This superbly funny 1930 Gershwin brothers musical betrays the cynical streak evident in their “Wintergreen” shows, as the United States goes to war with Switzerland over cheese. It was originally conceived as a bitterly satiric anti-war tract, written by George S.
Kaufman, culminating in impending war against the Soviets. Morrie Ryskind revised Kaufman’s libretto, substituting the neutral Swiss for the Reds, pointing up the satire by placing all within the context of a dream.
Hailed as not only funny and tuneful (the rescued “I’ve Got a Crush on You” and the title tune, which isn’t really the flag-waver it has become in our time) but also intelligent, the show had a run as bittersweet as Swiss chocolate—only 191 performances. Due to the superb score, the show continues to thrive in stock and amateur productions, often sporting watered-down political content.
The great Kurt Weill collaborated with the Group Theater’s Paul Green on this anti-war
zeitoper
(a German term meaning “opera for the spirit of the times”) from 1936, which examined the after-effects of World War I on a small-town lad, the eponymous Johnny.
Young Johnson tells a harrowing tale of war, of meeting an enemy soldier (also called Johnny) as pacifist as he, and of returning home, only to be hospitalized “for his own good” and turned into a street peddler. The sophisticated score played interestingly off the very uneven satire of the book, which echoed Weill’s old partner, Bertolt Brecht.
“How’m I doin’?” was the rhetorical question Mayor Ed Koch asked of the people of New York. He also asked it in print, in his 1984 quasi-auto-biography
Mayor,
which was quickly adapted into the cabaret musical of the same title in 1985.
Featuring a book by Warren Leight (who would go
on to pen the 1999 Tony-winning play
Side Man)
and a score by the talented composer Charles Strouse,
Mayor
was a small, sketch-type show that tended to flatter Hizzoner Koch and played up his strengths as a man of the people, a mover and shaker, and a publicity hound.
Another Kurt Weill
zeitoper,
this anti-fascist tract from 1938 was authored by Maxwell Anderson, adapted from Washington Irving’s novel
Old Knickerbocker’s Guide to New York
(and featured Irving himself, commenting on the progress of the musical). Originally a critique of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the show eventually told of Brom Broeck, the first American, so called because he wouldn’t take orders from New Amsterdam’s tyrannical Dutch governor, Pieter Stuyvesant.
Trouble was, Anderson’s didactic book succeeded only in making his points early and too often. Weill’s great score, featuring the classic “September Song,” the Depression-era rouser “There’s Nowhere to Go But Up,” and the haunting “Requiem for a Soldier,” was left to pick up the slack.
Knickerbocker Holiday
is credited as being the first musical to use a historical figure from past history to comment on present political affairs.
This regional theater offering was presented by the Signature Theater Company of Arlington, Virginia, in the Spring of 1998, after London’s Donmar Warehouse premiered it in 1997. A modern, very dark tale of corruption, dirty politics, and murder, it featured a book and lyrics by John Dempsey, and music by Dana P. Rowe.
The Fix
concerns the Chandler (Kennedy?) family, the patriarch of which dies in bed with his mistress at the show’s start. The games go on from there. The scion, Cal, must keep his kinks in check and the family’s skeletons in the closet in order to rise up the ladder of public office.
The Fix
earned points for its unremittingly bleak outlook.
A different kind of political musical, this 1969 musical took the seminal moment in America’s history, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and brilliantly fleshed it out. As many have noted, the success of the show lay in the tension created despite the familiarity of the outcome.
1776
featured a John Adams as obnoxious and unpopular as he was brilliant and single-minded, intent on uniting the Colonies by himself, if need be. His opposition is nearly everyone else present at the Continental Congress, sweltering in the summer heat and arguing with Adams at almost every turn. Sherman Edwards’ unusual yet effective score shone, particularly the song “Momma, Look Sharp,” in which a soldier recounts how his best friend was shot in the field.
Peter Stone’s book is a model of construction, offering a superb document to history while providing the necessary tension, most notably in a twenty-plus minute scene without music which in which the vital matters of independence are debated by all. The egalitarian integration of score, book, and staging (by Peter Hunt), as well as superb performances, made
1776
the smash hit of the season, winning the Tony for Best Musical.
