But
Cotton Patch Gospel,
like
Godspell,
offers a vivid witness to the Greatest Story Ever Told, and it’s no mystery as to why both are popular in regional and community theaters across the country.
Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart often wrote in tandem with estimable author/director George Abbott, and
The Boys from Syracuse,
their 1938 effort, may be the best collaboration of them all. The source for
Syracuse
was Shakespeare’s
The Comedy of Errors,
which became a snazzy, jazzy farce (“If it’s good enough for Shakespeare,” the show begins, “it’s good enough for us”) concerning two sets of mismatched twins and their escapades on one crazy day in Ephesus. A truly great score (featuring the standards “This Can’t Be Love” and “Falling in Love With Love,” as well as the close-harmony wowza “Sing For Your Supper”) led critics to opine that Shakespeare had merely been missing the punch of a Rodgers and Hart score to make his show really work. An unsuccessfully re-written revival hit-Broadway in 2002.
The Comedy of Errors
is itself based on Plautus’
The Twin Menachmae,
and in 1981 another musical based on
The Twin Menachmae
hit the Main Stem. The unhappily-titled
Oh, Brother!
reset the twins plot in the contemporary Persian Gulf (yep, a lot of opportunity for Broadway-style musical comedy there). Whatever charm was present in
Syracuse
(not to mention the killer score) didn’t translate, and despite a George Abbott-like surfeit of young talent (David-James Carroll, Harry Groener, Mary Mastrantonio,
sans
“Elizabeth”),
Oh, Brother!
lasted only one performance.
The tale of Martin Guerre is a true story of a Frenchman who marries, then leaves his home in the Pyrenees village
of Artegat to join the army, where he is presumed dead. Years later, a man returns to Artegat, claiming to be Martin Guerre. He is welcomed back, but is later suspected (and finally revealed) to be an impostor. Two musicals based on the true story of Martin Guerre have received high-profile musical stagings—and it seems in the case of this tale, smaller is better.
The House of Martin Guerre
opened in Toronto in 1993. The work of two women, Leslie Arden and Anna Theresa Cascio,
House
focused on Martin’s long-suffering wife, Bertrande, and the effect of her child-marriage to the loveless Guerre, her eventual attraction to Guerre’s impostor, and the eventual awakening of the village to the new world outside their closed doors. A superb production at Chicago’s Goodman Theater in 1995, starring Tony-winner Antony Crivello as the impostor, and the wonderful Julain Molnar as Bertrande, gave full voice to this version of the legend as seen from a woman’s point of view.
At nearly the same time as
House
was on the boards in Chicago, Cameron Mackintosh’s production of
The Return of Martin Guerre
opened in London. Written by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, who were responsible for Mackintosh’s
Les MisÉrables
and
Miss Saigon, The Return of Martin Guerre
had neither the epic sweep of
Les MisÉrables
nor the tragic stature of
Miss Saigon,
yet was produced with size and bombast similar to those twin behemoths. The show relied on weary storytelling devices as well, originally telling the tale through the narration of a town cripple and a trio of old village biddies who provided heavy-handed comic relief.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels featuring his fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, are easily the most popular detective novels ever published, and their London locations, colorful villains, and elaborate plots would make them ideal candidates for musicalization. Two top-flight musicals have explored the world of the great gumshoe.
Baker Street,
from 1965, was a Big Broadway Musical from the get-go. Directed by Harold Prince,
Baker Street
set its tale at the time of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, pitting Holmes and Dr. Watson against their old nemesis, Professor Moriarty, who wants to pinch the Crown Jewels and get rid of Holmes once and for all. Holmes enlists his Baker Street Irregulars to pursue Moriarty through the alleys and sewers of London. With a then-unheard-of top ticket price of $9.90,
Baker Street
offered stunning, Tony-winning sets by Oliver Smith and a Jubilee parade in the fog by the Bil Baird Marionettes, but the score and script ultimately did the show in.
Baker Street’s
record-breaking grosses dried up quickly, and the show closed in less than a year.
