Obsessed With Broadway

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

2010-07-22T21:16:00.003-04:00

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

2010-06-20T12:14:00.000-04:00

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

2010-05-01T15:56:00.002-04:00

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

2009-01-11T19:04:00.000-05:00

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

2008-09-07T16:37:00.002-04:00

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.

2008-08-16T12:25:00.001-04:00

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

2008-06-16T13:09:00.001-04:00

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:

South Pacific, the New Broadway Cast Recording

2008-05-29T20:54:00.000-04:00

This week, the new cast recording of the revival cast of South Pacific was released. In a somewhat surprising move, Barnes and Noble was given exclusive rights to release a version of the recording containing a few bonus tracks--a few orchestral tracks and one or two short reprises of songs. Any copies of the album bought anywhere other than Barnes and Noble (including, presumably, the Vivian Beaumont) is a shorter version of the album containing only twenty-six tracks.

The new CD sounds impeccable and immaculate. There are a couple of odd choices about when to include dialogue and when not to, but the overall sound is excellent and except for weak vocals from Sayre's Bloody Mary and Morrison's Cable (the latter of whom unfortunately does his number in the original key, though he is now singing it a half-step down in the theatre), it's well sung. Of all the Nellies I have heard on record (and there are at least ten of those) O'Hara's technique is second only to Kiri Te Kanawa, who is a less ideal Nellie for obvious reasons. Even Florence Henderson is not as solid as O'Hara. Szot also is in excellent voice and provides powerful vocals, and the orchestra sounds a little richer than in the theatre (there are apparently a few extra players). Fans of the production will be very happy with the disc.

The new recording is almost the polar opposite of the recent Carnegie Hall concert CD which has a lot of technical flaws, given the scant rehearsal time and the fact that it's culled from a live performance. Personally though, I find that recording much more effective, mainly because of McEntire and Stokes, but also, the messy, live quality makes it more theatrical and viscerally exciting.

On recording, I find O'Hara's performance endemic of the production: beautiful, expert, but too controlled and sophisticated. On the recording, even the children's laughter at the end of "Dites Moi" sounds unspontaneous. Without being able to see Szot, though his phrasing and singing is overall very strong, I found him a bit wooden. And even though there are more vocally effective Cables and Marys than Jason Danieley and Lillias White, I find them both far ahead of their counterparts in the current production. But obviously, this reflects how I feel about the productions in general, and I'm in the minority on not being head-over-heels in love with the revival, but even with my reservations I can say that it's well-done and sounds very good so I'm sure fans of the production will be happy to have this new recording.

The Tony Awards, 2007-2008 Season

2008-05-13T21:45:00.000-04:00

The 62nd Annual American Theatre Wing's Tony Awards will be presented on June 15th. The show will be broadcast live on CBS starting at 8pm. Whoopi Goldberg was recently announced as this year's host.

This morning, the nominations for the Tony Awards were announced. The new musical In the Heights brought in the most nominations (13) and looks likely to win Best Musical. The second most-nom'd production is the hit Lincoln Center revival of South Pacific, which is likely to sweep in a large number of the 11 categories in which it is nominated including Best Musical Revival, Best Direction of a Musical, and Best Actor in a Musical, and more than possibly, Best Actress in a Musical. South Pacific is also likely to see Tonys in the design categories. Sunday In the Park With George, another acclaimed musical revival received nine nominations, though it looks likely to lose in most categories, and Gypsy, the third acclaimed musical revival, tied the most-nominated new play, August: Osage County, with 7 noms. All three of Gypsy's leading players, Patti LuPone, Laura Benanti, and Boyd Gaines were nominated. This marks LuPone's fifth nomination for a Tony. She previously won twenty-eight years ago for Evita, but most recently lost in 2006 for her Mrs. Lovett in the John Doyle revival of Sweeney Todd to The Color Purple's LaChanze (the only award TCP received). Three of August: Osage County's players, Deanna Dunagan (a favorite to win), Amy Morton, and Rondi Reed were nominated.

The complete list of nominations is as follows:

Best Play:

August: Osage County
Rock 'n' Roll

The Seafarer

The 39 Steps

Best Musical:

Cry-Baby

In the Heights

Passing Strange

Xanadu

Best Book of a Musical:

Cry-Baby, Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan

In the Heights, Quiara Alegria Hudes

Passing Strange, Stew

Xanadu, Douglas Carter Beane

Best Original Score:

Cry-Baby, Music & Lyrics: David Javerbaum & Adam Schlesinger
In The Heights, Music & Lyrics: Lin-Manuel Miranda

The Little Mermaid, Music: Alan Menken and Lyrics: Howard Ashman and Glenn Slater

Passing Strange, Music: Stew and Heidi Rodewald Lyrics: Stew

Best Revival of a Play:
Boeing-Boeing

The Homecoming

Les Liaisons Dangereueses

Macbeth

Best Revival of a Musical:
Grease

Gypsy

South Pacific

Sunday in the Park With George

Best Performance By a Leading Actor in a Play:

Ben Daniels, Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Laurence Fishburne, Thurgood

Mark Rylance, Boeing-Boeing

Rufus Sewell, Rock 'n' Roll

Patrick Stewart, Macbeth

Best Performance By a Leading Actress in a Play:
Eve Best, The Homecoming

Deanna Dunagan, August: Osage County

Kate Fleetwood, Macbeth

S. Epatha Merkerson, Come Back, Little Sheba

Amy Morton, August: Osage County

Best Performance By a Leading Actor in a Musical:
Daniel Evans, Sunday in the Park With George

Lin-Manuel Miranda, In the Heights

Stew, Passing Strange

Paulo Szot, South Pacific

Tom Wopat, A Catered Affair

Best Performance By a Leading Actress in a Musical:
Kerry Butler, Xanadu

Patti LuPone, Gypsy

Kelli O'Hara, South Pacific

Faith Prince, A Catered Affair

Jenna Russell, Sunday in the Park With George

Best Performance By a Featured Actor in a Play:

Bobby Cannavale, Mauritius

Raúl Esparza, The Homecoming

Conleth Hill, The Seafarer

Jim Norton, The Seafarer

David Pittu, Is He Dead?

