The Apple Tree

Though tuneful and sweet-tempered, this slender series of comic sketches about those silly but overpowering creatures called women was already looking faded in the 1960s, when writers like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem were finding and raising their voices as feminists. But the original “Apple Tree” had the irresistible force of its star, Barbara Harris, on its side. ~ New York Times, Ben Brantley, 2006.

Three short stories made an uneven star vehicle for Barbara Harris but the critics were ready to celebrate her. Sadly she disappeared from Broadway soon after for reasons she kept to herself. When the show was revived with Kristin Chenoweth the critics again felt that the leading lady was grand but the rest of the show was easily forgotten.

The cast album reveals some forgotten gems including “What Makes Me Love Him” and “Gorgeous.”

This concludes my Bock and Harnick series. Next up Jerry Herman's Mack and Mabel. 

Fiddler on the Roof vs. The Rothschilds

With a time crunch this week I've decided to pay homage to (ie steal) the art style of the site that inspired this blog: Three Panel Shakespeare.

Fiddler on the Roof remains Bock and Harnick's biggest hit show. Six years afterwards they would attempt a spiritual successor. Where Tevye fought to hold on to home and tradition Mayer Rothschild wants to break free. He dies with the ghetto walls still standing but his sons carry on the family business and buy their freedom. Losing three quarters through the show bothered some audiences. The show ran a respectable 505 performances but did not capture the international acclaim of Fiddler.

She Loves Me

GEORGE: You’ve never really looked at me.

AMALIA: I’m looking at you right now- and shall I tell you what I see? A smug, pompous, petty tyrant-very sure of himself and very ambitious.

But I see him ten years from now- selling shampoo.

And twenty years from now-selling shampoo.

And thirty years from now still selling shampoo!

Because, basically, you know what he is? Just a not-very-bright, not-very-handsome, not-very-young man with balding hair and the personality of a python!

Is this a couple you want to get together? Oddly enough yes. 

She Loves Me is a rare romcom where neither of the sparring lovers has to rewrite their personality to come together at the final curtain. By setting them in a larger workplace drama we see the tensions that are causing them to lash out and the good qualities that will make them compatible when they take the time to really see each other. The show loses money in a large house but delights in a black box.

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!''

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!

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

The Body Beautiful

Before ROCKY, before GOLDEN BOY, there was the boxing musical THE BODY BEAUTIFUL. It got Bock and Harnick together. They moved on to FIORELLO, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and many more.

Read more about THE BODY BEAUTIFUL here.
The work is licensed by Samuel French.