Sherlock Holmes, the Musical,
wasn’t even that lucky (or even that good, if you ask most people). Veteran tunesmith Leslie Bricusse supplied book, music, and lyrics, with British character man Ron Moody stepping into Holmes’ tweed cape and deerstalker hat. Opening in London in 1989, it incorporated much from other Bricusse shows, most notably the opening number, “London is London,” which was cribbed from Bricusse’s musical
Goodbye, Mr. Chips.
A critical and financial flop,
Holmes
brought to mind the music-hall
shows of the previous era, which had been completely eclipsed by the pop-opera spectacles of the ’70s and ’80s. Moody’s presence in
Sherlock Holmes
also invited inevitable comparison to his triumph as Fagin in the infinitely superior
Oliver! two
decades before.
Gaston Leroux’s celebrated novel of a deformed lunatic living in the bowels of the Paris Opera House had been memorably filmed many times and in many styles, but still it came as no surprise to theater folk when Andrew Lloyd Webber announced his intention to write the music for a stage version. What followed has become perhaps the greatest commercial phenomenon in musical theater history, rivaled only by
Les Miserables
and that other Webber behemoth,
Cats.
Breathtakingly designed by Maria Bjornson and Andrew Bridge, and directed in high style by Harold Prince,
The Phantom of the Opera
opened in London in 1985 with Webber’s wife, Sarah Brightman, as the heroine, ingenue Christine Daae, and Michael Crawford in a mesmerizing turn as the tortured Phantom. A worldwide smash hit, the show had roughly eight thousand touring companies on the road, and a merchandising operation that would make Michael Jordan blush.
Phantom
is the simpler title of another musical version from 1991, this one written by the gifted Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit, who collaborated on the Broadway musical
Nine
in 1982, besting Webber’s
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
in the Tony race that year. The Yeston-Kopit
Phantom
has never played Broadway for obvious reasons, but has a rich life in regional and foreign productions (often being
billed as the most successful musical never to have played New York). Supporters of the Yeston-Kopit
Phantom
maintain that the storytelling is superior in their version, offering a more compelling relationship between Christine and her father, and portraying the Phantom as a more pathetic, and less mesmerizing, creature of need.
Another great idea for a musical: A golden boy, loved by all, son of a conquering war hero, falls in love with a slave, their forbidden romance setting in motion a tragic chain of events. Great, except that Giuseppe Verdi got there first. He turned it into the grand opera
Aida,
which is standard repertory all over the world. Two musicals based on Verdi’s work have opened on Broadway, with varying results.
Charles Friedman had directed Oscar Hammerstein’s
Carmen Jones,
which Hammerstein had adapted from Bizet’s opera
Carmen,
resetting the opera in the black American South. Friedman, not exactly on Hammerstein’s level as a writer, adapted Verdi’s opera into the Southern gothic
My Darlin’ Aida
in 1952. Retaining Verdi’s music, Friedman turned ancient Memphis into Memphis, Tennessee, at the time of the Civil War, and changed the characters accordingly (Radames = Ray Demarest, Pharaoh = General Farrow, etc.). The beautifully mounted production came across to most critics like a novelty, music critics mostly saying, “great music,” and drama critics saying, “great sets.”
My Darlin’ Aida
closed after only eighty-nine performances.
Disney Theatricals’ Y2K spectacle
Aida,
on the other hand, is still going strong after three-plus years. A blazingly abstract take on the story,
Aida
has a Tony
winning score by Tim Rice and Elton John and book by director Robert Falls, David Henry Hwang and Linda Woolverton. The conceit of this
Aida
has contemporary characters meeting in the Egyptian wing of a museum, ineluctably drawn together as Aida and Radames were long ago, the story subsuming them.
With Elton John supplying good, catchy pop tunes, as is his wont, and Rice doing his usual bit with uninspired lyrics,
Aida
works best as a showcase: visually, by way of Bob Crowley’s stunning, abstract-modern sets and costumes, and musically, with killer pop roles in Aida, Radames, and spoiled little rich girl Amneris.
