beloved source material. As the show evolves, it would be great if it could hold on to as many members as possible of the O'Neill cast, which comprised an exceptional roster of pros, including the above-named performers as well as Betsy Wolfe (Mary Ann Singleton), Jeffrey Carlson (Beauchamp Day), and Jose Llana (various parts). Whatever the future of the show, rest assured that I'll be there whenever I can to witness and document its development.