Brief Interruption: A Little Night Music Re-Opens on Broadway

On July 13th, 2010, Trevor Nunn's revival of the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler musical, A Little Night Music, originally produced and directed by Harold Prince on Broadway in 1973, re-opened after a two-week hiatus.

The production originally opened on Broadway in December, but had begun life a year earlier at London's Menier Chocolate Factory, the 180-seat theatre which also produced the revival of La Cage aux Folles the Broadway-transfer of which recently bested Night Music for the Tony as the season's Best Musical Revival.

The Meiner Night Music which opened in late 2008 and transferred to the West End's Garrick Theatre in March of 2009 for a run of four months, won mostly enthusiastic reviews from the London critics, many of whom praised the production's intimacy and Chekhovian overtones. While some questioned Nunn's decision to cast actors closer to the ages of their counterparts in Ingmar Bergman's film Smiles of a Summer Night, the basis for the musical, than for the musical itself, the cast, headed by 34-year-old Hannah Waddingham (fifteen years younger than Glynis Johns was when she created the role on Broadway), won mostly strong reviews, particularly for Waddingahm's "truly gorgeous" (Daily Mail) rendition of the musical's famous song, "Send In the Clowns."

When the same production moved to Broadway this winter, only Alexander Hanson as lawyer Frederik Egerman was brought over to recreate his role from the UK cast. Broadway and Sondheim legend Angela Lansbury, fresh from her fifth Tony win the previous season took on the role of Madame Armfeldt, originated by Hermione Gingold in 1973 and created for this production at the Menier by Maureen Lipman. Taking over for Waddingham was screen star, Catherine Zeta-Jones.

The production opened to mixed reviews. While Ben Brantley was cool in his enthusiasm for the production as a whole in The New York Times, he admitted that Zeta-Jones brought "a decent voice, a supple dancer’s body and a vulpine self-possession to her first appearance on Broadway" though he also felt "Ms. Zeta-Jones delivers her big ballad, 'Send In the Clowns,' with an all-out emotionalism that I suppose makes sense but doesn’t jibe with the character’s amused urbanity. And swapping arch banter, sung or spoken, doesn’t come naturally to Ms. Zeta-Jones."

Variety's David Rooney felt "Director Trevor Nunn brings a blunt, heavy hand where a glissando touch is required, but the wit and sophistication of the material are sufficient to withstand even this phlegmatic staging." Several critics complained that the small eight-piece orchestration created for the tiny Menier staging was inadequate for Broadway, while others logged disappointment with the spare set and monochromatic costumes.

Positive response to Lansbury's performance was almost unanimous, but while Zeta-Jones had champions including New York Magazine and Time Out New York, most critics, while praising the star's presence and beauty, had reservations about her performance, many noting that the star seemed to be pushing, with a resulting "overdone" quality. (For more, see Leo Benedictus's round-up of critical appraisal of Zeta-Jones's performance in The Guardian.)

Despite her somewhat mixed reviews, Zeta-Jones when on to win a Tony for her role as Best Actress in a Musical. The win was seen by some as part of a break-down in Tony credibility, with some claiming that the decision to excise the New York critics from the Tony voting pool had compromised the Tonys which would now be forced to champion commercial merits over artistic ones. (Read gossipy Michael Riedel's take on the situation here.) Zeta-Jones was only one of many Hollywood stars to be nominated for Tonys in the 2009-2010 season. Combined with the wins of Scarlett Johansson and Denzel Washington, Zeta-Jones's award helped prompt a Facebook campaign to "Give the Tonys Back to Broadway" which was begun following the awards. (Read Johansson's response here).

However, though Zeta-Jones won over lesser-known stage actresses in her category, both Kate Baldwin and Christiane Noll had appeared in musical revivals that had closed in January after short runs in the fall. Sherie Rene Scott, whose one-woman show was a late-season replacement, was essentially playing herself, which may not have seemed like a particularly strong accomplishment to voters. Some had predicted that Zeta-Jones's most noteworthy competition would come from Broadway newcomer Montego Glover in the Tony-winning Best Musical of the season, Memphis. While it could be argued that opened or closed, Baldwin and Noll's contributions should have been equally considered, Glover suffered from an underwitten role, and of all the roles for which the actresses were in competition this year, Zeta-Jones's, though the role with the least singing, is also the strongest, richest, and most complex character which may have impressed voters.

Zeta-Jones's performance of "Send In the Clowns" on the awards show itself met with criticisms similar to her performance on stage, perhaps with some of the problems being magnified by the camera and also by several months of playing the show repeatedly, a feat to which the actress was not accustomed. In their live blog of the performance at The New York Times website, Charles Isherwood complained, "She’s overacting it as she did in the show. So unnecessary. And vulgar." Dave Itzkoff quipped, “Swing your razor high, Catherine.”

Judge the performance for yourself here:



A month prior to the Tonys, the production had announced a closing date of June 20th, at the end of Lansbury and Zeta-Jones's contracts. There had been rumors in the preceding months that real-life mother and daughter Gwyneth Paltrow and Blythe Danner had considered taking over, and Debbie Reynolds also announced that she had been approached to take over for Lansbury. Evidently suitable agreements were not reached with these or any other stars and the production was slated to close a week after the Tonys.

Ten days after the closing was announced, however, it was reported that Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch might be taking on the Zeta-Jones and Lansbury roles and that the production might not close after all. The official announcement that the pair had, in fact been cast, came on June 7th, along with the news that the production would actually shut down after Zeta-Jones and Lansbury's final performance on June 20th, re-opening with the new stars on July 13th.