Best Performance By a Featured Actress in a Play:

Sinead Cusack, Rock 'n' Roll
Mary McCormack, Boeing-Boeing

Laurie Metcalf, November
Martha Plimpton, Top Girls

Rondi Reed, August: Osage County

Best Performance By a Featured Actor in a Musical:

Daniel Breaker, Passing Strange

Danny Burstein, South Pacific

Robin De Jesús, In The Heights
Christopher Fitzgerald, Young Frankenstein

Boyd Gaines, Gypsy

Best Performance By a Featured Actress in a Musical:

de'Adre Aziza, Passing Strange

Laura Benanti, Gypsy

Andrea Martin, Young Frankenstein

Olga Merediz, In The Heights

Loretta Ables Sayre, South Pacific

Best Direction of a Play:

Maria Aitken, The 39 Steps

Conor McPherson, The Seafarer

Anna D. Shapiro, August: Osage County

Matthew Warchus, Boeing-Boeing

Best Direction of a Musical:

Sam Buntrock, Sunday in the Park with George

Thomas Kail, In The Heights

Arthur Laurents, Gypsy

Bartlett Sher, South Pacific

Best Choreography:

Rob Ashford, Cry-Baby

Andy Blankenbuehler, In The Heights

Christopher Gattelli, South Pacific

Dan Knechtges, Xanadu

Best Orchestrations:

Jason Carr, Sunday in the Park with George

Alex Lacamoire & Bill Sherman, In the Heights

Stew & Heidi Rodewald, Passing Strange

Jonathan Tunick, A Catered Affair

Best Scenic Design of a Play:

Peter McKintosh, The 39 Steps

Scott Pask, Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Todd Rosenthal, August: Osage County

Anthony Ward, Macbeth

Best Scenic Design of a Musical:

David Farley and Timothy Bird & The Knifedge Creative Network, Sunday in the Park With George
Anna Louizos, In the Heights
Robin Wagner, Young Frankenstein

Michael Yeargan, South Pacific

Best Costume Design of a Play:

Gregory Gale, Cyrano de Bergerac

Rob Howell, Boeing-Boeing

Katrina Lindsay, Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Peter McKintosh, The 39 Steps

Best Costume Design of a Musical:

David Farley, Sunday in the Park with George

Martin Pakledinaz, Gypsy

Paul Tazewell, In the Heights

Catherine Zuber, South Pacific

Best Lighting Design of a Play:

Kevin Adams, The 39 Steps

Howard Harrison, Macbeth

Donald Holder, Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Ann G. Wrightson, August: Osage County

Best Lighting Design of a Musical:

Ken Billington, Sunday in the Park with George

Howell Binkley, In the Heights

Donald Holder, South Pacific

Natasha Katz, The Little Mermaid

Best Sound Design of a Play:

Simon Baker, Boeing-Boeing

Adam Cork, Macbeth

Ian Dickson, Rock 'n' Roll
Mic Pool, The 39 Steps

Best Sound Design of a Musical:

Acme Sound Partners, In the Heights

Sebastian Frost, Sunday in the Park with George

Scott Lehrer, South Pacific

Dan Moses Schreier, Gypsy

Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre:

Stephen Sondheim

Regional Theatre Tony Award:

Chicago Shakespeare Theater

Special Tony Award:

Robert Russell Bennett (1894-1981), in recognition of his historic contribution to American musical theatre in the field of orchestrations, as represented on Broadway this season by South Pacific

One Brief Shining Moment

2008-04-27T12:35:00.002-04:00

When Jack quoted something, it was usually classical... But I'm so ashamed of myself -- all I keep thinking of is this line from a musical comedy. At night, before we'd go to sleep, Jack liked to play some records; and the song he loved most came at the very end of this record. The lines he loved to hear were: "Don't let it be forgot, That once there was a spot, For one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot."
--Jackie Kennedy, Life Magazine, December 6, 1963.

When Theodore White's "Epilogue" containing these words from the First Lady, widowed one week before, appeared on newstands, the national tour of Camelot, the Lerner and Loewe musical, was appearing at the Chicago Opera House. Later, Lerner recalled the performance after the article was published, "When [Louis Hayward, as King Arthur] came to those lines, there was a sudden wail from the audience. It was not a muffled sob; it was a loud, almost primitive cry of pain. The play stopped, and for almost five minutes, everyone in the the theatre - on the stage, in the wings, in the pit and in the audience -- wept without restraint. Then the play continued. Camelot had suddenly become the symbol of those thousand days when people the world over saw a bright new light of hope shining from the White House.... God knows, I would have preferred that history had not become my collaborator." (Lerner, 252).

In 1980, in his review of a revival of the musical, Frank Rich wrote, "When confronting the show today, it is all but impossible to forget that it was a favorite of John F. Kennedy's. [These] associations can give it an unearned, if still affecting, poignancy..." (Qtd in Suskin: v2, 132). In later years, many would question the "Camelot myth" that surrounded the JFK presidency following the assassination, and some wondered if the story had not been a figment of the grieving First Lady's imagination. Nevertheless, at a time when the country was in a state of national mourning, a great symbol may have been just what was needed, and Camelot fit the bill.

Today, thirty years after Frank Rich's review quoted above, we are perhaps so far removed from the Kennedy assassination, that Camelot will never affect us the way it did that audience in 1963. Nevertheless, we are a nation in peril, and both of the current presidential candidates for the Democratic Party have connections with the Kennedys. A photograph of Bill Clinton meeting JFK was frequently published in the 90s, and connections were often drawn between the Clintons and the Kennedys. Recently, Barack Obama has been been likened to JFK and in fact, the term "Camelot" has been used much in the media concerning Obama. Caroline and Ted Kennedy made a direct connection between Obama and JFK when they endorsed his campaign; headlines read, "Obama Knighted by Camelot." Perhaps our nation's mutual hope for relief and return to good times will affect audiences seeing the musical Camelot today. The show continues to be popular with audiences, and only in the past few weeks completed a sixteen-month national tour, and this coming weekend, a concert production with the New York Philharmonic starring Marin Mazzie, Gabriel Byrne, and Nathan Gunn will be appearing at Avery Fisher Hall. The May 8th performance will be broadcast live on many PBS stations as part of the "Live From Lincoln Center" series. (Check your local listings).

