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It’s Today!

Call me Uncle Lindsay! I’m pleased to announce that my nephew, Jack Ezra Daly, was born around 10AM Philippine time in Baguio City. Son and mother are healthy and resting well. Only less than two weeks ’til I venture out to the other side of the world to get a glimpse.

"Music in the Air" at Encores!

I was stunned walking out after Music in the Air at the City Center that I had completely forgotten the melody to “I’ve Told Every Little Star.” I spent the entire intermission humming the oft-repeated hit song from this lost Kern & Hammerstein show until the lights went down. We were even treated to yet another encore during the second act. But lo and behold, as I was walking down the steps from the gallery, the only song that I could recall was the rapturous “The Song is You.”

The musical, last seen in NY in a 1985 Town Hall concert revival (with John Reardon, Patrice Munsel, Kurt Peterson and Rebecca Luker), was a moderate success for Kern and Hammerstein in 1932, running for 342 performances and spawning two popular song hits (care to venture a guess there…?). A film version starring Gloria Swanson was released in 1934.

To say Music in the Air has a creaky libretto would be a colossal understatement. The story is highly contrived and was initially meant to be more of a send-up of operetta conventions than anything else. Naive country folks, a doctor, his beloved daughter, her love interest and… brace yourself… their walking club (also the choral singing society) go to Munich. The doctor, an amateur musician, has written a song and the townsfolk insist it is so good that he must have it published. Words are by the love interest. They will take it to his school friend turned music publisher. Of course, the daughter will sing it and win over the publisher, as well as the lothario librettist and his lover-muse-prima donna in residence. Both larger-than-life characters use the two naive kids as pawns in their romantic battles, leading to the young girl starring in a new operetta in Munich. Oh, did I mention there was lederhosen? Yes, it’s that kind of show.

Now before you think all “gee willickers, it’s just like 42nd Street,” it’s not. There is an unusual honesty in the second act about the difficulties of show business, with the disagreeable musical director dropping the necessary truth bombs in order for the show to become a hit. He asks if it’s unfair that the livelihood of seventy or so people be threatened by a rank amateur with dreams of being on the stage. The girl agrees and goes back to Munich, humiliated only in her love life, but her eyes are opened to Così fan tutte. Everything about it isn’t quite so appealing. But never fear, there are still two numbers and two romantic couplings to be repaired, all accompanied by the orchestra and the necessary plot machinations.

Okay. It isn’t much. In fact, it’s a bit of a stretch. However, there is much to enjoy in the soaring Kern-Hammerstein score. Romantic, melodic and enough pastoral imagery to get us through until the next revival of The Sound of Music, it’s hard to resist. Interestingly, the team had just written the musical Show Boat, which was one of the first attempts at progression in the musical as an art form. You had a show that combined elements, took on darker themes, and bucked trends to create a powerful theatre experience, with most of the score serving dramatic functions for plot and character, with some of the period crowd-pleasers tossed in for good measure. With Music in the Air (which would be Hammerstein’s last success until Oklahoma!), the team composed an entirely diegetic score, which is unusual for a musical. Most especially unusual for an operetta. Whenever a musical theatre song is diegetic, it means that the character is aware that he or she is singing. For instance, Sally Bowles singing “Cabaret” or the “Parlor Songs” in Sweeney Todd. (This is also where the choral society walking to Munich comes to play. Again, it creaks… but alas that is period convention for you).

The show was given the usual Encores! treatment, with emphasis placed on the score and giving the audience a chance to hear fully restored orchestrations by the great Robert Russell Bennett, the premier orchestrator of the early years of the American musical. Sierra Boggess and Ryan Silverman were the young lovers, vanilla extract and all. It took a few minutes for the show to get jump-started. That happened when stars Douglas Sills and Kristin Chenoweth took the stage as the larger-than-life divas. They get the funniest moments and some of the better musical numbers (for instance, the scenelet where they present the first act of the new show and “The Song is You”). Add to this the sight gag of Sills towering over the diminutive Chenoweth, decked out as a brunette and dressed to the nines in period gowns. Dick Latessa and Marni Nixon are on hand to lend some minor support in the second half, the latter stopping the show with a wistful recollection of her hit solo (so many shades of Heidi Schiller in Follies I can’t even begin to tell you…)

While the show itself is virtually unrevivable, I am grateful for the opportunity to see such a lost show. As one who appreciates seeing and hearing musical scores live, I relish in these opportunities – especially if there isn’t a cast album available to give the full experience. But I have to say, having limited expectations, I was surprisingly charmed by the experience. Encores! tends to mix things up a bit, throwing out titles that aren’t as lost as their initial mission statement would lead you to believe, but also allowing us to see a show like the troublesome cult flop Juno, or the 1932 revue Face the Music.

