1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Lerner and Bernstein collaborated on an ambitious piece about the history of race relations in the White House. The original libretto was a play within a play. An argument between the "actors" was the through line as they switched between numerous Presidents, First Ladies and servants. The finale suggested that American Democracy was always "in rehearsal." The show went through many rewrites during a tumultuous tryout period. When it arrived on Broadway the framing device was gone leaving a revue-like series of sketches.

Critics praised Patricia Routledge's turn as the First Ladies and panned the rest. The show closed in 7 performances. Bernstein's estate has arranged  a 1992 student production and a 2008 concert. They've restricted licencing rights beyond that and avoided a full recording.

Snippets of the original show have been found online. Abigail Adams' ballad "Take Care of This House" has received several recordings. The true show stopper of the evening was "Duet for One," a clash between outgoing First Lady Julia Grant and incoming First Lady Lucy Hayes at the 1877 inauguration. Patricia Routledge rapidly alternated between the roles with two distinct character voices. Recordings of the song capture some of the humor but the physical staging apparently lifted it to musical theater heaven.

My Fair Lady Clones

How do you write a song for Sherlock Holmes, Mr. Darcy or Vincent Price? Perhaps make them sound like Henry Higgins? My Fair Lady was, and is, an unusual musical despite attempts to clone it. Lerner and Loewe's Camelot and Gigi both used structural pieces of their prior masterpiece to create something new.  Other imitations were less successful.

Baker Street: He has Holmes being pursued by a woman in love with him.... After all, Alan Jay Lerner had Higgins getting quite cozy with Eliza Doolittle at the end of "My Fair Lady..." If you're a strict constructionist of the Holmes canon, you won't like the early crudities of this treatment. ~ Howard Taubman. New York Times. 1965.

Darling of the Day: One way to really appreciate what a flawless musical “My Fair Lady” is, is to experience the ultra-rarely performed imitation of it called “Darling of the Day..." Not helping matters was having hopelessly miscast screen boogeyman Vincent Price attempt a Rex Harrison imitation in the leading role ~ New City Times. 2005.

First Impressions: Although Mr. Burrows is an able man with gags and guffaws, he is not likely to settle comfortably in the smaller compass of a Jane Austen novel. Even if he were, Hermione Gingold would not be the proper lady to keep steady company with him there.... she scampers nibly around the stage like a beldame in a burlesque show ~ Brooks Atkinson. New York Times. 1959

Gigi

courtesan : noun : a woman who has sex with rich or important men in exchange for money : a prostitute who has sex with wealthy and powerful men

Lerner and Loewe followed the success of My Fair Lady with a lavish adaptation Colette’s Gigi. The music and costumes disguise the sordid aspects of the story. Gigi is groomed, like Eliza Doolittle, for high society but the cost is steep. As Tom and Lorenzo put it in their hilarious recap “Because this is a film from 1958, the oral sex lessons take place off-camera.”

The film was adapted the stage in 1973 and is being revised for a Broadway revival in 2015.

Camelot

How does Lancelot get from the boy of C’est Moi to the man of If Ever I Would Leave You? We watch Arthur and Genny mature but Lance’s arc was cut during the disastrous out of town try out. The unbalanced love triangle makes it easy to miss the political subtext and dismiss the book unfairly. Still the score remains evergreen.

Paint Your Wagon

Away out here they've got a name for rain and wind and fire. 
The rain is Tess, the fire's Joe. 
And they call the wind Maria.

Why is the fire "Joe?"

There's not much plot to this one. The mining town is built. The townsfolk fall in love or lust. The mine dries up. Everyone leaves. In place of a plot we get a series of skits with the various eccentric townsfolk and a delightful Lerner and Loewe score. The film added a love triangle, and Clint Eastwood, but cut most of the songs.

Dance a Little Closer

Dance a Little Closer closed after one performance and a scathing New York Times review. It was quickly dubbed Close a Little Faster. The 1936 play, Idiot’s Delight, paired Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in a romance against a war-torn backdrop. The musical updated the show to the Cold War and ruined the “did she or didn't she” mystery with some ill-advised flashbacks. The modern setting allowed for lyrics like:

Whoever made Atari should be hung by his thumbs.

I’m mad I have to eat so many Rol-Aids and TUMS.

Lerner added a subplot for a gay couple who wanted to get married. Since this drawing I’ve learned that they were airline stewards, not skaters, but they performed a duet on skates. Though more sympathetic than Lerner’s gay villain in Coco they had less personality, despite the efforts of Jeff Keller and the dashing Brent Barrett.

Here's Jaime J. Weinman's essay on the show with song clips.

Coco

Who the devil ca-ares!

What a woman wea-ars!

I began the week discussing Alan Jay Lerner’s revised librettos and decided to finish the week with two of his more obscure works. First up Coco in which Katherine Hepburn spoke-sang and sparred with lawyers, rivals and exes while planning a fashion show. Hepburn’s appearance was enough of an event that the show received a 15 minute excerpt on the 1970 Tony Awards in which she is betrayed by her comically awkward protégé. When Hepburn left the show she was replaced by the talented Danielle Darrieux but the show closed soon after.

Rene Auberjonois played Coco’s stereotypical gay nemesis and won a Tony for it. His one song, Fiasco, makes less of an impression than the demonic cackling fit he had in the middle of it on the cast album. He shared some fun backstage gossip with the San Franscisco Gate in 2008 when the show was revived at the 42^nd Street moon Theatre.

