Cabaret

Cabaret has gone through many rewrites. Bob Fosse's film brought the text closer to Christopher Ishwerwood's original stories. Revivals turned the subtext into text. But from the beginning the show turned a mirror on a hedonistic society that ignores politics at their peril.

The Grand Tour

If Jerry Herman’s best score is that to Mame, his greatest hit is Hello, Dolly! And the cult favorites are Dear World and Mack & Mabel. So The Grand Tour is his unappreciated title. ~ Ethan Mordden – One More Kiss: The Broadway Musical in the 1970's.

With vaudevillian elements rubbing shoulders with the unpleasant spectacle of summary arrests and executions, at times you feel you’re only a few goosesteps away from the bad taste of that spoof Producers musical, Springtime for Hitler. Still, amid a generally pleasing score, there’s one stirring stand-out number of survivors’ defiance, I’ll Be Here Tomorrow, which is up there with “I Am What I Am”, that famous anthem from Herman’s later, greater La Cage Aux Folles. ~ Dominic Cavendish - The Telegraph. 2015.

While the original play Jakobowsky and the Colonel had the two leads evenly matched the musical adaptation was designed as a star vehicle. Joel Gray's Jakobowsky carried the show while Ron Holgate's Colonel was made into a supporting buffoon. Their conflicting worldviews and eventual truce were under served by this shift. The show closed after 61 performances. Jerry Herman added songs to the Marx Brothers pastiche A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine but would not write another full Broadway score till his Tony winning La Cage Aux Folles in 1983.

Goodtime Charley

Act one of Goodtime Charley reads like Once Upon a Mattress; full of innuendo and burlesque. Act two reads like Game of Thrones; building to a scene where a vengeful Charley runs a sword through his General, feeds his Archbishop to the Inquisition, and tosses his treacherous mother down a flight of stairs. The New York Times described the show thus:

“The tone of the book is uncertain. It tries to be both flippant and serious, but it really succeeds in being neither. The story of a little guy’s being made into a king is not a bad idea at all – but although Mr. Grey is the star, the story rests on Joan. This is a conflict of narrative interest that Mr. Michaels never resolves. Whose story is this? We never find out.” ~Clive Barnes. New York Times. 1975.