Like Lansbury, Stritch has had a long-lasting association with Sondheim, having first performed his work forty years ago in the original production of Company. Peters, of course is also a Sondheim and Broadway veteran, unlike Zeta-Jones who was a Sondheim novice and unused to the stage. In addition, Peters is one of few remaining Broadway stars who has been able to carry a show on the strength of her name in the last fifteen years.

Critics are expected to begin attending performances by the end of the month, with reviews of the new stars appearing in early August. It remains to be seen whether the casting of Peters, who many already view as an effortless improvement on her predecessor, along with co-star Stritch will improve the production in the minds of critics who previously gave it a luke-warm reception.

Initial reports in the first days of performances after the re-opening indicated that 85-year old Stritch was having trouble with the lines, but that Peters was in excellent form. Now a little over a week into their run, word that Stritch has gained confidence and shed her difficulties with the words indicate that with Peters and Stritch, this may indeed be the ticket of the summer.

Broadway to Hollywood: Part Two

By 1950, the relationship between Hollywood and Broadway had changed radically from the early days of talkies when Broadway material was digested by an uncertain Hollywood, eager for dialogue and musical material for the new medium. In the late 20s and early 30s, Hollywood not only bought Broadway product, but regularly brought Broadway talent to the West Coast, attempting to capitalize on the skills of performers already experienced in speaking, singing, and dancing, as well as using seasoned dialogue writers, composers, and lyricists. Some performers like Fred Astaire left Broadway for Hollywood, never to return. Others like Irving Berlin made money but went back to the theatre. Still others were burned by their Hollywood adventure and quickly went back to New York.

During this period, a Hollywood tendency developed to use Broadway material as little more than the merest skeleton on which to build a movie. Some composing teams like Rodgers & Hart routinely saw their musicals filmed minus the vast majority of their songs, and often sporting new ones by other Hollywood writers.

There were exceptions, and in fact many straight plays found their way to Hollywood in surprisingly faithful adaptations, but these will be discussed later. Particularly as Hollywood looked to Broadway musicals for material in the early days, a certain disregard for the material seems notable. Broadway musicals were not taken particularly seriously as entities, and as such it was deemed appropriate to significantly revise or even overhaul the material for the movies.

The fact that Hollywood, in its early days, was so largely unfaithful to the Broadway material it chose to adapt, has meant that today, we remain at a remove from what the majority of those Broadway shows were. Like the preceding centuries of theatrical history, these ephemeral works dissipate with time, leaving behind only fragmented, skeletal indications of how they originally appeared. However, technological developments that would come into play in the next two decades would forever alter the lasting impression Broadway was able to make on the world, and in Hollywood.

The 1940s. Revolutions on Broadway.

The new style of acting that became known as "Method Acting" had deep roots. Though the term as it came to be known was developed first at The Group Theatre in the 1930s, the idea of a more "realistic" acting style had developed over centuries of stage performance. The experimental group of actors that made up The Group Theatre worked together until 1941 when the war led to the dissipation of the group. However, Lee Strasberg continued to teach and develop this style of acting which had its nominal basis in Stanislavki's turn-of-the-century work at The Moscow Art Theatre.

Coinciding with the foundation of The Actor's Studio in New York were the premiere works of playwrights Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller who would each collaborate with director Elia Kazan and designer Jo Mielziner on productions which remain, today, some of the most famous in all American theatre history. Perhaps Marlon Brando's 1947 appearance as Stanley Kowlaski in the most famous Williams work, A Streetcar Named Desire, can be seen as the moment when an actor trained in "The Method" came to national prominence in a starring role first on Broadway and then on film.

All this was also in development just as Rodgers and Hammerstein's new brand of "musical play" was forever changing what the American musical would be. It is not likely a coincidence that this is also the period in which two important technological advances would significantly alter the reach of Broadway, particularly Broadway musicals.

In 1943, Oklahoma! made technological history with its highly influential cast album. The idea of the Original Cast Recording had been developing over the previous four decades as recording technology developed. Various musical stage works had left behind recordings of sorts, but prior to Oklahoma! only a handful of Broadway scores had been recorded in full with their original stage casts, orchestras, and arrangements.

As Oklahoma! was preparing for Broadway, a ban on recording new music was in effect. Musicians had been on strike from new recordings since the summer of 1942. While negotiations had continued with the various record labels, Jack Kapp at Decca Records, who had made several Broadway-related albums prior to that time, came to one of the earliest agreements allowing recording to resume, and soon produced the original cast recording of Oklahoma!. The recording was actually two volumes--two sets of albums. Several 78s were bound together in a book, the first volume comprising the majority of the score and major songs from the show, the second volume, appearing several months later, included the few remaining songs from the score not heard on the original volume. The two combined volumes created a comprehensive account of the entire set of songs from the musical as performed in the show by their original singers.

Oklahoma! was a Broadway phenomenon, becoming one of the longest-running musicals ever to play Broadway at that time. The appearance of the album allowed theatre-goers to take home and relive the theatre experience and it allowed those not lucky enough to obtain tickets to the sold-out show a representation of what they were missing in the theatre.

After Oklahoma!'s success on records, Decca, soon followed by the other record labels, began to regularly turn out Original Cast Recordings of Broadway shows, both hits and flops. This development has a two-fold impact on the history of the development of musical theatre.

