Gwen Verdon Vehicles

The backstage stories are similar too.

Gwen Verdon’s desire to act vs. the producer’s desire for dancing.

Bob Fosse’s desire for dark eroticism vs. the collaborator’s desire to lighten up the source material.

New Girl In Town won Tony’s for Verdon and her co-star, Thelma Ritter, but flopped. Sweet Charity lost Tony’s to Mame and Man of La Mancha but went on to a film and revivals.

It's a shame Verdon didn't get to recreate more of her stage work on film. We're very lucky we got Damn Yankees preserved along with her work on the Ed Sullivan show.

Meanwhile my inspiration at Three Panel Shakespeare has drawn some more musicals of her own including Gwen Verdon's break-out show Can-Can!

Tenderloin

How would Guys and Dolls have fared if we spent all our time with General Cartwright in the Save-A-Soul Mission? Maurice Evans was the star and he played the Reverend Brock so he got five stodgy songs. The fun numbers go to the prostitutes and gamblers, leaving the show with a permanent imbalance.

After the 2000 Encores revival the New York Times wrote:

The book, by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman, is full of hokum, but the score has a great deal of the sophisticated charm that is characteristic of the composer and lyricist, whose gift for time-specific musical spirit is apparent in numbers like the winking, oversentimental ballad ''Artificial Flowers'' and the ragtime-ish production number ''Little Old NewYork.'' The score also shines a light on a number of gems. One, ''How the MoneyChanges Hands,'' is an explanation by the chorus of prostitutes to a disguised Reverend Brock of the sequential payoffs of a corrupt capitalist system. Sung to a slowly swaggering Bock melody, it has the same gleeful that's-the-way-of-the-world acceptance as ''Politics and Poker'' from ''Fiorello!''

Carousel vs. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Quick! Which of these two shows features:

• Ne'er do well fathers who dies young
• Leaving their winsome working mothers
• to raise mopey teenage daughters alone.
• The father returns from the dead to offer the daughter advice at her high school graduation,
• while the wife's feisty best friend provides the comic relief with her own dysfunctional marriage.

If you answered both you are correct!

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn's Johnny never beats his long-suffering wife. He just drinks and gambles away her money while promising to "Buy her a star." Meanwhile Carousel's Billy brings an actual star to his daughter but settles for giving her a slap.

Flora the Red Menace

"A musical dramatization of Lester Atwell's novel ''Love Is Just Around the Corner,'' ''Flora,'' whose book was written by George Abbott and Robert Russell, tells the Depresion-era story of an idealistic young fashion designer who is persuaded by her stammering boyfriend, Harry, to join the Communist Party. Unable to deal with the organizational discipline and outmaneuvered by a rival for his affections, she is kicked out of the party.

''If the show has a guiding philosophy,'' Mr. Ebb said, ''it is to be true to yourself. When we wrote the show, I was having a similar identity problem, since no one in my family was thrilled at my decision to be a lyricist.'' ~ New York Times. 1987.

The Pajama Game - Quick Sketch

Music and Lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross

Book by George Abbott and Richard Bissell

based on the novel 7½ Cents by Richard Bissell.

1954 Broadway

Adler and Ross amazed audiences and critics with two Tony winning musicals back to back. Then Jerry Ross had the misfortune to die at the age of 29 of bronchiectasis. While we'll never know what they could have written their two hits, Damn Yankees and The Pajama Game were captured in faithful films and successful in revivals.

Damn Yankees

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.

Of course modern directors can also play up the homoeroticism. That’s okay too.

Me and Juliet

Me and Juliet was Rodgers and Hammerstein's sixth collaboration and their second commercial failure. Allegro had been Hammerstein's passion project, and Me and Juliet was Rodgers' baby. Juliet ran 10 months beating Allegro's nine.

The libretto uses a show within a show framework similar to 1948's Kiss Me Kate as a Chorus Girl juggles the affections of an Assistant Stage Manager and the Jud Fry-esque spotlight operator. 

Leading Lady Isabel Bigley had originated the role of Sarah Brown in 1950's Guys and Dolls. After the closing of Me and Juliet she left Broadway for television.

Read more about Me and Juliet here. 

On Your Toes

My first request! I wasn't familiar with this show so I had to do some digging. The show is licensed by Rodgers and Hammerstein Co. Learn more here.