But has Camelot ever worked? If it didn't, you'd never know it from the terrific Original Broadway Cast Recording. The original production played on Broadway for over two years and launched a highly successful national tour. The original London production played for fifteen months, and the show received a lavish film treatment. It has achieved classic status and has been constantly revived in stock and regional companies including a notable revival at New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse in 2003 starring Brent Barrett. It has toured the country several times with three more stops on Broadway. In addition to Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, and newcomer Robert Goulet, the original Broadway leads, Kathryn Grayson, who had been a successor to Andrews on Broadway, starred in the first national tour for over a year, and the show later toured as a vehicle for such stars as Rock Hudson and most recently Michael York and Lou Diamond Phillips.

Nevertheless, despite the show's popularity, it has never been a critical favorite. The opening night reviews in 1960 were mixed. John Chapman wrote a rave for the Daily News, but Walter Kerr, in the Herald Tribune, who thought the show started out promisingly, wrote, "With no truly affecting legend of love to go on, the balance of the evening is filled with wayward gestures," and in the Times, Howard Taubman, who also thought at first, "The inspired creators of My Fair Lady appear to have passed another miracle" was ultimately let down, finding, "Unfortunately, Camelot is weighed down by the burden of its book... Were it not for the personal communication of Miss Andrews and Mr. Burton, Guenevere and Arthur would not be very engaging. " The final tally of reviews was one rave, one favorable, two unfavorable, and three pans. (All qtd in Suskin: v1, 122-125).

When Richard Burton returned to the role of Arthur for the tour which stopped on Broadway in the summer of 1980 (with a young Christine Ebersole as his Guenevere), Clive Barnes led the critics in citing problems with the show. "The real problem about Camelot is that it is not, never was, nor never will be, a particularly good musical." Barnes also felt that Burton seemed "little more than a burnt-out dummy." (In the Times, Frank Rich raved over Burton, though he shared other reservations about the show with the other critics). It was reviewed with even less enthusiasm when the same production returned to Broadway the following year starring Richard Harris (who had replaced an ailing Burton on the road). (Suskin, v2.) Camelot's final visit to Broadway was in 1993 as a stop on yet another tour, this time with Robert Goulet having moved up from his original role of Lancelot to star as Arthur; the production was dubbed "Cam-e-Lounge" by industry insiders and The New York Times, noting the show had "an enchanting score and a ponderous book" found the production "heavy as a rock pile. " (The production played for over two years on the road, nevertheless).

The 1967 film adaptation had the disadvantage of opening at a time when lavish screen musicals were regularly bombing at the box office. Pauline Kael, dubbed it "one of Hollywood's colossal financial disasters," while noting that it had "good bits tucked in among the elaborate mistakes." In The New York Times, Bosley Crowther discussed the many problems inherent in the material saying, "[W]hat it basically needed in its transfer to the screen was a drenching in cinema magic to remove all the dull and pretentious patches of realism and romantic cliché that kept it from sparkling in the theater. And that's what we all hoped it would have. Well, it hasn't, alas."

Camelot was to be Lerner and Loewe's first new musical on Broadway since My Fair Lady, which had become one of the biggest hits Broadway had ever seen. They had continued their winning streak in Hollywood, with Gigi, an original film musical which had won nine Oscars and was a box office smash. When it was announced that My Fair Lady's Julie Andrews, Robert Coote, director Moss Hart and other members of the MFL team would all reunite with Lerner and Loewe for their new musical which would also star Richard Burton, interest was so intense that it quickly built the largest advance ticket sale in Broadway history. Expectations were extremely high. But Camelot's trouble began early.

In his memoir, The Street Where I Live, Lerner reports that his partner, Frederick Loewe, was not enthusiastic about the project from the start, and had to be convinced to work on it; Camelot would ultimately become the least happy of their collaborations. Problems arose as soon as the company went to Toronto where the new musical was to begin tryouts. The O'Keefe Center was new and there were many technical kinks to be worked out while attempting to mount the new production. Lerner had found cutting down TH White's multi-novel saga, The Once and Future King, to a two hour and forty-minute musical a daunting challenge. When the show began tryouts in Toronto, it was approximately four hours long, and a great deal of pruning, re-writing, and re-thinking was needed. Work on the project was stalled when Lerner, suffering from an ulcer, was hospitalized. Just as he was being released, Moss Hart suffered a heart attack. Hart's condition was very serious and he would ultimately remain in the Toronto hospital long after Camelot had moved on in its tryout period and ultimately to Broadway. With their director felled, Lerner took over the direction himself, though Loewe was insistent that a new director be brought in. Lerner remained hopeful that Hart would recover in time to save the show, and only half-heartedly attempted to find a new director. In the meantime, he continued with re-writes while directing rehearsals himself. The process continued throughout the tryout period. Hart did not recover in time and no new director was brought in, so when the show finally opened in New York, though it had been trimmed, it was still running too long, and many of the perceived problems with the show, particularly in the second act, had not been solved.

Thanks to its huge advance, Camelot played its first three months without running out of audiences, even though ticket sales were scarce after the lackluster reviews. The show got a new lease on life, however, when Moss Hart, having finally recovered, asked his collaborators to try again to fix the show, even though it was already running. The cast rehearsed the new changes during the day while performing the show at night, as though they were back in tryouts. Two songs were cut, revisions were made, and the running time was brought down. Just as the changes were ready to be put into the show, the show got a major boost when Ed Sullivan, whose Sunday night variety show was the most popular on television, devoted an entire broadcast to a celebration of the works of Lerner & Loewe in honor of the fifth anniversary of My Fair Lady on Broadway. Burton, Andrews, and Goulet, all appeared and in addition to performing songs and sequences from Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon, and My Fair Lady, the final portion of the telecast was devoted to Camelot. A total of four songs from the show were heard, including the title song and "What Do the Simple Folk Do?" The next day, Camelot's ticket sales finally took off, and the show became a hit.