Firstly, the reach of the records made of Broadway musicals was greater than any stage show could be. While every show was limited to the few hundred people a night who could experience the show in the theatre, a recording could go anywhere and be played at any time. In 1948, the premiere of the Long-Playing record at Columbia further revolutionized the music-listening experience of the average American. Now rather than a bulky album of heavy 78s, a single disc in a light-weight package could encompass close to an hour of music, perfect for the average length of a Broadway score. The Original Cast Recording of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific in 1949 was one of the new format's earliest successes. Now average Americans, most of them far away from New York and Broadway could actually hear what new Broadway scores sounded like as sung by their original New York stars years before a road company might play near enough to their town to see the show themselves.

Secondly, the cast recording serves a historical purpose for it allows us, today, to experience first hand a little of what these ephemeral musicals were like when they first appeared. In order to study the difference between what a Broadway musical was like on stage and what it was like when adapted to film, we must attempt to understand what that stage form actually was. One of the pitfalls of studying film adaptations of Broadway properties is to mistake the movie's representation of the material for the material itself. Lacking any other concrete representation of the stage work, the film becomes a substitute, which is often most misleading.

As the LP was making waves in the average American's experience of music-listening in the late 1940s, the revolution being created by the development and sudden overwhelming popularity of television also increased the national visibility of Broadway.

By the early 1950s, millions of American households had televisions. In that decade, much popular television was filmed and broadcast from New York and made use of New York writers, directors, and performers. Classical and contemporary theatre works were regularly performed on television, often with major New York stars (albeit, usually in highly abridged adaptations), and many New York playwrights created works specifically form the new medium.

Also on television, variety shows, particularly Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town and later The Ed Sullivan Show regularly brought performances from Broadway plays and musicals into the living rooms of millions of Americans. In 1954, when General Foods celebrated their own twenty-fifth anniversary with a Rodgers and Hammerstein tenth anniversary special, all three networks broadcast the show which included performances by original cast members and new performers from each of the duo's major stage works up to that time--and this was before any of the R&H titles had appeared on film. The staggering ratings the special brought in reflected an American culture for which the Broadway musical had become a center of popular culture.

Though this would perhaps be the zenith of the Broadway musical's cultural centrality, never again to be enjoyed after its slow dissipation in the 1960s, the many live stage performances as performed on television that survive today afford the historian the opportunity to witness many original stage productions as they appeared, in part, on Broadway with their original performers. Often these performances can be directly compared to the later film adaptations of the works they represented.

Still, it is important to recognize that theatre is an experience-based medium. Film and records can be replayed over and over, and though the physical material on which they are printed may deteriorate, the performances that are recorded are forever caught in that one moment captured. To experience any work in a theatre is to be part of a unique experience that will never happen again. Even a long-running Broadway musical which appears nightly over and over will be different each night. Even a single performance of a theatre work can be a vastly different experience for two different spectators, depending on where in the theatre he or she sits.

So whatever analysis I may do of Broadway works and their filmic representations, we must first recognize that in most cases, I will not be discussing a stage work that I personally witnessed. Whenever possible, I have studied performance footage, recordings, photographs, and reviews to help create a sense of what a show might actually have felt like, but the theatre remains an elusive ghost, forever disappearing.

Broadway to Hollywood: Part One

Stage language vs Film Language

When adapting a stage work to film, Alfred Hitchcock's advice was, "Don't open it up."*

In Hitchcock's view, the very thing that makes a play a success on stage is in its structure--the exact thing that the process of 'opening it up' for film treatment would jeopardize. The two films Hitchcock made of stage works, Dial 'M' For Murder and Rope, are claustrophobic in nature. The action takes place mostly in small rooms - focusing on a single location, mimicking the setting of the works as they appeared on stage.

Other stage-to-film transfers have succeeded without substantial departure from the stage structure. Reportedly, Elia Kazan was not originally interested in reproducing the stage version of A Streetcar Named Desire for film, and initially conceived of an elaborate opening-up of the material which would have incorporated scenes that are only talked about in the play--going back to Belle Reve where Blanche's downfall prior to coming to stay with her sister and husband began. Ultimately, Kazan abandoned the concept, opting to go with a script and film-staging that would stick closely to the original play and using three of the four original stage stars (and incorporating Vivien Leigh from the London production).

Other adapters of stage works for the screen, however, would opt to re-structure stage works for film, attempting to provide in filmic language that which was communicated on stage through dialogue and other more theatrical language.

Language, in fact, becomes the preeminent element in a discussion of the translation of stage works to the movies. Works for the the theatre tend to focus on the written/spoken word as their basis, often leaving much of the action of a given plot to the imagination of the audience. Movies, on the other hand, excel in the use of visual language.

Perhaps because movies began life as a wordless set of moving pictures, movies learned to tell stories in pictures rather than words. Theatre works, on the other hand, had survived the centuries primarily through the written text. Ancient works from Greece and Rome survive today as texts, and though we still have limited knowledge as to the actual performance practices of the time, from the texts we learn that these plays, like the texts that would come after them for centuries, tended to provide action in words--with much of the action of a given story described in speech as an off-stage event.

The works of Shakespeare, which have survived five hundred years of various performance practices, also remain today essentially as written texts. These texts, while bound to their words, are wide open--often taking place in many different locations and employing very large casts, unlike the traditional late 19th and 20th century drama which became bound to scenery and often limited itself to a few scenic locations and often, smaller casts.

