110 in the Shade

"The rainmaker doesn't change the weather: he changes people, turning them into what they really are." ~ Ethan Mordden. Open a New Window: The Broadway Musical in the 1960's 

110 in the Shade has been compared to The Music Man. Both involve a con man who charms the town and a spinster who stands against him. While Marian domesticates Harold, Starbuck awakens a drive in Lizzie. Lizzie's been held down by her well meaning family. She needs to break out of her comfort zone and find some independence before she can settle down with a spouse. The show is more respected than beloved but Lizzie is a fantastic role for a singing actress. The role won great praise for both Inga Swenson in 1963 and Audra McDonald in 2007.

I'll be taking a break from this comic to work on some other projects. Have a safe winter and a happy new year!

Arms and the Girl

Nanette Fabray is best remembered today for her supporting role in the 1953 film The Bandwagon. She was a skilled comedienne who starred in a long string of Broadway flops. The cast album for Arms and the Girl is forgettable but Fabray, and supporting comic Pearl Bailey, show considerable charm.

The Fantasticks

Two innocents go on a journey, suffer and return home sadder but wiser. It works for me in Candide and Into the Woods. So why don't I care for the world's longest running musical? I think it's the lack of self-awareness. I find the father's plot so unpleasant and the lovers so ill-suited to each other that their sincere act two duet rings as hollow as the satirical act one duet. The original production charmed audiences for 42 years so I've had to accept I'm simply not the target audience. I haven't experienced the things the show feels nostalgic for. I can not remember so I can not follow.

Still, it did give us Jerry Orbach.

Trevor the musical

In 2017 the short film In a Heartbeat made me cry. The adorable story of a middle school boy falling for his peer was a sweet piece of wish fulfillment with a hint of darkness for flavor. It's a fairy tale that would have been unthinkable to me in 1994. Back then I got the film Trevor.

Much of the humor stems from Trevor's obliviousness to his budding homosexuality. His peers figure things out before he does. When he's outed he *** spoiler *** attempts suicide. One pep talk later he is strutting home to Diana Ross's "I'm Coming Out." It was an upbeat capper to a film that tackled some dark subject matter. The film won an Academy Award and inspired The Trevor Project. The organization provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to LGBTQ+ youth.

Today marks the closing performances of Trevor the musical at Writers Theatre in Glencoe, IL. The show features a talented cast and has received positive reviews. I felt it was a work in progress but am eager to see where it goes next. Act One is wisely structures around the school talent show. The moment was a throwaway joke in the film but on stage it provides the spine for Trevor's relationships with the boy he likes, the girl who likes him and his showbiz dreams. Act Two feels a bit shapeless at present. The students shun him and *** spoiler *** his crush writes him a letter calling him a fairy.

As a target of school bullying myself I know that your peers don't shun you. They attack you. They call you worse than "fairy" and they do it to your face. I'll bet the writers know this too. Right now they're pulling their punches for the sake of their audience. I say tell us the truth. We can take it.

Marie Christine

If you've heard of Medea you know what she did. The question of any adaptation is why. The cast album did not make this clear to me. Audra MacDonald's Marie sounds remarkably self-possessed, boasts of her magic powers and is clearly too good for Dante Keyes. The libretto told me more.

In Marie Christine LaChuisa spends time developing the world Marie is fleeing from. Act One's Louisiana is no more home to her than Act Two's Chicago. Her magic is questionable as well. She boasts of her power to seduce men but uses her magic to manipulate and murder other women. She has no biscuit or ribbon to hold on to Dante. Her obsession with Dante becomes a fatal flaw. She "will not let go" and she cannot change enough to fit the new life he leaves her in. 

Children complicate the matter. If she simply fled with them she'd have no means to support them. If she left them to Dante they'd become servants. Perhaps that would have been better but she'll never know. 

Hello Again

If La Ronde was a play about class then Hello Again is a musical about loneliness. Both stories feature a daisy chain of hook ups but neither has much to say about sex. In a sense that's the point. The sex in Hello Again is rarely for love or pleasure. It's a tool to gain something from a partner; financial support, a career boost or a sense of feeling "safe."

The scenarios are flexible enough to allow for literal or fantastical staging. The 2017 film version includes a lovely mix of both. The roles are juicy enough to showcase stars or newcomers and the original Off-Broadway cast has gone on to great things. The show was not LaChuisa's first musical but it was definitely the one that put him on the map.

