Broadway received a much-needed shot in the arm with the appearance of
The Producers
in the spring of 2001. Hitting the Main Stem with almost-unprecedented anticipatory hoopla, it surpassed all expectations. Not bad for a show with something to offend everybody.
Mel Brooks’ 1968 movie
The Producers
is a slapdash but often riotously funny farce about a theater producer (Zero Mostel) who takes on a nebbishy partner (Gene Wilder) by convincing him they can make more profit off a flop than a hit show. They proceed to find the worst possible play and hire the worst possible director, Roger DeBris, and the result is the jaw-dropping
Springtime for Hitler.
And of course, it becomes the hit of the season, leaving the two producers to ponder where they went right.
It seems more of an insult to Hitler nowadays to have him played by DeBris, a screaming drag queen, than by an innocent hippie, as he was in the film. As portrayed originally by Gary Beach, DeBris (assisted by his confidante, Carmen Ghia) enters in a gown resembling New York City’s Chrysler Building and gets more outrageous from there. The drag quotient is upped in the first-act finale, as the stage fills with little old ladies, the pigeons Lane has been “plucking” to finance his show. The ladies
and
gentlemen of the ensemble
totter on, dressed as old biddies, clicking their walkers in unison and singing of the joys of geriatric sex.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
is the 1998 brainchild of John Cameron Mitchell, an appealing singing actor who penned this musical saga (with music by Stephen Trask) about a German “girly-boy” named Hedwig, whose failed sex-change operation results in the aforementioned “angry inch.”
Hedwig’s tale is one of unrequited love for an American GI who used and abused him before becoming the rock star Hedwig always wanted to be. Hedwig hits the road with his own band, called the Angry Inch, and stalks his beloved from afar. Hedwig is played by a man in fearless and fantastic drag (Mitchell wrote himself literally dozens of costume changes), and Trask and Mitchell’s songs (aided off-Broadway by Trask’s band, Cheater) tear into Hedwig’s glam-rock dream world.
This is the musical version of the great film
Some Like it Hot,
wherein two struggling Chicago musicians witness the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and are forced to take it on the lam. Lambs they ain’t but gams they got, as our heroes join an all-girl band bound for Florida.
Following the formula and story of the film, our boys pile double entendres upon cheap jokes as they’re forced to swish around, evading the gangsters and the amorous attentions of Osgood the millionaire and Sugar the bombshell.
Sugar
was producer David Merrick’s “big show” for 1972. Gower Champion briskly staged the capers, and Jule Styne and Bob Merrill’s
score kept Peter Brook’s script moving along. But despite some success, the musical suffers in comparison to the great movie version, the greatest drag comedy ever.
Most anyone who buys this book is aware of the audience shenanigans that accompany a showing of
The Rocky Horror Picture Show,
a minor movie musical which gained legendary status thanks to midnight showings attended by diehard fans. The fans create their own show, hurling toast, rice, and their own dialogue at the screen and showing up in costume as their favorite characters.
But before there was the film, there was the stage musical.
The Rocky Horror Show
began as a fringe entertainment in England in 1973, making it to Broadway in 1975. The show is a mile-high-camp spoof of schlock horror movies and ’50s drive-in specials as innocent Janet and Brad spend a dark and stormy night in the mansion of Dr. Frank-N-Furter. Furter is a drag nightmare, in outrageous makeup and ladies’ lingerie, and he proceeds to turn the square couple on, over, and inside out.
Broadway saw
Rocky Horror
again in 2001, after icon status had been bestowed on the property, and the drag was as flamboyant as ever, yet seemed as comfortable as a pair of old shoes doing the “Time Warp.”
Drag musicals reached a kind of apotheosis with this 1991 off-off-Broadway evening, conceived by its director, Robert Longbottom. The work of Frank Kelly, Albert Evans, and Bill Russell,
Pageant
was literally a
beauty pageant, with the performers (named Miss Bible Belt, Miss Industrial Northwest, and the like) played by men. Hosted by an unctuous emcee,
Pageant
was more clever than funny, though it had mild success in regional theater.
Based on a true story and a 1993 movie of the same name, Mike Reid and Sarah Schlesinger’s The
Ballad of Little Jo
had its premiere at Chicago’s vaunted Steppenwolf Theater Company in 2000. More than a drag show,
Little Jo
is an examination of the roles expected of men and women on the Western frontier in the wake of the Civil War.
Josephine Monaghan, ostracized by her family for bearing a child out of wedlock, lands in Silver City, Idaho, and dons men’s clothes, passing as a man to survive on her own. She falls in love with both her business partner
and
the man’s wife, enacting a sort of
Twelfth
Nighi-on-the-range. Judy Kuhn’s touching performance as Jo went a long way towards balancing out irregularities in the storytelling and the pleasant, but contrived, score.
Although the big, splashy musicals normally bring in the big crowds, and therefore the big bucks, smaller musicals have sprung up by necessity; not everyone can afford big-ticket musicals, and many prefer a more intimate style of musical theater. These ten small musicals have been seen all over, Broadway and beyond.
The prototypical small musical, with just two instruments—piano and harp—supporting a cast of nine. Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt made their careers on this all-time long-running champion, which ran for over forty years at New York’s tiny Sullivan Street Playhouse. The turning of the seasons serves as a potent metaphor in many Jones and Schmidt shows, and in this 1960 classic, young love and friendship are examined against the inevitable changing climes.
The Fantasticks
is their shining example and a perfect small musical.
William Finn and James Lapine’s teaming of two musicals in Finn’s “Marvin” trilogy,
March of the Falsettos
and
Falsettoland.
These two shows (and their predecessor,
In Trousers)
tell the story of a married father’s struggles to come to terms with his latent homosexuality. The shifting definitions of “family” are examined in these shows; none has a cast larger than seven (one character even makes note of the “teeny tiny band” playing for them).