Scholars argue about the suitability of classic texts, particularly Shakespearean ones, to the cinema. While some argue that Shakespeare's works are perfect for film in their vast number of locations, and often epic sweep, others complain that Shakespeare, as a verbal medium, is at an immediate disadvantage on film, with the camera being able to provide that which Shakespeare must provide in words, making his texts redundant on film.

In the earliest days of stage performance, we have learned that often masks would be employed to convey the overall persona and sometimes emotional state of a character. The actor became the vessel through which a story would be told, but the actor's delivery was not expected to mimic the reality of life as later acting would.

By the 19th century, however, stage acting had developed to the point that George Bernard Shaw described a performance of the great Eleanor Duse as being so real, spontaneous, and life-like, that he actually saw her blush on cue.

As 'mimetic' acting developed in the 20th century, film arguably became an even more relevant medium than the stage for catching the nuances of acting performances which attempted to simulate life as realistically as possible. The close-up was able to see the tiniest facial movements, the look behind the eyes, and the slightest glimmers of emotion. On stage, even an audience in the first row may not see such nuances, so the language of the theatre needed to remain somewhat separate from the movies. While a close-up could tell you much about what a character was thinking, the theatre audience, seated hundreds of feet away from the actor, needed a theatrical equivalent to tell them what was happening in the mind of the character.

It is perhaps, no coincidence, that just as The Method was beginning to take a hold of actors in New York (and later Hollywood), Rodgers and Hammerstein were solidifying the revolution that had begun in the world of the Broadway musical. Though there had been many, many steps on the developmental road to Oklahoma!, and it was not exactly, as it is often called, the first integrated musical, it did bring about an enormous change. After Oklahoma! and the Rodgers and Hammerstein follow-up, Carousel, musicals began to be an art form to take seriously on their own. The "musical play" as it was sometimes called (as opposed to the "musical comedy" which even in the era of Integration still showed its roots in vaudeville and burlesque), was a new opportunity for musicals to communicate as serious art.

Opera had become a serious form of music-theatre in previous centuries, but often opera spoke in languages not known to the ears of its audiences, and even though many operas had extremely complicated stories, the music was the focus. The mid-twentieth century musical, with its combination of spoken scenes, story-driven dances, and musical sequences sung in a language the audience could understand, provided the stage with the exact thing it needed to compete with the burgeoning world of 'mimetic' acting on the screen and the live television drama. The musical theatre became a language all its own, and for that reason, it would become a notoriously tricky proposition to translate this language, built in opposition to the tools of the camera, to the language of the movies...

*According to Peter Bogdanovich

Gypsy Closes on Broadway

On January 11th, 2009, Patti LuPone, Boyd Gaines, and Laura Benanti offered their final performances in their Tony-award winning roles in the most recent revival of Gypsy. Despite previous announcements that the show would run until March first and rumors that the production would be filmed for commercial release, the producers announced in December that “due to these uncertain financial times” the show would instead close in January, and it went unfilmed. Gypsy was one of many Broadway shows which closed this month in the wake of the current economic crisis. Other shows included long-running hits Hairspray and Spamalot as well as more recent shows like Spring Awakening, the 2007 revival of Grease, last season’s Young Frankenstein, the Tony-winning revival of Boeing Boeing, and the recent new musical 13.

When it closed, the 4th Broadway revival of Gypsy had played a total of 332 performances and 27 previews (plus a three-week “try-out” at New York’s City Center in the summer of 2007). This was the second shortest run of a Broadway Gypsy with only the Lansbury revival of 1974 playing fewer performances on Broadway. Nevertheless, statistics like these can be deceiving and the context must be considered.

While the Lansbury production played by far the fewest performances of all the Gypsys on Broadway, it was the only production to play on the West End. Dolores Grey took over for Lansbury when she departed after six months to take the production on a North American tour which included a limited stop on Broadway. The 30th anniversary revival starring Tyne Daly also toured prior to its Broadway engagement and is unique in being the only Broadway production of the musical to have replaced its star. Linda Lavin played Rose for the final months of the initial engagement. Daly brought the production back for a few months the following spring, ending the engagement after a total of 476 performances

While the 2003 Bernadette Peters production played just over a year and close to as many performances as the previous revival (451), it was the first Broadway Gypsy that did not tour either pre or post-Broadway.

The recently-closed 2008 revival would likely have closed in March as originally planned if not for the current economic situation. It may have suffered somewhat from over-familiarity with the piece as it had not been five years since the closing of the last production when the new production opened. Nevertheless, the LuPone-headed Gypsy like the original and Lansbury productions before it was met with critical praise from almost all of the major critics. (Daly and Peters both met with critical dissent, though the New York Times praised both and Daly won the Tony). It also became the first Gypsy to win Tonys for both its Louise and Herbie, Laura Benanti and Boyd Gaines, and LuPone became the third Tony-winning Rose.

Again though, context is important. The original production of Gypsy, which played more than twice the number of performances than the LuPone production, ran far longer than the other productions. The Daly revival was closest to the success of the original, running for approximately two thirds of the original’s 702 performances. Merman also took the show on a highly successful national tour after closing on Broadway which was followed by a second national company. Still, even the original production was apparently looked at as somewhat of a disappointment by producer David Merrick. The Sound of Music was one of two musicals which bested Gypsy for the Best Musical Tony in 1960 (Fiorello tied with SOM) and went on to play more than twice the number of performances on Broadway and become a phenomenon, touring for years, spawning numerous international productions and ultimately becoming one of the most successful movies of all time.

