I love Damn Yankees but
I’ll admit it’s oddly structured. Who is it about? Joe and Meg are technically
the protagonists as their marriage is at stake, but Applegate (The Devil) and
Lola drive the plot and get the best songs.
The baseball team gets the dances while their quest to beat the Yankees
and win the pennant is kept offstage. The 1994 revisal adjusted this by
focusing on “the big game” in the finale.
Gwen Verdon’s Lola was unquestionably the heart and… soul…
of the original production. You can play Lola as a comical vamp and get laughs
but Verdon did more. She’d grown tired
of the vamp act. Joe’s initial resistance made it fun for her again but his
sincerity made her drop the mask. She never forgot that she was “the ugliest woman in Providence, Rhode
Island” wearing a supernatural disguise. It gave the breezy musical comedy some
pathos.
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