In the following years, the show was seen across the country and in several international productions. There would be more tinkering with each new production, however. "Take Me to the Fair," one of the songs dropped from the show in Hart's post-opening revision, had been included on the original cast recording and was reinstated for the London production. When the film was made, the song was again included and Lerner, who penned his own screenplay, attempted once again to fix the problem with the disjointed tone of the two acts. He incorporated a flashback device so that the story started with Arthur on the battlefield where he is found at the end of the show, with the hope that this would help the audience know what they were in for. This idea had been considered and rejected for Broadway because the opening of the show was working well and Lerner had been hesitant to change it. However, one of the recurring criticisms the show had received was that there was a breach of tone between the two halves.

After Arthur and Guenevere's charming first encounter which included three excellent, light songs in a row, the show quickly became political and heavier. Julie Andrews said in a 1989 interview, "I think audiences got very angry because the first half of the show promised so much whimsy and charm and [in] the second half they were rather surprised when it took such a turn." (Broadway: A History of the Musical, Part 4) . The flashback device, though it failed to help make the film of Camelot a critical or box office success, was incorporated into the show for the Burton/Harris revival in 1980 and has become a regular feature in revivals. The use of the flashback may also have been deemed useful since revivals regularly cast older actors as Arthur. Burton was only 35 when he originated the role, but subsequent Arthurs have tended to be over 50. When Michael York took on the part in 2007, he was 65. Gabriel Byrne turns 58 this month.

Given the common perception that Camelot is and always will be a flawed show with a classic score, perhaps a concert reading is its best possible form. When Gabriel Byrne, Marin Mazzie, and Nathan Gunn join forces with the New York Philharmonic this weekend, we can hope that Camelot will overcome its flaws and work its magic once again and perhaps we can also hope that we ourselves may some day soon experience a future such as the one Alan Jay Lerner saw in Arthur's dream for a round table democracy. Perhaps we are nearing our own "One brief shining moment."

South Pacific and the "First" Broadway Revival?

2008-04-05T13:36:00.000-04:00

In the space of one week, revivals of two of Broadway's most classic shows have opened on The Street and both have been greeted with rave reviews. 1959's Gypsy and 1949's South Pacific now join 1984's Sunday In the Park With George as the latest critically acclaimed musical revivals on Broadway this season.

Several of the South Pacific reviews and pre-opening articles repeated the production's claim to being the first revival of South Pacific on Broadway and effectively the first Broadway production since the original closed over fifty years ago. This claim has been used to support an assertion that the show has somehow been lost until now. It also invites the comparison between this "first" Broadway revival with Gypsy which is now in its fourth revival, and its second in only five years. These two classic shows arriving on Broadway at once are in competition with each other, so highlighting the novelty of a new Broadway South Pacific versus the continually revived Gypsy, seems a reasonable PR tactic.* However, South Pacific has always been the more popular work and is arguably still much more familiar on a global scale than Gypsy, despite the latter's five Broadway productions.

In a recent article for the New York Times, Charles Isherwood pondered the differences between the two shows, and surmised that Gypsy's constant reappearance on Broadway is evidence of its more lasting popularity, gained through a forward-looking edge which mirrored a more troubled and uncertain national identity while South Pacific “can stand as a symbol of a time when all could agree on the fundamental virtues that the country strove to represent to the world: a can-do spirit, a belief in self-improvement, the courage to fight for the collective good." According to Isherwood, this attitude has dated South Pacific which has resulted in its becoming "a largely unknown theatrical entity." Other critics and journalists have focused on the musical's racial politics as the main factor which has dated the material and made it difficult to revive in a post-Civil Rights world.

But has South Pacific ever been an unknown entity? Its original production was a huge hit, one of the biggest in its day. In fact, the original production of South Pacific played 1,925 performances which is more than all the performances of all five productions of Gypsy combined.** While Gypsy was completely shut out of the Tony Awards in 1960, South Pacific, in addition to winning the Pulitzer Price for Drama, won nine Tonys and still holds the record for being the only show in Broadway history to sweep all acting categories. In 1950, a national tour was launched that would stay on the road for five years, and in 1951, Mary Martin opened in the London production which played for two and a half years. In New York, it was seen several times in the 50s and 60s at City Center and at the very same Lincoln Center where it is now being presented. Though Merman did take Gypsy on a successful post-Broadway tour (which was followed by a second national company), she opted not to take the show to London and it was not seen there or in New York again until the Lansbury revival in the 70s. When Hollywood eventually produced its versions of both, the 1958 South Pacific became one of the most successful films of its year and the soundtrack album, like the Broadway cast album, was a hit and was one of the best-selling records of the decade. Gypsy's 1962 film adaptation, while not a complete failure, hardly repeated the South Pacific film's success, and Pauline Kael dubbed it, "extremely unpleasant."

In the 1980s, South Pacific was seen in several major productions including one at New York's City Opera, a Los Angeles production starring Richard Kiley and Meg Bussert, a touring production starring Robert Goulet, and a major West End revival starring Gemma Craven. By this time, however, South Pacific had begun to show its age, and in 1984, Anne Bogart, an avant-garde director, staged a revisionist production at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts the premise of which was that mental patients who had been emotionally scarred by conflicts such as those in Grenada and Beirut were acting out the show as a form of behavioral modification therapy. Bogart's production used the musical's original text to examine mid-century American ideals about war and race. (For more on the production, see Sally Banes, Subversive Expectations). The production was highly controversial, but raised the question of whether South Pacific had become out-dated in its original form; the question has continued to be asked in the following years.

Nevertheless, South Pacific has never gone away. Since the year 2000, the show has been seen in a Lincoln Center concert starring Karen Ziemba and George Hearn, in a major revival at London's National Theatre directed by Trevor Nunn, a television film adaptation starring Glenn Close (a ratings winner), a US national tour which starred first Michael Nouri and later Robert Goulet, and of course in 2005, the one-night-only Carnegie Hall concert version starring Reba McEntire and Brian Stokes Mitchell was filmed for television and is now available on CD and DVD. McEntire and Mitchell repeated their roles at the Hollywood Bowl just last summer. The show is also currently on tour in a new production in the UK starring Helena Blackman, who was a runner up in the "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria" casting contest for the current London Sound of Music revival.