Moving from the hills of Germany to the realm of Missitucky, the City Center’s third and final installment for this season will be the satiric Finian’s Rainbow from March 26-29. Now, if they would only listen, give me Darling of the Day, Donnybrook!, A Time for Singing and Very Warm for May.

“But let’s be glad for what we’ve had and what’s to come…”

-Betty Comden & Adolph Green, “Some Other Time,” On the Town (1944)

Happy 2009, Everyone!

The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center

For all the fans of Kate the Great, here is some fun news: The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center is being established in Old Saybrook, near at her family home in Fenwick. I received a comment from Ann, who runs the blog documenting the progress of the theatre arts center, which is currently under construction and poised to open in the summer of 2009, informing me about this wonderful project. The non-profit theatre organization is going to take residence in a historic theatre on Main Street in the Town of Old Saybrook, with funds provided the town and private donations raised by trustees of the organization. “The Kate” as the theatre has already been affectionately monikered, will feature a 250 seat theatre as well as a museum devoted to the iconic actress.

Hepburn, one of the last true stars of the Hollywood Golden Age, died in 2003 at the age of 96, leaving behind a considerable legacy on stage, on television and most notably on film. Her relationship with Spencer Tracy has taken on an iconically romantic status of its own. She alone holds the record for most Oscar wins by an actor with four statuettes (for Morning Glory, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter and On Golden Pond), though the always practical Kate never really cared for awards or the fuss of celebrity. Kate also treaded the boards in the The Lake (prompting that oft-quoted zinger by Dorothy Parker), The Philadelphia Story, Coco, A Matter of Gravity and The West Side Waltz (the latter opposite Dorothy Loudon, what a night that must have been), earning two Tony nominations along the way.

Hepburn is one of my all-time favorite actresses. With her distinctive looks, voice and independent personality she defied what was expected of a movie star, one of the reasons why she remained a movie star for sixty years (unlike her contemporaries, like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis who found themselves reduced to camp roles in lower quality films). She won her last Oscar as leading actress in 1982, just before she turned 75; and she would continue to work steadily throughout the 1980s, ultimately retiring in poorer health after a brief cameo in 1994’s Love Affair. Her film roles were very diverse, from literary heroines to historical figures to screwball comedy heiress to witty, urbane society women, to vulnerable “spinsters”, etc.

It should be noted that she had some of her greatest successes (and a couple of failures along the way) working in film adaptations of plays. Starting with her 1932 debut in A Bill of Divorcement, she also brought stage characters to the screen in Morning Glory, Spitfire, Quality Street, Stage Door, Holiday, The Philadelphia Story (inspired by and written for her by Philip Barry; one of the best things that ever happened in her career), Without Love, State of the Union, Summertime (David Lean’s Technicolor valentine to Venice in an adaptation of Arthur Laurents’ The Time of the Cuckoo), The Rainmaker, Desk Set, Suddenly Last Summer, Long Day’s Journey Into Night (one of her finest hours as an actress), The Lion in Winter (my personal favorite?), The Madwoman of Chaillot, The Trojan Women, A Delicate Balance, The Glass Menagerie (for TV), The Corn is Green (also for TV), and On Golden Pond. That’s not even taking into consideration those roles written expressly for her: Bringing Up Baby, Woman of the Year, Adam’s Rib, The African Queen, etc. Speaking of The African Queen… this classic has yet to be released on DVD in the United States… someone is clearly sleeping on the job here! So to whomever owns the rights: restore it, reissue it and give it the superlative DVD treatment it deserves.