All this is to say that Gypsy has always been more a critic’s show than a huge box office success. The 2008 revival apparently did not turn a profit and at ten months had a relatively short run. Nevertheless, it can be considered an artistic success, winning three Tony awards and high critical praise. LuPone, in addition to the Tony award, won the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Actress in a Musical and the Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance and cemented her reputation as Broadway's reigning diva.

Gypsy, the 2008 Broadway Cast Recording

The long-awaited cast recording of the acclaimed 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy finally reached stores in late August and is now available at TimeLife.com

Following in the footsteps of the 2008 cast recording of South Pacific, Time Life chose to release this Gypsy in two forms. The first release which is being sold by most outlets is a 1-disc CD featuring most of the score (including material never before recorded) as well as several songs cut from the original production in 1959. Some of these songs have been heard in some form prior to this release, including as bonus features on the most recent release of the Original Broadway Cast Recording. The second release is an exclusive 2-disc release from Barnes & Noble which features about eleven minutes of extra material recorded for the album but which would not fit on an 80-minute CD.

Like South Pacific, Gypsy was hardly underrepresented on disc prior to the release of the current album. There are over forty recordings of the score of South Pacific, while Gypsy has approximately half that number. South Pacific, despite its lack of full-scale Broadway revivals prior to the current one, has been constantly produced throughout the last sixty years, and many productions resulted in cast recordings including a 1967 Lincoln Center revival, two film soundtracks, and three London productions. There have also been two separate large-scale studio recordings (one from TER/JAY and another starring a rather unlikely Jose Carreras and Kiri Te Kanawa), and countless pop and studio recordings. Gypsy, on the other hand, has had a handful of pop recordings, such as Annie Ross's 1959 jazz album. There have been a few studio recordings including a famous disaster of a recording starring another Jule Styne Momma, Kay Medford.

Of the remaining recordings of the score, several feature foreign-language casts. This leaves six major recordings of the score standing in sharp comparison to the new recording. All three previous Broadway revivals were recorded, with Lansbury's London recording being released in a slightly altered form for the US. In addition to the Daly and Peters recordings, there are also the two film soundtracks, starring Rosliand Russell/Lisa Kirk, and Bette Midler respectively. And of course, the towering Original Broadway Cast Recordings still stands today as one of the greatest cast recordings of all time.

That famous OBC does not necessarily represent the show exactly as it appeared on stage in 1959. Several of the songs were apparently transposed to lower keys during the run of the show, so the score as heard on the recording is perhaps even more vocally exciting than what was heard nightly on Broadway. Changes were also made for the recording, including the use of a different arrangement of "Small World" which makes the song sound more like a popular hit. Despite these changes, however, the original recording is still one of the most revered of its genre and it captures much of the excitement of Ethel Merman's legendary performance.


In the almost fifty years since Merman created the role, Rose has become one of the most collectible of "diva" roles of the musical theatre, and the various recordings of the score have become a valuable tool for enthusiasts to compare and contrast performances. Today, itunes has made the compare/contrast process even faster and easier allowing one to call up all renditions of a single song in only a few keystrokes, which can then be listened to instantly, back to back. It is to such scrutiny that any new recording will be subjected. One can now compare a new performance almost note by note to other recordings.

After the OBC, the next major recording of Gypsy is the 1962 soundtrack album. When the album was released for the first time on CD in 2003, it included multiple bonus tracks. The original soundtrack album had included alternative versions of some songs than what can be heard in the film. Lisa Kirk, who dubbed the majority of Russell's vocals for the film, sings a solo version of "Together Wherever We Go," which was cut from the film (and appears in a vocally jarring rendition by the film's three stars as a bonus on the DVD of the film as well as the new CD). In the film, Russell and Kirk's voices were spliced together for a "Rose's Turn" that is part Russell, part Kirk. The original album included only an all-Kirk version. The current release includes both cuts. Also included on the CD were Russell's vocal tracks for several songs that were ultimately deemed unusable by the studio, necessitating the assistance of Kirk. Merman is said to have acquired records of Russell's takes which she played at parties for laughs.

Ironically, the next two Broadway Roses who each won the Tony for the part while Merman did not, produced what have been called called much less vocally exciting recordings than the Merman original. Lansbury comes off much better than Daly, though changes in key are frequent within Lansbury's numbers in order to allow her to sing in a smaller range where she was vocally the most stable. The ferocity Lansbury brought to the role is in evidence on the recording. Tyne Daly, acclaimed in the theatre, was the least vocally endowed of the Broadway Roses, and was unfortunately ill when the recording of the 1989 revival was recorded. Daly herself reportedly was so upset with the recording she has declined to autograph copies of it. Nevertheless, as a souvenir of a great performance, the record is valuable.

Between the Daly recording and the current recording, there are two other major Gypsys. The 1993 television film starring Bette Midler was a ratings success that garnered strong reviews and many Emmy nominations (though only one award, for Musical Direction, was won). In later years, however, many including Arthur Laurents have expressed disappointment with the production and the star. Midler, one of the industry's greatest entertainers seemed to have all the right qualities for Rose, but Midler has had limited success as an actress and her performance of the role is not the most satisfying. However, Midler apparently insisted on singing several of her songs live on set, which were later mixed with studio takes. On record, this gives her performance a welcome theatricality and electricity. Though she perhaps does not plumb the depths of the role in the way some Roses have, Midler brings her considerable gifts as a performer and entertainer to the role, and comes off somewhat better on disc than on screen, and provides one of the more vocally solid renditions of the score, singing the score for the most part in Merman's keys.