March
and
Falsettoland
were first paired for a full evening in 1992 by director-choreographer Graciela Daniele at Hartford Stage Company.
This chamber musical was conceived by then-budding playwright Craig Lucas
(Prelude to a Kiss, Longtime Companion)
to fill a late-night slot off-off-Broadway back in 1981. Stephen Sondheim gave his blessing to the use of eighteen of his “trunk” songs, songs cut from other shows. The two-character, one-piano evening told the interesting tale of two lonely souls living in separate apartments, yet inhabiting the same stage space, articulating their hopes and dreams through Sondheim’s songs.
The always-experimental Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt cast two of Broadway’s biggest stars, Robert Preston and Mary Martin, as the entire cast, a married couple, in their 1966 musical based on Jan de Hartog’s play
The Fourposter. I Do! I Do!
was an examination of a marriage in music, and Preston and Martin, despite having to carry the whole show, predictably filled the entire theater with their warmth and sheer star power.
Off-off-Broadway all the way to Tony Awards and a legendary run and reputation, all for a cabaret show about a stride piano player. 1977’s
Ain’t Misbehavin’
successfully and ebulliently recreated the spirit and the music of the legendary Fats Waller, with a cast of just five strutting in high style, backed by a piano player (the great Luther Henderson at the show’s premiere) and a small jazz combo.
The two-performer, three-person-orchestra chamber show j
ohn & jen
came to off-Broadway in 1995 by way of the venerable Goodspeed Opera House, birthplace of many shows, both large and small. But j
ohn & jen
took a novel approach to its subject matter, the changing dynamics of love, families, and sacrifice, as one actress played jen to one actor playing her brother, john, and his son, also called john. Papa john is killed in Vietnam, and jen must connect to young john in order to bring their grief and understanding full circle.
An agreeable but somewhat banal 1983 musical about a potentially interesting subject.
Baby
concerns three couples (in their forties, thirties, and twenties) and their adventures in the baby game. As each couple tries to conceive, they must confront not only impending parenthood, but also the demands placed on their relationships with each other. The book, by Sybille Pearson, covered this territory better than Richard Maltby, Jr. and David Shire’s mediocre score.
Another two-hander, this time from the pen of the talented Jason Robert Brown, who wrote book, music, and lyrics.
The Last 5 Years
depicts the five-year relationship of Jamie and Cathy, examining their time together by playing that time backwards, starting with the breakup of their marriage and ending with their first entrancing meeting. Brown cleverly orchestrates their relationship, nowhere better than in the final numbers, “Goodbye Until Tomorrow/I Could Never Rescue You,” which juxtaposes their first goodbye (after their first date) with their last.
Christina Rossetti’s allegorical poem
Goblin Market
was adapted into a two-character musical at the tiny Vineyard Theater in 1985. The allegory is mainly sexual, as two sisters visit their childhood nursery and find their memories invaded by goblins and the forbidden fruits they bear. Peggy Harmon and Polly Pen made a quite unusual verse musical out of this material, with actresses Ann Morrison and Terri Klausner hauntingly portraying the sisters.
Singer-songwriter Craig Camelia is often referred to as the musical theater’s best-kept secret. Or used to be, anyway, before
Sweet Smell of Success
bombed so loudly on Broadway. But before
Success
smelled, off-Broadway lauded his superb
Three Postcards,
from 1986. Three women meet for lunch in a trendy bistro, to the tinkling sounds of our orchestra, the bistro’s piano player. The only other character is the pithy waiter, who frequently interrupts the ladies’ reveries.
Musicals often hold a fun-house mirror up to nature, distorting real life by musicalizing it. Here are ten musicals about other parts of the fun house—different types of show business.
Cy Coleman, Mark Bramble, and Michael Stewart’s 1980 musical biography of the legendary showman P. T. Barnum. Director and choreographer Joe Layton wisely set the evening within the context of a circus, with a ringmaster announcing the scenes. Orchestrator Hershy Kay and set designer David Mitchell made invaluable contributions to the three-ring evening.
The hectic, seat-of-the-pants world of early variety television gets the once-over in this unsuccessful musical from 1992. Adapted from the 1982 film of the same name,
My Favorite Year
concerns a young gofer working on the King Kaiser television show who is assigned to babysit a dipsomaniacal matinee idol prior to his appearance
on the show. An appealing cast did their best but the atmosphere was never convincingly portrayed.
No, it’s not a porn musical. “Naked from the waist down” is trade lingo for stand-up comics, who let it all hang out for everyone to see when they step to the mike. This 1985 off-Broadway show follows the parallel lives of three comics, starting in small clubs and aiming for the big time (Heeeeeeere’s Johnny!) and the very different paths their lives take. Loud, bombastic rock-and-roll storytelling was the order of the day.
A best-selling detective novelist adapting his work into a Hollywood film is the subject of this very funny, superbly conceived 1989 musical. Larry Gelbart’s book portrays both the real, “color” world of the writer up against the Hollywood system, and the
noir
world of his characters, in black and white, sometimes both onstage at once. Even more ingenious was the use of the same actors to portray the real people as well as their fictional counterparts, daring the audience to decide which bunch was more unsavory. Cy Coleman and David Zippel’s score was one of the best of the 1980s, and saw out the decade in excellent style.
1981’s
Dreamgirls
was an intriguing show in concept— the tale of the rise and fall of the Dreams, a girl group obviously based on the Supremes—but just a mediocre show on paper. Michael Bennett cast the show with performers who sold the R & B style to the hilt. Bennett’s legendary staging literally never stopped moving, and the non-stop dancing was aided greatly by lightning-fast costume changes and scenic designer
Robin Wagner’s amazing movable light towers, which seemed to dance themselves.