In addition, South Pacific has continued to be a favorite for amateur productions and is seen in school, church and community productions and in professional regional productions on a constant basis. There have been over forty recordings of the score, many of which are currently available on CD and there are three versions of the show currently available on DVD: the original 1958 film (recently released on a special 2-disc edition), the 2001 television production, and the 2005 concert staging. So, despite its lack of a return to Broadway in the recent past, South Pacific has never been out of the public concsciousness.

It is worth noting that only two of the Rodgers and Hammerstein titles were seen on Broadway during the 1970s and 80s. The King and I was brought back as a return vehicle for Yul Brynner twice, and Oklahoma! was seen in a 1979 revival that played less than 300 performances.

Finally, in 1993, Nicholas Hytner staged an acclaimed cross-racial Carousel at the National Theatre in London which transferred to Broadway the following year, playing on the same stage as the current South Pacific. This was the "first Broadway revival" of Carousel in the same sense that this is the first South Pacific Broadway revival. The Hytner Carousel came at a time when musical revivals were gaining strength on Broadway. That year, the Tony Awards Committee split the Best Revival Tony into separate categories for musicals and plays to accommodate the many entries. Hytner's color-blind reimagining of Carousel inspired interest in the other Rodgers & Hammerstein shows and in the following eight years, revivals of most of the major R&H titles (and two minor ones) appeared with similar new approaches.

After Carousel, The King and I appeared in 1996, and the same season the team's only work created especially for the movies, State Fair, was brought to Broadway. The Sound of Music was successfully revived in 1998 (it introduced the current Gypsy's Louise, Laura Benanti, to Broadway), and four years after its London premiere, the Trevor Nunn Oklahoma! bowed at the Gershwin in 2002. The following season, Flower Drum Song was revived. However, this show, like South Pacific, had addressed issues of race in ways deemed unworkable in a contemporary setting. For the 2002 revival, given that the story concerned Chinese people and Chinese Americans, a Chinese American playwright, David Henry Hwang, was given the task of writing a completely new new book and story that would be more politically correct. The result was not all together successful.

With all the revived interest in Rodgers and Hammerstein on Broadway in the past fifteen years, South Pacific, one of the team's most successful titles, was the glaring omission, the one major title still lacking a post-Hytner rethinking. Perhaps the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, led by Ted Chapin, were stymied by the accusations that the show was dated but realized a major re-write like the one given to Flower Drum Song would not work, nor would an approach like Anne Bogart's be acceptable on Broadway. Chapin has stated in recent interviews that he and the R&H Organization had been approached over the years with various concepts and packages to bring the show back to Broadway, none of which had been found suitable. (See related Times and Daily News articles). Some of the productions discussed above were at one time or another rumored for Broadway, though none ever took hold. Perhaps the 2001 Nunn production could have transferred, but it was not the success in London Nunn's Oklahoma! had been, and that Oklahoma! was a disappointment on Broadway in 2002.

Perhaps also, it has taken the distance of time, decade by decade, for the work to move from seeming dated to historic. Though a few of the critics reviewing the current production did complain that the show is dated and unworkable for a contemporary audience, most seemed to regard the racial and social politics in the work as acceptably representative of the time period in which it is set and was written. Though only time will tell if audiences accept the work with the wide acceptance that has greeted previous productions, the love affair between audiences and South Pacific seems unlikely to end any time soon.

The current revival, originally slated as a limited engagement, announced that it would become an open run after the raves began to roll in. When it comes time for the Tony awards, South Pacific will be hard to beat in the Best Revival of a Musical category, and it will show strong competition in several of the other categories as well. Though Gypsy too gained rave notices, Gypsy has always been a tougher sell. Though both stories are deeply American, South Pacific is quintessentially Rodgers and Hammerstein in its life-affirming testament that racial prejudice can be overcome and cockeyed optimism can be rewarded even during war. Gypsy, not unlike Death of a Salesman, suggests that reaching for the American Dream can only lead to isolation and estrangement, even from one's family. Though Gypsy is frequently called the "greatest" of all American musicals, it easy to see why South Pacific has always been a more popular one.

________________________________________

*Highlighting the competition between the two productions, Michael Riedel reported some gossip in the New York Post last week that commercial producers of Gypsy feel that the not-for-profit revivals like South Pacific should not be allowed to compete for Tonys with commercial revivals.

** So far. Statistics quoted from ibdb.com

Everything's Coming Up Rose

2008-03-15T11:23:00.000-04:00

Mark Steyn is one of many scholars and enthusiasts who call Gypsy "The greatest of all Broadway musicals," (Babies, 101). Frank Rich simply called it his "favorite" musical in The New York Times when reviewing the 1989 Broadway revival. Today, it is widely accepted as one of the greatest achievements in the history of Broadway and its components are often cited separately as the greatest book, the greatest score, the greatest overture, and the greatest role.

The last of those is perhaps the most persuasive, for Rose has become the most coveted role in musical theatre. Ethan Mordden compares it to the Great Roles of opera which give enthusiasts "an endless gallery of great singers of the past that grows larger with each generation, a thousand performances to attend... [and] variants to recognize." (Roses, 251). Perhaps this explains why Gypsy is receiving a new Broadway mounting (its fifth) less than five years after its most recent bow on The Street.

By now you've probably heard the story of how the latest revival made its way to Broadway. The author of the book, Arthur Laurents, having previously directed two Broadway revivals of the show himself, nixed Patti LuPone when Sam Mendes approached her to star in his 2003 revival but while the eventual production with Bernadette Peters lasted a year on Broadway, it won no Tonys and reviews were decidedly mixed. Then in 2006, LuPone stealthily appeared in a triumphant concert staging of the show in Chicago and the following year, Laurents decided to relent and take advantage of the more likely Rose of her generation while giving Broadway a final Laurents staging of the show.1 So after a limited run at New York's City Center last summer, this week Gypsy is back on Broadway.

However it got here, the effect of giving us two Broadway Roses in so short a time, both of whom are among the foremost Broadway belters of their generation, is to give us an opportunity more potent than ever to compare Rose against Rose. It also illustrates how large the role looms over Broadway, with it now seeming almost necessary for great singing actresses of a certain age to tackle the part.

At the time of the Peters staging, many were able to compare her to another recent Rose. Betty Buckley, who replaced Peters in her Tony-winning role in Song and Dance and replaced LuPone in London in Sunset Boulevard (after another LuPone casting controversy), had come close to Broadway with her Rose at the Papermill Playhouse in 1998. In discussing that production, John Clum said Gypsy had become "the Norma of musicals, the ultimate diva challenge." He goes on to say, "I have not experienced an audience response like the one at Betty Buckley's Gypsy since the grand diva nights at the Met." (Boys, 170-171). This was echoed by Ken Mandelbaum's memory of another Rose, Angela Lansbury; "For 'Rose's Turn,'" he recalls, "she ... received perhaps the longest ovation I've ever witnessed for a single musical number." Buckley received a rave from Brantley in The Times, but Mordden gossips that Laurents told Buckley she was "execrable" in the role, ending any hope she would go on to play Rose in New York or London. (Corpse, 191). Still, clearly Rose has become the grandest of diva Broadway roles, winning new fans (and dissenters) with each new performance.

One difference between Rose and the Great Roles of opera, however, is that there will always be The Progenitor-- The Original, "real" Rose. Ethel Merman's performance as Rose is legendary and inescapable. Her performance of the songs is preserved forever on the Original Broadway Cast Album while her performance on stage exists only in fifty year-old memories, the writings of those who saw her, and a few tantalizing live recordings which lurk in some private collections. With only these ephemeral tools, it is impossible to compare Merman's performance closely with Roses in the here and now, so the legend that she was and is the greatest of them all becomes difficult to dispute and as Mordden says, "each new Rose [will] be compared with Merman in search of the true Rose of the world" (Roses, 250-1).

Great Opera roles, written as they were, mostly before the age of recording technology, do not have Original Cast recordings. Broadway Cast Albums, however, preserve a portion of an original performance; a performance on which a role is "made." And Gypsy was tailored specifically to Merman's talents by its authors, and it has come to be regarded as the greatest of the star's personal triumphs.

When she opened in Gypsy in 1959, Merman had been working on Broadway for almost thirty years. Since her auspicious debut in Girl Crazy in 1930, she had won raves in a series of triumphs including Anything Goes, Annie Get Your Gun, and Call Me Madam. She had not only debuted many of the greatest hits for Irving Berlin and Cole Porter, she had also worked with many of the best comedians in the business including Jimmy Durante and Bert Lahr, and her own comedic skills had been compared by critics to the likes of Fanny Brice.2

Over the years, it has been posited that other Roses have found greater depth than Merman ever could in Rose. (Laurents says Sondheim called her "a talking dog" (Original Story By, 378)). Nevertheless, Merman and Rose are forever linked. Without Merman, there would be no Rose, for the project was assembled as her vehicle. It was Merman who demanded Jule Styne be brought in to write the score, and her trademark "shouting" and bulldozer personality are all over the role.

Today's audiences know Merman mainly through cast recordings, however in the early 30's, Merman did appear in a handful of Hollywood musicals, and in 1936 got to recreate her role as Reno Sweeney on screen in Anything Goes. The show was drastically altered in its film incarnation, however, and after appearing in a few other films (most notably, Alexander's Ragtime Band), Merman went back to Broadway and did not make another Hollywood film until she reprised her Tony-winning role of Mrs. Sally Adams in the Fox adaptation of Call Me Madam in 1953. The following year, she appeared in an original movie with a score of Berlin hits, There's No Business Like Show Business. Though she appeared in other films and made frequent television appearances, these were her last two major Hollywood musicals. The film version of Call Me Madam made a number of changes to the material, but it retained most of the score, and even a fair amount of the Lindsay-Crouse dialogue, making it the closest we can come today to seeing what Merman might have been like in one of her Broadway roles. Though it would be more than five years before she would appear in Gypsy, her film performances as Mrs. Adams and Molly Donahue in There's No Business... can help us imagine what she might have been like as Rose.

Opening night notices of Gypsy were excellent, with Walter Kerr famously dubbing it, "The best damn musical I've seen in years." Though most of the reviews focused on Merman, notice was also made of the other creators, with Frank Aston describing Merman's climatic 11 o'clocker: "Jerome Robbins puts her in a spot, with the whole stage open about her. Jo Mielziner's lamps paint changing letters against the background. And Miss Merman lets go in the best song Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim have prepared for the evening, "Rose's Turn" . . . . The ker-whalloping Gypsy is a sophisticate's dream (Aston, qtd in Opening Night On Broadway, ed. Suskin, 276).3

The production had opened in May of 1959, a month after the Tony Awards so Gypsy had to wait almost a year for its own awards night, only to be completely shut out of the 1960 awards, with the final Rodgers & Hammerstein show, The Sound of Music tying the Pulitzer-Prize winner Fiorello for Best Musical, and Mary Martin taking Best Actress over Merman. (Asked about her feelings on the loss, Merman reportedly quipped, "How are you going to buck a nun?")4

Merman played Gypsy for another year after the Tonys and took it out on a triumphant tour of the country immediately after closing in New York. 5 Merman famously lost the role of Rose when Gypsy was made into a film, however, and Rosalind Russell had to be dubbed by Lisa Kirk for most of the vocals in the film which also starred Natalie Wood and Karl Malden. Merman had been promised the movie and was livid over its loss, and most of the show's creators disowned the movie and later barred other proposals to remake it, citing the disastrous results of the first attempt. 6 Looked at today, though we can bemoan the loss of a film preservation of Merman in her greatest role, the film is less terrible than it may have appeared in comparison to the original Broadway production and though the 1993 Bette Midler television production was more faithful to the show, the performances are not nearly as good as in the original film. (Laurents referred to the Midler version as a "dud, " (Art, 138)). It is also just possible that in the long run, Merman's loss has been Rose's gain. If Merman had gotten to preserve her Rose, it might have made it impossible for others to reimagine the role, the way Brando's Stanley and Yul Brynner's King have stunted all other interpretations. But it is also possible that Merman would not have been shown to best advantage in a film Gypsy. For a light film like Call Me Madam, Merman's somewhat stage-bound manner feels appropriate, but perhaps on film her Rose would not have appeared as excellent as it did in the theatre. It is impossible to know, but now all we have is the Merman myth; the legend of her great performance as Rose is probably greater than any real performance could ever be.

After the film, other actresses including Ann Sothern and Vivian Blaine played Rose in stock mountings. In the early 70's, after several proposals to bring Gypsy to London with Merman reprising her part fell through, Angela Lansbury was eventually able to triumph in a new production of the show. With Laurents as director, Lansbury's interpretation helped solidify Gypsy's reputation as one of the truly great shows for the vast difference of approach and staggering depth Lansbury brought to the role revealed that Rose was a character rich enough to be played in many different ways. Laurents also took the opportunity to fine tune some moments in the show, perhaps most notably the transition from the end of Rose's Turn to the final scene. Laurents described the new approach to Craig Zadan:

"At the end of the number she bows and you can feel the audience standing and screaming--but it's so strange. Why is Angela Lansbury taking a bow at this stage of the game? It's the first bow she takes in the show. And she has a rather demented look in her eye. On the third bow, all the lights go out except for a spot on her. And then a spot picks up Gypsy as she walks on . . . and the audience stops applauding . . . but Rose keeps bowing. Then you realize that it was all in her head. It's very spooky. You see, now the last scene doesn't seem tacked on." (Zadan, 55-56).

At the end of the clip below, it's possible to glimpse the moment described.

After triumphing in London and on tour in the States, Lansbury took Broadway by storm, winning her third Tony as Rose.

The 30th Anniversary Revival which came to Broadway in 1989 is now further away from us than that revival was from the Lansbury revival, and further than the Lansbury was from the Merman original. Still, the '89 revival which starred Tyne Daly is the Gypsy close enough in many of our memories that it is still the most readily comparable to the "latter day" Roses of Buckley, Peters, and LuPone. Daly was an accomplished stage and television actress not known for her singing, and she was the least vocally secure of all the Broadway Roses. Nevertheless, her Rose received raves from several critics, most importantly from Frank Rich in The Times, and she became the second Broadway Rose to win a Tony. The production didn't last when Daly's replacement, Linda Lavin (who was fascinating in the role) failed to get good notices, but triumphed again when Daly brought the show back for a return engagement. 7

In the spring of 2003, when the Mendes-Peters revival began previews, there were rumors of problems with the production; the set and costume design was rethought, and the star became ill and began to miss performances. Many predicted disaster, but Peters managed to open in the show and received a rave from Brantely in The Times. Michael Kuchwara in the Associated Press and Clive Barnes in The Post also sided in favor of the production. Kissel in The Daily News, Isherwood in Variety, and Linda Winer in Newsday were negative. On the strength of Peters's name, the production ran just over a year on Broadway.

When LuPone opened in the City Center incarnation of the current Gypsy, she received negative reviews from both critics at The Times, Brantley and Isherwood, but Kuchwara, Variety, The Daily News, The Post, and Newsday were all raves and other critics including Terry Teachout and John Simon also printed enthusiastic reviews. We will know very soon if their opinions have changed for the latest incarnation.

But whether or not the current revival is deemed a success, rest assured, we have not seen the last of "Mama" Rose.
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1 Many, including Laurents, felt that Peters had overcome some of the negative advance publicity and unlikely casting that plagued the 2003 production, but reviews were mixed and Laurents was unhappy with the direction. In July of 2004, Laurents said, "[I]n 2003, there was a new Rose alive on Broadway: Bernadette Peters! Brilliant, original, totally unlike any of the others. Well, each of the four was unlike the others. Unfortunately, the physical production in 2003 was misconceived and hurt the show more than people realized.. " (Art, 138). A somewhat fuzzy outline of the events surrounding LuPone's casting in the Laurents production appeared in an article by Jesse Green in the NYT but LuPone had previously discussed it in a 2004 interview after the Peters revival had closed. (In an interview in the Spring 2005 issue of The Sondheim Review, LuPone also mentioned that Lonny Price had proposed an Encores! production of the show for her which had also been nixed by Laurents).

2 Burton Rascoe, World-Telegram opening night review of Something For the Boys, January, 1943, "[H]ere's a gal with the comic genius of Fanny Brice (or nearly) in the days when Miss Brice was playing in the Ziegfeld shows." Also See John Chapman's Daily News opening night review of Annie Get Your Gun, May, 1946, "[Merman] is a better comedienne than she ever was before, with some of the earthy humor of Fanny Brice..." (Both qtd in Opening Night On Broadway, ed. Suskin, 628 and 53).

3 Kerr's quote became a major part of the ad campaign. For other review excerpts, see Opening Night, Suskin, 276- 279 and Mandelbaum, "The Best Damn Musical," Broadway.com.

4 Qtd for instance in Merman: A Life, Kellow, 188.

5 Kellow, 191, Mandelbaum, "The Best Damn Musical." Merman's tour was followed by a second national company starring first Mitzi Green, and later Mary McCarty. Bernadette Peters made an early appearance in that company.

6 "Not for all the money in the world will we let them make another film version of `Gypsy,' " said playwright Arthur Laurents. The first time Hollywood filmed the Broadway musical, it was "lousy," said composer Jule Styne, referring to the 1962 Warner Bros. adaptation that starred Rosalind Russell and Natalie Wood. Neither of the stars sang their roles in the Mervyn LeRoy-directed movie and critic Pauline Kael labeled the interpretation "extremely unpleasant." "Broadway Creators Nix Gypsy Pix," David Fox, Los Angeles Times, November 3, 1989.

7 For further insight into this production see Mandelbaum, "Thirtieth Anniversary," Broadway.com.

South Pacific. Then and Now.