The next recording is, of course, the 2003 Broadway revival cast recording starring the controversial Rose of Bernadette Peters. The current revival seems to have benefited from the mixed response to this recent production. While Ben Brantley and others published very favorable reviews of Peters and the production, others felt the star was miscast. Peters had became ill during previews missing several performances, which added fuel to the fire of some who thought she was not up to the demands of the role. Peters gamely went on after previews, even when ill, and brought in audiences for a full year of performances. Though some vocal distress or deterioration can be heard in her performance on the 2003 recording, vocally, she still ranks as one of the stronger Roses on record. Unfortunately the recording is marred by a reduced orchestra and unappealing mixing and production.

So, after all these previous recordings, perhaps yet another Gypsy recording was not necessary. However, the new production is highly acclaimed and still selling decently at the box office, so a new album was inevitable. While the album will doubtlessly not convince those who do not like star Patti LuPone in general or in the role on stage, it still ranks as one of the strongest recordings of the score subsequent to the Merman original. The record is well produced and benefits from the lush full orchestra. Boyd Gaines, who won his fourth Tony for his performance in Gypsy, does not have a huge amount of sung material in the show, so it's pleasant to hear his rendition of Herbie's cut song, "Nice She Ain't." Laura Benanti, also a Tony winner for her Gypsy performance, brings much of what makes her the most acclaimed Louise/Gypsy so far to the recording. Next to Zan Charisse on the Lansbury recording, Benanti gets the most complete strip sequence on record for the evolution of Louise to Gypsy Rose Lee, and Benanti's transition from meek to confident and flirtatious is well represented on the recording.

Finally, of course, there is LuPone. The star has received perhaps the greatest reviews of her career, and her second Tony for her Rose. In praising the current Broadway revival, many critics, writers, and even Arthur Laurents himself, have been quick to note ways in which it is superior to previous productions. Merman's acting talent has been called inferior to later Roses, though many critics at the time acclaimed it as the best performance of her career, and specifically commented on the strength of her acting. Still, the word "definitive" has been used by some critics including John Simon to describe the current production and star. However, a role with so many successful portrayals can never truly have a definitive performance, and to this writer's mind, even sight unseen, the role will forever belong to Merman. However, LuPone does make one of the best overall cases for the part, bringing all the benefits of her strong legit acting background and her huge vocal power to the role. And it does seem as though this actress has had this date since she first bulldozed Broadway as Evita almost thirty years ago. It was then that she first fully demonstrated her lungs of iron and her will of steel that would one day serve her as Merman's successor. She is in excellent voice and in addition to her strong vocals, the album includes enough of her dialogue to hint at what she brings to the book scenes.

Though the album does not include Rose's second act reprise of "Small World" (which has been cut in the current production) it does include previously unrecorded score material including the "traveling" reprise to "Some People," and the Barnes and Noble bonus tracks, though not particularly necessary for the most part, do provide Rose and Louises's final scene and finale music which gives the album a more satisfying ending than most Gypsy albums which simply end with "Rose's Turn." The other cut songs included on the album are a mixed bag. In most cases, the choice to cut the songs appears wise. The counterpoint section of "Small World" and "Mamma's Talkin' Soft" is perplexing. The counterpoint seems muddled and overly complex. Not at all something in the tradition of Merman's great counterpoint numbers, "You're Just In Love" and "Old Fashioned Wedding." It is hard to imagine that the star would have accepted the number in this form. However the official story has always been that the song was cut because the little girls were staged to be on a high set piece and one of the two young actresses was terrified of heights.

Finally, if one was to own only one recording of Gypsy, one would need to own the OBC. However, for any true Broadway fan, one recording of Gypsy is simply not enough, and if one was to own only two recordings, the 2008 recording starring Patti LuPone, Boyd Gaines, and Laura Benanti, would be an excellent compliment to the original. Overall, of the other major recordings, it is the strongest.

The Revival.

Fall is upon us.

The New York Shakespeare Festival production of Hair at the Delacorte Theatre proved to be the summer's biggest success, and it continues to fill out its extension in September. Rumors suggest a Broadway transfer is possible. Reviews were strong, and the line for tickets begins to grow by the early morning hours.

The second annual Encores! Summer Stars production, Damn Yankees! was not as strongly received as the inaugural production of the series, Gypsy (the transfer of which continues its run at the St. James). Reviews were somewhat divided over the cast though the majority seemed to indicate that Sean Hayes, previously of NBC's Will and Grace, made a successful transition to the New York stage playing the devilish Mr. Applegate and that Jane Krakowski, though obviously a Broadway pro, was somewhat out of her element recreating Gwen Verdon's magic and Bob Fosse's dances. Most critics echoed Christopher Isherwood in The New York Times who found the production "pleasant but a little pizazz-deficient." According to Isherwood, "Everyone involved performs his or her chores capably, but the show does not shimmy off the dust of 50-plus years truly to tickle us anew. It's a solid double, maybe, but hardly the grand slam that was last summer's "Gypsy," which subsequently transferred to Broadway and scored three Tonys. " In comparison to Gypsy, Linda Winer wrote in Newsday that Damn Yankees "is much more in the tradition of summer stock with TV stars."