Most Broadway playhouses are in the West Forties (west of Broadway, that is). Here are ten musicals that gazed just a bit further west, beyond the Hudson.
A new musical (1992) loosely fashioned from the Gershwin brothers’s
Girl Crazy
(1930). In both, a man heads West to the desert, and falls in love with the only girl in Deadrock, Nevada. The creators of
Crazy For You
wisely wrote a new book with palatable show-biz elements: Our hero is a wannabe hoofer who revitalizes the playhouse in town, bringing in a Follies show and reviving the spirits of the townsfolk. The Gershwin numbers were aided tremendously by choreographer Susan Stroman.
James Stewart played Destry, a sheriff so effective that he tames the West without using a gun, on film in 1937’s
Destry Rides Again.
The role was entrusted to
Andy Griffith for the 1959 Broadway musical version, also called
Destry Rides Again.
Produced by David Merrick (who opined that at the time there had never been a real rip-snorter of a Western musical), the score was by the estimable Harold Rome, with a book by Leonard Gershe.
Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh wrote the score to N. Richard Nash’s libretto about a hot-cha oil prospector in 1912. What made it noteworthy was the presence of Lucille Ball, in her only Broadway musical. Despite a typically fine Coleman-Leigh score (including “Hey, Look Me Over!” and “Give a Little Whistle”), the book was not distinguished, and Ball was uncomfortable (and unhealthy) throughout. It was a flop at just 172 performances and didn’t last the 1960 season.
The landmark 1943 musical based on Lynn Riggs’s 1931 play
Green Grow the Lilacs.
The plot means little (I hate you, I love you, you goin’ to the dance?), but the telling is everything: cowboys, farmers, and their women all coming of age as the nation grows up around them, while Oklahoma territory becomes a state. Rodgers and Hammerstein carved their niche in the American consciousness with this classic show, the first real musical play.
N. Richard Nash wrote the book for the flop
Wildcat;
it resembles his play
The Rainmaker.
Nash finally got around to adapting the play into a musical,
110 in the
Shade,
in 1963. Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, red-hot from
The Fantasticks,
scored the show, which concerns the men of the Curry family, their spinster sister, and the flashy fraud who finally makes all their dreams come true. The elemental trappings of the Western locale suited Jones and Schmidt; their work is typically excellent.
It always takes place Tonight, On The Stage Of This Theater, but this 1991 Tony-winning musical warmly recalls the era and the essence of America’s cowboy philosopher. Director-choreographer Tommy Tune conceived the evening as a giddy, hellzapoppin’ Ziegfeld Follies revue, with Mr. Ziegfeld as a disembodied voice coaching Rogers along to tell his life story. Wild West Show acts elbow the girls, girls, girls for stage time, and Rogers and his life and times are genially observed all evening, until Wiley Post finally rises from his box seat and encourages Will to go flying with him.
Yes indeedy, Wagner’s
Ring
operas reset to the contemporary West. Wagner’s mammoth operas are spun for gentle comedy in this off-Broadway spoof, which finds the Valkyries chasing the ring (and the dwarf) through Texas, where it winds up as a gift at a barbecue in honor of a double wedding ceremony.
Das Barbecu,
with music by Scott Warrender and book and lyrics by Jim Luigs, premiered at Goodspeed Opera House in 1993 and moved to off-Broadway in 1994, where it had the considerable benefit of a superb cast.
A spring opening (and closing) in 2003,
Urban Cowboy
is closely based on the John Travolta-Debra Winger movie of the same name. Young Bud and his wife, Sissy, live their lives in contemporary Houston, with much of the action centering around Gilley’s Bar and that famous mechanical bull. As is the case with many new musicals, particularly those adapted from film sources, the score is a mix of old hit songs (“Could I Have This Dance,” “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”) and new show tunes, in this case, tunes from several composers.