  "Whenever I would do something outlandish or think up a piece of business, (Benthall) would say, 'No no no, dear boy. You can't do that.' And Kate would say, 'What are you talking about? He's the only amusing thing in the show!'”

Brigadoon

Run an' get 'im! Get 'im!

Run an' get 'im! Get 'im!

Run, ye men, or ye will never see another morning'.

Harry Beaton’s unhappy subplot sends the fairy tale romance of Brigadoon into dark and creepy territory. The town minister “enchanted” the town to protect it from “witches.” The town “wakes” for one day every 100 years and vanishes while the townsfolk sleep. If a local leaves the enchantment is broken and Brigadoon vanishes permanently... So the townsfolk can't let Harry leave...

Chicago’s Goodman Theatre is opening a revised Brigadoon this week. Director Rachel Rockwell discussed the project with New City Stage. The discussion suggests that Brigadoon will now be escaping the Scottish/English wars rather than witches. Time will tell if the revisions minimize the town’s fascist tendencies or embrace the stories darkness.

Meanwhile check out Tom and Lorenzo’s hysterical recap of the film:

Unfortunately, Gene wakes up the next day and, realizing that everyone he’s ever known or loved has been dead for 50 years, spends most of the day crying. The day after that, he wakes up and the town has materialized in the middle of a high-speed rail line, killing half the town’s inhabitants. The day after that, they’re all killed by aliens.

Background Reading

Licensing 

On A Clear Day (v.2)

In 1965 Daisy Gamble flashed back to her past life as Melinda Wells. This allowed one actress to play two roles but the plot gave them little to do.

In 2011 Daisy was rewritten as David Gamble, a gay man with a past life as a female jazz singer. Was this a terrible idea? Not necessarily.

• Is David in the closet at the start of the show? Or at least insecure about his sexuality?
• Melinda was at one point written for an African American actress. Did the adversity she faced in the 1940’s frighten or inspire David’s life as a gay man in the 1970’s?
• What journey do these two characters make over the course of the show? What does David learn from his past as Melinda to carry him into his future?

The writers didn’t answer these questions, instead choosing to focus on David’s relationship to Dr. Mark Bruckner, a widower who becomes infatuated with Melinda despite her voice coming from another man. Was this a terrible idea?... Not… necessarily…

• Is Dr. Bruckner bisexual? If he’s always identified as straight, how does he respond to his feelings for David/Melinda? Does he begin to admire in David the qualities he admired in Melinda?
• Will a revised libretto have him conduct his “study” of David in a more professional manner? Or keep it as sketchy as it was in the original and call him out for it?

Then Harry Connick Jr. was cast as Dr. Mark Bruckner. This was a terrible idea. The Chicago Tribune’s Chris Jones wrote: “in order to work, it requires a little sexual complexity on the part of Bruckner (who is now loving a woman through a man), an ambivalence that Connick (unlike the omnisexual Hugh Jackman, playing right across the street in "Hugh Jackman: Back on Broadway") does not embody” The show allowed him to croon several ballads but the issues of sexuality were kept as far away from the star as possible.

Jessie Mueller made an impressive Broadway debut as Melinda, and quickly moved to the Tony winning role of Carole King, but the new libretto gave her even less to do than her predecessor. Melinda wants to be a singer, makes a winning debut, then dies young. What does this mean for David? Apparently very little.

After the critical drubbing the show received there is a chance that Peter Parnell’s libretto will vanish. That would be a shame. Encores has already produced On a Clear Day with Kristin Chenoweth but I’d love to see someone produce the two versions in rep and cast some actors who were willing to ramp up the (bi) sexual tension.

On A Clear Day (v.1)

This week Chicago's Goodman Theatre begins previews for a rewritten production of Lerner and Lowe's Brigadoon. Director Rachel Rockwell told the Chicago Tribune that the hope is the new libretto will "freshen up" a show that has fallen out of popularity in recent years. There's a lot of potential there but before I do a post on Brigadoon I thought I'd talk about another Alan Jay Lerner show that was rewritten in 2011.

Barbara Harris received rave reviews for her dual roles in On A Clear Day (You Can See Forever) and was nominated for a Tony Award. She would a Tony the following year playing three roles in The Apple Tree. Neither show was a success and she soon left Broadway for Hollywood. The relationship between Daisy and her alter ego, Melinda, is an interesting one but the show was not willing to explore it. The Melinda flashbacks had, reportedly, gorgeous costumes but very little plot and raised more questions than they answered. Melinda was betrayed by a cad and died in a shipwreck. Is that why Daisy has gotten engaged to an uptight killjoy and can predict a plane crash? The libretto isn't sure as we spend more time on the Dr's infatuation with Melinda, his Higgins/Eliza-esque arguments with Daisy, and a subplot for a Tycoon who wants to leave his fortune to his reincarnated new self. The 1970 film version wrote some new songs for star Barbara Streisand but did little to strengthen the plot.

One legend goes that an enthusiastic fan told Alan Jay Lerner "At intermission I didn't know what was going to happen next!" Lerner replied "That was the problem. We didn't either."

YouTube clip of the Broadway Cast performing five songs on television.
Background Reading
Production licensing

What happened to On A Clear Day in 2011? Tune in tomorrow to find out.