Gypsy on Broadway has performed strongly throughout the summer, and Lincoln Center's revival of South Pacific continues to be the hottest ticket in town. Both productions fared well at the Tony Awards in June, with Gypsy winning for all three of its leading players, and South Pacific taking the award in four design categories, as well as Best Leading Actor in a Musical, Best Director of a Musical, and Best Revival of a Musical.

Perhaps somewhat in reaction to the strength of these two musical revivals, several more have been announced for the coming season. In the early 90s, the highly successful revival of Guys and Dolls ushered in a decade on Broadway dominated by revivals of classic (and sometimes, less classic) musicals and a new production of that musical has been announced for the upcoming season. Despite the announcement that planned revivals of Godspell and Brigadoon will not appear this season, in addition to Guys and Dolls, revivals of Pal Joey, West Side Story, and Dancin' are planned, and rumors of another Sondheim revival, Merrily We Roll Along, to be directed by James Lapine have been heard.

In the 90s, while Miss Saigon, Rent and Disney's Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King became the major new musical hits of the decade, revivals such as Cabaret and Chicago became bigger hits than their original productions and one season, 1995, saw only one new musical on Broadway, Sunset Boulevard (which was presented with a Tony for Best Musical despite its total lack of competition). The 90s had re-shaped what revivals of musicals looked like on Broadway. Revivals now attempted to make older shows look new to contemporary audiences. New productions of older shows with re-written books, re-written orchestrations and arrangements, and often parodistic, winking attitudes toward the original material were frequent. Such practices were not unheard of before the 90s, with the 1971 No No Nanette being an obvious example of a revival which totally revamped its material to great success. Revivals of Anything Goes on and off-Broadway from the 60s to the 80s had new books and interpolated songs. However, prior to the 90s, musicals from Broadway's Golden Age (roughly the 40s to the 60s) when presented in revival usually appeared in a form closely resembling their original productions, sometimes even being presented with their original stars.

Some 90s revivals tampered less with the actual text of the original shows but found a new approach in the direction, design, and overall attack of the material. Revivals of Rodgers and Hammerstein classics such as Nicholas Hytner's dark Carousel and Christopher Renshaw's King and I starring a Tony-winning post-Sondheim Anna in Donna Murphy were hailed by critics. Sam Mendes's Cabaret, one of the most successful revivals of the period, combined revisionist direction and approach with the altered text, tunestack, and arrangements which had become the norm when reviving even the most classic Broadway titles.

Perhaps somewhat in reaction to the new Broadway tradition of revising classic Broadway titles in revival, as well as the troubling trend in downsizing orchestras, the 90s also saw the rise of the concert staging of classic musicals, best exemplafied by the City Center Encores! series. Concert stagings of musicals had been seen in previous decades, but the genre has developed greatly in the last fifteen years. For instance, 1985's sell-out concert presentation of Follies at Avery Fisher Hall included an all-star cast performing the majority of the show's score accompanied by the New York Philharmonic, but only a few lines of connective dialogue were heard between songs, and staging was limited to minimal movement in front of microphones, mostly delivered directly to the audience. When Follies was staged by Encores! in 2007, though the tradition of the performers holding scripts was retained and sets and costumes were minimal, in addition to the full score, it was almost a complete new full staging of the show with a revised but fairly extensive book and full choreography.

However, Encores! did not always look like the 2007 Follies. When the series began in 1994, stagings looked more like traditional concert stagings of musicals, with actors in evening-wear reading from scripts and using minimal staging and edited books. As the series developed however, stagings became more fully realized. 1996 saw a major turning point when Encores! staged Bob Fosse's 1975 show, Chicago. Up to that time, Encores had specialized more in shows like Call Me Madam, Fiorello!, and Allegro. Before Chicago, Encores! had presented earlier musicals dating from 1939 to 1950, and staging had been highly minimized. Chicago was only twenty years old, and relied heavily on dance staging. Because of this, the decision was made to have Ann Reinking, a frequent Fosse dancer who had been a replacement for Gwen Verdon in the original production, create new choreography in the Fosse style, effectively making it the fullest staging of a show presented by Encores! at that time. The result, of course, was such a success that the production was quickly picked up by commercial producers and brought to Broadway where it has played ever since.

Chicago changed Encores!. Soon after, other similar concert stagings such as Los Angeles's Reprise and Chicago's Ravinia concerts became a regular occurance, and took on the Encores! tradition of presenting almost fully-staged productions with minimal sets and costumes and edited books. In addition to the more fully-realized stagings, the success of Chicago on Broadway may also have encouraged the series's presenters to use Encores! as a tryout for Broadway, though Encores! has denied that this is the case. Still, two other Encores! productions made it to Broadway (in altered forms): Wonderful Town had a mildly successful commercial run on Broadway, though it was somewhat marred by illness which caused acclaimed star Donna Murphy to miss many performances. In the last months of the run, she was unceremoniously replaced by a game Brooke Shields. The critically acclaimed Encores! staging of The Apple Tree starring Kristin Chenoweth was picked up by Roundabout for the 2006-2007 season, and it played a limited three-month engagement, once again receiving glowing reviews, mainly for its star. At this point, it looks unlikely that Damn Yankees will follow Gypsy's route from Encores! Summer Stars to Broadway.