Now as an added treat, here is Kate’s one and only appearance on the Academy Awards. Under an incredible veil of secrecy, Hepburn showed up (in a black Mao pantsuit and garden clogs, at that) to present the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award to her friend and colleague, Lawrence Weingarten at the 46th annual ceremony in 1974. The audience reaction she receives after a gracious introduction by the one and only David Niven (remember when Hollywood gave us such class acts?) is one of those for the ages – and so is her quip…

She was a star. One of the best we’ve ever had. Now… who’s up for a road trip to Old Saybrook this summer…?

A Helluva Town

Here’s the round-up on all my recent adventures into NY…

Dividing the Estate 11/20 – I love an opening night show. Who doesn’t? You are there for the official first performance. Regardless of whether or not the show is a success, you were there for the performance that will put it into the annals of Broadway history books. Electric, starry and a chance to really dress it up too. The play, by Horton Foote, offers fascinating characters and intriguing ideas, but the result is rather middling. It felt more to me like a revival of a pre-Miller work, with its rather archaic plot machinations and contrivances. That’s not to belittle the ideas behind the work: those complicated familial associations with property and money that cloud all else. Stellar cast. Elizabeth Ashley is a hoot as the aging matriarch, Penny Fuller is the epitome of honesty in her performance (and she looks two decades younger than she is) and Hallie Foote (the playwright’s daughter and definitive interpreter) all but walks away with her study of avarice and solipcism. (Did her vocal inflection remind anyone else of Kim Stanley’s voice over narration at the beginning of To Kill a Mockingbird? Incidentally, Horton Foote won an Oscar for the screenplay). I don’t know if I’ve ever been so angry at a character, yet simultaneously in total admiration of the performance behind it. Not even the ladies who’ve played Violet Weston have had that effect. Gerald McRaney makes his Broadway debut as the ne’er-do-well brother (who drinks…) and Arthur French provides a memorable supporting turn as the ancient servant who refuses to retire. Comparisons to the titan August: Osage County are inevitable, but this is really as Noah put it, August lite. The opening crowd gave 92 year old Foote a standing ovation. Runs through January 4th at the Booth. Required viewing for the three leading ladies, but especially Ms. Foote.

On the Town 11/23 – The classic Broadway debut of Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green hasn’t fared well with time. The film version eliminated almost the entire score (far too sophisticated and raunchy for studio executives) and Broadway revisals in 1971 and 1998 were failures. Thanks to Encores! we got the chance to hear Bernstein’s first stage score as part of the innumerable festivities celebrating his 90th birthday. The show started with the National Anthem, a replication of the original 1944 production which opened during the last year of the Second World War (timely then, and sadly enough, timely now). Instantaneously, the entire audience stood. People started to sing a little bit, quietly to themselves, and infectiously more and more people started to join in with the volume increasing until the entire City Center audience was singing full volume for the final phrase. One of those beautiful communal moments that has such a beautiful effect on a person. As for the show: those orchestrations, those dance arrangements, those Comden and Green lyrics, their cartoonish but endearing book. All loads of musical comedy fun. Tony Yazbeck is a star on the rise: those looks, that voice and the sincerity of his acting. Did I mention he dances like an heir to Gene Kelly? (You know, why didn’t Roundabout cast him as Joey?) Christian Borle and Justin Bohon provided stellar support as Ozzie and Chip. Jennifer Laura Thompson is one hell of a funny soprano. Leslie Kritzer belted the hell out of the score, but her comedy was a bit forced. And then there was Andrea Martin, an absolute riot from start to finish as Madame Dilly, the perpetually soused instructor at Carnegie Hall who tore up the scenery in her few scenes (with her help, my beloved “Carnegie Hall Pavane” stopped the show). Roxie and I made our usual pilgrimage to the Park Cafe, but there was no sign of Rifke or Mireleh. Next up from the Encores! crew is a rare revival of Kern & Hammerstein’s Music in the Air in February.