2008-03-10T20:50:00.000-04:00

The LCT South Pacific revival opens in a few weeks. I caught an early preview and the show is in good shape with an attractive cast, full sets, full costumes, full staging and full (30 pc) orchestra. When was the last time a Broadway Musical Revival got all of those? These days, we're used to the pared down, reduced orchestrations, reduced cast, British-directed Sondheim revivals. So next to those, South Pacific looks pretty unique, and I wouldn't be surprised if it took the Best Musical Revival Tony.

That said, South Pacific has a tendency to cause controversy when it appears these days. In his Variety review of the 2005 Carnegie Hall Concert, David Rooney summed up some of the problems:

"With a leading woman who agrees readily to spy on the man she loves and recoils in shock upon learning he has a dead Polynesian wife and two brown-skinned children, the 1950 tuner challenged American audiences at a time when race attitudes were still very much in ferment. But such plot points require considerable concessions from contemporary theatergoers, as does the idea of an island woman who practically offers up her daughter for sex to a military man and potential husband (not to mention a Marine who sings 'Gayer than laughter, am I')."
(Variety, 6/13/05).

In Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical, Andrea Most's chapter, "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught: The Politics of Race in South Pacific" suggests that the once forward-thinking statements against racial prejudice that were made in 1949 are now undercut by what the author sees as racial stereotyping in the portrayal of the Asian characters.

These problems didn't stop the 2005 concert (now available on CD and DVD) from garnering strong reviews, with most of the critics agreeing that the cast and staging managed to overstep the problems inherent in the material. A 2001-2002 tour production starring first Michael Nouri and later Robert Goulet was also generally well-received, a 2001 television film was a ratings success, and the show has been a favorite among school and amateur groups for the last half-century. Audiences continue to enjoy the show, particularly the score (which has been recorded countless times) and many enthusiasts bridle at the suggestion the show is "dated."

The current revival is being touted as the first-ever Broadway revival, which could be considered correct, though earlier revivals at City Center and Lincoln Center (a 1967 LC staging with Florence Henderson left behind a cast recording that has recently been issued on CD), might be considered "Broadway." The show was also seen in the late 80s in New York at City Opera, not to mention the recent touring production, the Carnegie Hall concert and the television film. Nonetheless, the current revival is the first new full staging in New York in many years.

In 2002, Trevor Nunn staged South Pacific at the Royal National Theatre and received mixed reviews. This production seemingly attempted to deal with some of the "problems" of the show by revising the material, rearranging scenes, altering the book, inserting cut songs, etc. (See Ken Mandelbaum's review of the CD for full breakdown.)

The current revival is somewhat in the mold of the Nunn production; the vast stage of the Vivian Beaumont is reminiscent of the large playing space at the Olivier. Also, like the Nunn, this production is luxuriously staged with large set pieces (trucks on stage, etc) and many detailed costumes. There are textual changes in Barlett Sher's new production, and like the RNT, this production inserts "My Girl Back Home" though it is in a different place here. However, the other changes to the script here are much less significant than in the Nunn production. There are a few lines cut here and there and a few new lines inserted (apparently taken from early drafts of the script), but by and large the text is presented in its original form.

We will see if critics think the new production successfully overcomes some of the show's problems. Personally, I think it's beautiful and well done but falls short of packing the emotional wallop the show is capable of serving up (as evidenced most recently in the 2005 concert). But for those who bridle at the criticism of South Pacific being a "dated" show, I do think it's worth noting than in 1949 everyone in the audience would have had a personal relationship with the war depicted in the show, and most people watching the show would likely have had little personal experience of interracial relationships, so those things alone do immediately distance us from the material. This production does not shy away from those aspects and even goes more boldly into that territory having Nellie now actually utter the word, "Colored" with regards to the mother of Emile's children. It's a significant moment that is historically realistic but made it easier for me to pull away and locate Nellie in a time and place far from myself. I don't know if this is part of why I felt fairly uninvolved with the show emotionally, but I suspect that it is.

We'll see what the critics think when the reviews appear on April 4th.

The 2008 Musical Tony Race

2008-03-10T20:38:00.000-04:00

Ok people.

Musicals that have opened:

Little Mermaid
In the Heights
Passing Strange
Xanadu
Young Frankenstein

Out of all of them, Xanadu got the best reviews. Little Mermaid basically got panned, and YF got some mixed reviews but there's an overall bad feeling about it which some critics even mentioned, re: the overpriced tickets, the refusual to publish grosses, etc. Passing Strange got very good notices, almost as good as Xanadu's, and In the Heights has mixed. I think the fact that both Passing Strange and In the Heights were reviewed by Isherwood rather than Brantley may make them mean less to some Tony voters.

Left to open: Cry-Baby and A Catered Affair. Both of them got mixed to positive reviews from Variety in their out of town tryouts with Catered Affair having the clear edge. Cry-Baby has the disadvantage of looking like an also-ran Hairspray before it hits the street. Catered Affair is the one new musical in the R&H post-Sondheim mold, with a throw-back story. Looks like it could be the next Light in the Piazza.

I think Catered Affair is guaranteed a nomination, but the rest are a little close to call. I think we can safely bet Little Mermaid is out of the running.

In the Heights and Passing Strange. I don't think we'll see noms for both of these; at most I think we'd get one or the other. Passing Strange seems to be better liked but has less touring/box office potential. For one thing, it's a show that depends very heavily on one performer, and that's always a potential risk. In the Heights looks like a weak attempt to be the next Rent/Spring Awakening, but has more touring possibilities. My guess is that Passing Strange will get a score nom, but not a Best Musical Nom. In the Heights may get in as Best Musical on the youth/edge factor.

Xanadu, Young Frankenstein, and Cry-Baby are all comedy musicals based on movies. Xanadu has the advantage of great reviews and having done fairly well with audiences. It has the disadvantages of being a juke box show, and having opened so long ago it's not as fresh as the newer shows. Cry-Baby has an original score and will be fresher, but may look too much like a wannabe Hairspray. Young Frankenstein should be the juggernaut show this year, guaranteed a nom, but given all the bad feeling about it, a Tony snub would not be surprising.

It's tough to call, but my guesses are:

Catered Affair
Xanadu
In the Heights
Young Frankenstein