Despite the changes in Encores! approach to their selection of shows and their execution of them, the series has remained an interesting opposite to more commercial Broadway revivals. Rather than change older musicals to appear relevant to a contemporary audience, Encores! has usually attempted to present the material more as it may have originally appeared, particularly with regard to its use of original orchestrations and arrangements where available, which are played by a full-sized orchestra. On Broadway today, we seem usually to have to choose between either a full orchestra with minimal sets and costumes, or a reduced orchestra with a more fully realized physical production or some compromise in between. This is one thing that sets apart the current production of South Pacific, which both boasts a full orchestra, and a luxurious physical production. This comes after something of a slow-down in interest in musical revivals on Broadway, which dominated much of the previous decade.

Though the 2001 revival of 42nd Street lasted almost four years on Broadway, it still closed in the red. The same season, The Producers was showered with Tony Awards and became a Broadway phenonomen. In 2003, Hairspray became another major success, as did the Tony Award winner of 2004, Avenue Q, which despite its continuing success has not reached the level of phenomenon that is enjoyed by Wicked, from the same season. Other hit musicals from the last eight years include Mamma Mia, Movin' Out, Spamalot, and Jersey Boys. Since the revival of 42nd Street, the subsequent winners in the category, Into the Woods, Nine, Assassins, La Cage aux Folles, The Pajama Game, and Company all closed within six months of winning the Tony. (Granted Assassins and Pajama Game, which closed within weeks of the awards, were limited engagements.)

A revival of Fiddler on the Roof which did not win the Tony was perhaps the longest run of a revival in this period after 42nd Street, running for 781 performances. Two revivals which lost the Tony to Company in 2007 were somewhat dismissed by critics for going back to an older tradition of reviving Broadway musicals in that they were recreations of the original stagings. Les Misérables returned to Broadway late in 2006 and was not even nominated in the Best Revival of a Musical category, likely because it was seen less as a revival and more as an extension of the original production, but it ran for over four hundred performances. The revival of A Chorus Line slavishly recreated not only Michael Bennett's original staging, but original costumes and design. This revival, which just closed in the last few weeks, was one of the most successful revivals of the decade, running for 759 performances.

Last season saw an extraordinary number of play revivals, and this season appears set to continue in that tradition with such revivals as the highly anticipated Equus, the transfer of a London production of The Seagull, two David Mamet revivals, Speed the Plow and American Buffalo, as well as revivals of A Man For All Seasons, All My Sons, Dividing the Estate (a transfer of the off-Broadway production) and Hedda Gabler.

The 62nd Annual Tony Awards, 2008

A fairly unsurprising group of winners was announced on June 15, 2008 at Radio City Music Hall. And despite being the first ceremony to have one host in a few years (the wise-cracking Whoopi Goldberg), ratings are apparently only marginally better than last year's record-breaking low.

Personally, I was most pleased that Patti LuPone's incredible performance in Gypsy was awarded, along with her terrific co-stars Laura Benanti and Boyd Gaines. Kelli O'Hara, who does fine work in South Pacific will have plenty more chances and despite her loss, South Pacific was unsurprisingly the biggest winner of the night with seven awards: Best Actor Paulo Szot, Best Director Bartlett Sher, and Best Revival of a Musical and the revival swept all four of the design categories.

Until recently, there had been only three design categories in total for both plays and musicals: Scenic, Costume, and Lighting design, the last of those only having been presented since 1970. In 2005, the three categories were bisected so the designs of plays could be separately recognized from the designs of musicals. The 1961 season had also included separate awards for Costume and Scenic design of plays and musicals. This season, the category of Sound Design was added for both plays and musicals, creating a total of eight design awards.

The other biggest winner of the evening (also surprising no one) was August: Osage County, Tracy Letts's Pulitzer-Prize winning play imported from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre with its Chicago cast almost completely in tact. In addition to Best Play, Best Director and Best Scenic Design of a Play, Deanna Dunagan and Rondi Reed, both of whom sadly played their final performances yesterday afternoon, accepted awards in the Best Leading and Featured Actress in a Play categories. (Starting tomorrow, Estelle Parsons and Steppenwolf actress Molly Regan will take over Duanagan and Reed's roles, respectively).

In a season notably strongest in plays and revivals, only two new musicals received Tony Awards. In the Heights, after winning the first two competive awards of the night (announced via webcast prior to the CBS show) for Best Orchestrations and Choreopgrahy, as expected, took Best Musical and Best Score. Passing Strange, which some pundits had predicted would pull an upset, failed to do so, scoring only one award, Best Book of a Musical.

Three of the four design categories for plays were won by Roundabout Theatre productions: Sound and Lighting Design went to The 39 Steps, while Les Liaisons Dangereuses won for costumes. (Scenic Design, as previously noted, went to August: Osage County). In the category of Best Revival of a Play, the 60s French sex farce Boeing Boeing beat out heavy competition from revivals of works by Pinter and Shakespeare and Christopher Hampton. The original production of Boeing Boeing opened in France in 1960 and played there for nineteen years. The original London production ran for seven years, but it flopped in its first Broadway outing in 1965, closing after only twenty-three performances. Matthew Warchus's staging currently playing the Longacre first became a hit on the London stage in 2007. Star Mark Rylance, the sole cast member to have appeared both in the London and Broadway productions, won the Best Leading Actor in a Play Tony award and gave the most puzzling speech of the night.

Some of last night's performances:

Xanadu, which sadly went home empty handed:


Another Tony loser, the critically acclaimed revival of Sunday In the Park With George:


Best Musical winner In the Heights


Best Book of a Musical winner, Passing Strange:


Winners Gaines, Benanti, and LuPone in Gypsy:


Winner of seven Tonys including Best Musical Revival, South Pacific: