Fiorello

There are lots of shows I want to draw but life and rehearsals are getting in the way. Up today is the first in a series of shows by Bock and Harnick. Best known for Fiddler on the Roof this team has written many delightful shows that have resurfaced in the New York's Encores series.

I've covered The Body Beautiful in the past. Fiorello! was their first big hit, running 795 performances and winning the Pulitzer Prize for drama. It also tied with The Sound of Music for the best musical Tony, beating the beloved Gypsy! 

The best-remembered songs in Fiorello go to the leading ladies. Fiorello himself has little to sing. After the 2013 concert the New York Times wrote:

"Unfortunately single-minded, incorruptible people with a Mission (in this case, to save New York from the moral slime of Tammany Hall politics) tend to lack many arrows in their psychological quivers. And even with a new second-act number (written not long before Bock died in 2010) in which Fiorello bares his soul after losing both his first mayoral run and his first wife, the character remains a gleaming brass instrument with a limited range of notes to play."

Next up: Tenderloin!