The Gay Life

Barbara Cook spent the first decade of her career playing ingenues in musical comedies. The Music Man was her biggest hit but even "flops" like Candide and She Loves Me gave her signature songs like "Glitter and Be Gay" and "Vanilla Ice Cream." Today I look at one of her real flops; The Gay Life. 

We start with a set of one act plays about a rouge named Anatole and his many mistresses. In adapting them to a musical a through line was needed. That would be Liesl the young woman who loves him from afar. Like Bobby in Company she observes all his adventures. Like Sandy in Grease she wins him by asserting her own sexuality. The role could have been a cipher or a joke. Instead Barbara Cook made her the beating heart of the show.

Italian film star Walter Chiari couldn't really sing. The mistresses and the sidekick get the comedy numbers but those are mostly uninspired. The good stuff goes to Barbara Cook and her tracks on the cast album are spellbinding.

"Our leading man couldn't act, dance, sing or speak English, which was a handicap." ~ Howard Dietz

"When the show was published for the first time in 1986, it was retitled, for perhaps obvious reasons, The High Life." ~ Kevin Mandelbaum

Angels in America: The Opera

How do you adapt a 7 hour play cycle into a 2.5 hour opera? Focus on one character’s story and cut the others down ruthlessly. Where the stage play follows five principal characters 6 principals the opera zeroes in on Prior Walter the dying prophet. The other five are there but primarily serve as support to Prior’s story.

Kusner’s play was subtitled A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. The opera minimizes the political themes and emphasizes the spiritual. Prior’s debate with the Angels is the centerpiece of the second act as Louis, Harper, Joe and Roy fall to the sides. Poor Belize is barely a cameo. I couldn’t say how the opera functions as a stand-alone work but I found it fascinating as a companion piece to the play.

The Pirate

Vincente Minnelli’s famous musicals—among them Meet Me In St. Louis and An American In Paris—tend to eclipse his 1948 Technicolor flop The Pirate, one of his richest and strangest works. One of his kinkiest, too. ~ The AV Club

It takes this mammoth show some time to generate a full head of steam, but when it gets rolling it's thoroughly delightful. However, the momentum is far from steady and the result is a lopsided entertainment that is wonderfully flamboyant in its high spots and bordering on tedium elsewhere. ~ The New York Times.

Sherry!

Some musicals eclipse their source material. Others just add songs. The Man Who Came to Dinner remains a delightful comedy while Sherry! is rightfully forgotten. In 2004 an all star cast was assembled for a studio cast album of the score. The problems were laid clear. The three act play was squished awkwardly into two acts and the generic songs never quite fit the characters. The secretary got ingenue ballads (Elizabeth Allen /Bernadette Peters), the diva got the belty numbers (Dolores Gray / Carol Burnett), but poor Sheridan Whiteside (George Sanders / Clive Revill / Nathan Lane) was stuck with dull Henry Higgins patter and a bizarre dream ballet.

A fuzzy recording remains of Dolores Gray belting the title song. Critics agreed she was the best thing in the show but she wasn't onstage long enough to carry the show.

Marc Miller's review of the recording ended with: "The deluxe presentation and drop-dead cast seem a little silly under the circumstances; you can take hamburger, dress it up with spices and fancy cheeses, flip it onto a silver platter and call it steak haché au gorgonzola, but it'll still be hamburger."

Spring Awakening

Last month I covered several musicals that centered on youthful rebellions. This week I'll add two more to that list starting with the teen angst rock musical Spring Awakening.

Frank Wedekind's groundbreaking 1906 play follows three teens who suffer the consequences of abstinence only education. Steven Sater's 2006 libretto is faithful to the plot but not the tone. Melchior and Wendla's relationship becomes kinder while Hänschen and Ernt's relationship becomes crueler. Wedekind provides Moritz with a deus ex machina at the end. Sater's Moritz must cope with his grief alone.

Deaf West Theatre's 2014-15 revival cast the show with a mix of deaf and hearing actors. They expanded the adult cast from two to four and emphasized the communication gap between the parents and children.

Composer Duncan Sheik's score is angry and exciting in the first act. Things turn ballad heavy, with one exception, in the gloomier act two. Sheik would return to Broadway that same season with the less successful American Psycho. As a fan of the score I'm hoping another company revives it some day to a more receptive audience.