Jonathan Tunick & Barbara Cook at Birdland 11/24 – This joyous evening came about thanks to Sarah, who had an extra ticket. I’d never been to Birdland and it turns out that it’s one of the most enjoyably intimate spaces I’ve ever been in. A total throwback to those nightclubs you see in the 40s and 50s movies. The only thing missing, the two of us agreed, was a dance floor. The prices are right and the food and drinks were fantastic. Tunick leads the Broadway Moonlighters, a fantastic brassy band made up of players from Broadway shows. They gave us a fantastic evening of entertainment with arrangements of “Strike Up the Band,” “Lazy Afternoon,” the overture for Merrily We Roll Along, two original pieces by Tunick “Buffet Luncheon” and “Pumpkin Lane” (which he named after an exit on the Taconic State Parkway). Midway through the set, they introduced their girl singer: Ms. Barbara Cook who sang a few choice favorites and this inestimable treasure provided us with a few vocal selections, including Gershwin’s “Nashville Nightingale,” “Sooner or Later” (not the Sondheim, but from Song of the South), and a lovely rendition of “Autumn in New York.” The evening wrapped up with a sing-a-long rendition of “Let it Snow!” and several encores, capped with “Lullaby of Birdland.” We were among some of the greats of the NY scene. Priscilla Lopez, Kelly Bishop, Margaret Colin, Ron Raines, Marni Nixon, Alice Playten were some of the stars out on the town. I had the pleasure of meeting the effervescent Kate Baldwin, one of the loveliest singing actresses in town (who will be on an upcoming SVU so be on the lookout!) and my candidate to play Ellen Roe in Donnybrook! should Encores take the initiative. I also got to meet Harvey Evans, a perfect gentleman and one of the nicest people in show business. The party didn’t end there: we went to Angus’ for a nightcap and further good times with good friends.

Road Show 11/29 – I have never had the privilege of seeing a new Sondheim show until now. Although it’s not entirely new,  the show, a labor of love (quite possibly an obsession) for Sondheim, was work-shopped as Wise Guys (dir: Sam Mendes; Nathan Lane & Victor Garber) in 1999, played regional engagements as Bounce (dir: Harold Prince; Richard Kind & Howard McGillin) in 2003 has finally made its way into New York as Road Show (dir: John Doyle; Alexander Gemignani & Michael Cerveris) in 2008. The musical, about the Mizner brothers, has been given a dark, conceptual staging here at the Public that was rather unengaging, unemotional and ultimately rather uninteresting. The show has been scaled back considerably with a unit set, intermissionless hour and forty minute running time. Gemignani and Cerveris provide excellent performances, carrying the evening. Doyle’s directorial choices bothered me, particularly his favorite: two actors talking to each other while facing front. However, the costumes by Ann Hould-Ward are incredibly clever, especially having the opportunity to see the work up close as the actor’s collected for BC/EFA. The score sounds like a Sondheim piece, those discordant synocopated vamps and his usual lyrical wordplay (though I think here his composition outshone his text); but aside from “You” and “The Best Thing That Has Ever Happened,” (what a song!) there wasn’t too much that stood out. As I walked away two musical lines were trapped in my head: “Everybody’s Got the Right” from Assassins and the line “Ooh your song’s derivative” from “Die, Vampire, Die” out of [tos]. (Watch Road Show be declared a masterpiece in ten or twenty years and watch us naysayers changing our critical tunes). Newcomer Claybourne Elder was an endearing well-sung presence as Addison’s lover Hollis. Alma Cuervo, William Parry and Anne L. Nathan did the best with what they were given, which wasn’t much. I went into this knowing the divisive opinions on the show and the mixed critical response, however, I was hoping beyond hope that I would enjoy the play, but overall Road Show just isn’t that compelling. The day wasn’t a total disappointment: I got to roam much of Manhattan with my very good friend Chris Lavin (Follies enthusiast and a discerning and observational writer who needs a blog of his own – I know you’re reading this Chris, and I mean it). Visited a new favorite haunt, the Drama Book Shop and was lucky to just have a wonderful day in NYC. Let it be said, while I didn’t care for the show (I quipped to several friends that I had just seen Road Kill), he loved it. And you know what that means, kids. Sondheim definitely has a new show in town.

Critical Round-Up on Patricia Routledge

As promised, I spent some time in the campus library at SUNY New Paltz investigating their periodicals that consist of theatre reviews from the major news sources, mostly in the newspaper, but also some from transcriptions from television newscasts. (Which unfortunately meant that there was nothing about out of town shows in these volumes, so there was no Prettybelle for me to bring back for our beloved Sarah).

Here is the round-up on Patricia Routledge in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Darling of the Day:

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – 1976

“…and Patricia Routledge was often deliciously funny (although in an accent usually doggedly and oddly British) as all the First Ladies.”