The great songwriting team of Lerner and Loewe did most of their work in a European milieu (
My Fair Lady, Brigadoon, Gigi),
but this 1951 show, their second Broadway success, is a pure Western love story. It concerns a grizzled gold prospector and his budding daughter (who can’t understand why the menfolk are always pawing her) headed to California for the Rush of 1849, and her romance with a young Mexican. Don’t be put off by the film version, with those singing stars, Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood:
Paint Your Wagon
is a superb show.
A posse of Texans (authors Peter Masterson and Larry L. King, composer Carol Hall, and director-choreographer Tommy Tune) created this smash 1977 musical based on the real-life pleasure-for-poultry Chicken Ranch in west Texas. Run for generations with a tacit relationship between The Madam and The Law, it’s
only when a ratings-hungry TV preacher gets his truss in a twist that Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd reluctantly steps in to close ’er down. Tune’s cartoonish direction (i.e., cheerleaders dancing with two life-size cheerleader dolls apiece) greatly aided the no-nonsense satire of the tale.
Like movie and TV stars, pop recording artists can rejuvenate their careers, or even find a second home, in the musical theater. Here are ten singing sensations who traded the studio and concert stage for the legitimate stage.
One of the most popular country singers ever, Reba McEntire had crossed over to films with her performance in Rob Reiner’s dreadful
North.
She played a Texas mama who sang to convince young North to join her family. She fared better with her first Broadway project,
Annie Get Your Gun.
Other stars followed Bernadette Peters in the role of Annie Oakley in the 1999 revival, but Reba seemed to make the most sense. Not as needlessly glamorous as Susan Lucci, she also had the “country girl” authenticity to eclipse someone like Cheryl Ladd in the role. McEntire got great reviews (some saying she was better even than Peters), and her facility with the comedy paved the way to her still-running, eponymous sitcom.
Heartthrob Joey Fatone and his cohorts in the boy band N*SYNC put on a lively, almost non-stop stage show with vocal and stage pyrotechnics to spare. Fatone later branched out to pure acting, landing gigs in the vanity N*SYNC film project
On The Line
and a funny character bit in
My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
He made his Broadway debut in 2002, playing filmmaker Mark Cohen, in the long-running
Rent.
Toni Braxton, the gorgeous, soulful, Grammy-winning R & B singer, made a belated Broadway debut as heroine Belle in
Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.
Taking on the role in July of 1998, Braxton used her considerable beauty and star power to charm audiences and strike another blow for color-blind casting. While it’s true that beautiful songbirds like Miss Braxton will probably never lack work, the presence of a Black Belle in the Broadway arena was nevertheless a pleasing sight. She also took on the title role in Disney’s
Aida
in June 2003.
Frenchie Davis is a classic example of the “failing upward” school of success which is so prevalent in show business. A surefire finalist on TV’s popular
American Idol,
the plus-sized Davis found her vehicle to fame had stalled after she was discovered to have posed for an adult Internet website.
(Boo, hiss!)
“Save Frenchie” petitions went out, but Fox TV executives held their ground.
(BOO, HISS!)
Entertainment Tonight
knew a good thing when it
saw one, and hired Davis as a roving reporter.
(Aww-www.)
Finally, the outsized performer landed where she belonged—in the belter-friendly smash hit
Rent (Yaaaaaay!)
Unlike either of the two
American Idol
finalists, Miss Davis appears to have the vocal chops to be able to sustain a career in front of a live audience.
In the 1970s, many rock critics bemoaned the lack of legitimate female singing talent in the ranks; their exceptions were usually Pat Benatar and Linda Ronstadt. Joseph Papp evidently thought so, too; he put Ronstadt in the Public Theater revival of Gilbert and Sullivan’s
The Pirates of Penzance
in the summer of 1980. Her wide eyes fluttering with
faux-
Victorian propriety, Ronstadt’s voice was stretched somewhat thin at the top of the killer role of Major-General Stanley’s daughter Mabel, but her rock-star presence was one of the many offbeat delights in the successful revival. Showing off her versatility futher, Ronstadt’s concert of Mexican music,
Canciones de Mi Padre,
played Broadway in the summer of 1988.