Broadway has long been the proving ground for television and movie success. If you don’t think so, look up the calendar year that actress Mercedes Ruehl had between May of 1991 and April of 1992. Following are ten television shows featuring performers from Broadway’s musical stages.
HBO’s just-ended unflinching prison drama featured three fine musical performers in vastly different roles: J.K. Simmons
(Guys and Dolls)
as pitiless neo-Nazi Schillinger, B.D. Wong as Father Ray, and Rita Moreno as Sister Peter Marie. (Wong played Linus in the revival of
You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown;
Moreno was in the one-performance disaster
Gantry.)
Both Wong and Moreno are Tony winners for plays, and Moreno, of course, won an Oscar for her superb performance as Anita in
West Side Story.
The chic sitcom about ultra-hip New Yorkers is riddled with ultra-professional Broadway talent. Emmy winners
Eric McCormack (who played in
Meredith Willson’s The Music Man
in 2001), as good-guy Will Truman, and Megan Mullally (Rizzo in
Grease,
Rosemary in 1995’s
How to Succeed
… revival), who plays quippy socialite Karen Walker, trade the witty, bitchy repartee that is their show’s trademark. The late Gregory Hines, whose Broadway musical career spanned almost 40 years, used to pop up occasionally as Will’s boss, Ben Doucette. He’s been replaced by Willy Wonka himself (or is it Leo Bloom?), Gene Wilder, who recently won an Emmy for his portrayal of mercurial Mr. Stein.
One of the who? Nineteen eighty-what, now? This forgettable NBC sitcom from 1982 is worth mentioning only for its cast: Amidst the predictable sitcom detritus were future stars Dana Carvey and Meg Ryan, joined by a manic character guy named Nathan Lane. Lane is Broadway royalty now, with two Tonys and tons of fans and goodwill.
The old guard was represented by veterans Scatman Crothers and Mr. Mickey Rooney. Rooney made a belated Broadway debut in 1979’s burlesque riot
Sugar Babies.
His last Main Stem appearance to date was in the waning days of
The Will Rogers Follies,
as Will’s father, Clem.
Fictional First Lady Abigail Bartlet is played by the magnificent Stockard Channing, who made her Broadway debut in 1971’s
Two Gentlemen of Verona
and was also in
They’re Playing Our Song
and took over for Liza Minnelli in
The Rink.
On the
West Wing
set she canswap
backstage stories with Dulé Hill, who plays Charlie Young, the personal aide to the President. Hill scored on Broadway in 1996’s
Bring in ’da Noise Bring in ’da Funk. The West Wing
seems to be gathering Tony winners like kudzu; recently joining the cast were the fabulous Joanna Gleason
(Into the Woods),
as counsel Jordan Kendall, Mary-Louise Parker (2001’s Best Play
Proof),
as Amy Gardner, and Lily Tomlin (1986’s
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe)
playing the President’s secretary, Debbie Fiderer.
The song-and-dancing-est cops on TV are Ed Green and Lenny Briscoe, or, as they’re better known, Jesse L. Martin and Jerry Orbach.
Law & Order’s
detectives both boast Broadway musical credits, Martin making a splash as the first Tom Collins in the mega-hit
Rent
Orbach has a list of credits as long as your arm, among them creating the role of El Gallo off-Broadway in
The Fantasticks,
singing the role of Lumiere in Disney’s great film version of
Beauty and the Beast,
and creating roles in
Carnival
and Bob Fosse’s original production of
Chicago.
Their TV boss, S. Epatha Merkerson, scored a huge triumph as Billie Holliday in
Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill
off-Broadway in 1987.
Broadcasting from the heart of the theater district at 1697 Broadway,
Late Show With David Letterman
often hosts big-time Broadway stars to go along with Dave’s Big-Ass Ham. And look, behind the keyboards! It’s Paul Shaffer! Letterman’s longtime musical director got his start in Canada, and, following a legendary production of Stephen Schwartz’s
Godspell
in Toronto,
Shaffer took the job of Musical Director for
Godspell’s
move from off-Broadway to Broadway in 1976. Shaffer also served as Musical Director for Gilda Radner’s live evening on Broadway in 1979.