– Clive Barnes, NY Times

“On the evidence of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, last night’s musical at the Hellinger, both the show and history would have been more fun if our Presidents had been women.
Certainly the liveliest sally of the evening, which whisks us through a hundred-year tour of the White House, is provided by Patricia Routledge who, as Rutherford B. Hayes is taking the oath of office, plays both a fluttery Lucy Hayes and a caustic Julia Grant in a Leonard Bernstein-Alan Jay Lerner number called ‘Duet for One.’
That’s fun.”

– Douglass Watt, NY Daily News

“But Lerner’s book was potted historyballs and his lyrics swing dizzyingly between very bad and very good, the best being a one-person duet in which Patricia Routledge played both the outgoing First Lady, boozy Mrs. U.S. Grant, and the incoming one, flibberty Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes. Ms. Routledge would have stopped the show, if there had been one to stop.”

– Jack Kroll, Newsweek

“The second and best of the two acts contains a glorious piece of vocal and histrionic foolery by Patricia Routledge. It occurs in a number called ‘Duet for One.’ With a toss of her head and an instant transformation of manners, Miss Routledge alternates between a feisty Julia Grant and a mincing Lucy Hayes. The resultant hilarity is worthy of Bea Lillie. You can’t do better than that.”

– John Beaufort, Christian Science Monitor

“And only once did a song hint at any real sass: The estimable Patricia Routledge, playing all of the Presidents’ wives to Ken Howard’s recurring husbands, was relieved of her whining matronly duties just long enough to engage herself in a one-woman duet in which a very blunt Julia Grant made mincemeat of a successor so refined that her very fingers were made of ‘delicate bamboo.'”

– Walter Kerr, Sunday NY Times, Stage View: “Moralizing is a Bore; But Good Music Helps”
Darling of the Day – 1968

“And then the widow, depressed on learning that she has wed a great artist instead of a lowly valet, repairs to the pub, gets tipsy all alone, and begins an ebullient song, ‘Not on Your Nellie,’ which is a real showstopper. This is Patricia Routledge in her prime.”

– John Chapman, NY Daily News

“Miss Routledge, who really can sing, has more to work with as the young widow slightly past her prime, and it is a joy to watch her. With those rosy cheeks and that comfortable bosom, she makes you think inevitably of buttered toast, crisp linen and good smells from the kitchen. Every artist’s dream wife-mother, in short: all common sense and unselfish solicitude.
But a lively wench with a couple of beers in her. The high point of Darling of the Day is a thumping good production number in the local pub (‘Not on Your Nellie’), in which Miss Routledge, somewhat sozzled, kicks up her heels with a bunch of boys. It would stop a livelier show; it starts this one, for a moment.”

– Dan Sullivan, NY Times

“Darling of the Day is a superior musical comedy, and Miss Routledge is a treasure.”

– Richard Watts, Jr., NY Post

“No such problems with Patricia Routledge, who played the wife as if an apple on a string, rosy bouncing and delicious. Miss Routledge had all the musicality the show hadn’t, not merely because of a strong singing voice (which could be legitimate when she chose) but because of her consuming sense of music and performing. She may have been the commoner but she had all the class.”

– Martin Gottfried, Women’s Wear Daily

“The chief attraction of the evening is the English actress Patricia Routledge, who secures her man through a matrimonial agency. Miss Routledge, equipped with a genuine English accent of the class and area she is supposed to represent (although Professor Henry Higgins might argue about it), is a joy all the way through. She is brisk, fresh and appealing, a comfortable yet lively youngish woman who can kick up her heels with a beer or two in the pub when the occasion arises. She projects a sort of jaunty domesticity in her pretty little Putney cottage.”

– Richard P. Cooke, The Wall Street Journal

(and my personal favorite:)

“And when she hiccups her way into a showstopper called “Not on Your Nellie” – this is a real showstopper, not a clamoring bargain-basement job that has figured out all the pressure points – she hiccups like a woodwind stealing into the pit at dawn. Becoming a coloratura in her cups, she lets you know the cups are mint Sevres. It’s all needlepoint, and nifty, and I warn you: If you don’t catch her act now, you’ll someday want to kill yourself. I’ll help you.”

– Walter Kerr, Sunday NY Times, Stage View: “Patricia is My Darling”