On Sondheim: An Opinionated Guide (13 page)

^*
The word she bans is “loonies.” It’s an attack word; her charges, remember, are called “Cookies,” probably from the fifties term meaning “eccentric,”
kook
and its adjective,
kookie
. Edd Byrnes played a character named Kookie on the television detective series
77 Sunset Strip
, though his Kookie was less eccentric than hip, with an opaque vocabulary. “Baby,” he would say—and it’s praise—“you’re the ginchiest!”

Do I Hear a Waltz?

An American in Venice, 1965.

Based on Arthur Laurents’ play
The Time of the Cuckoo
.

Music: Richard Rodgers. Lyrics: Stephen Sondheim. Book: Arthur Laurents.

Original Leads: Elizabeth Allen, Sergio Franchi. Director: John Dexter.

This show shares something crucial with
Anyone Can Whistle
—a lamed heroine who believes she can redeem herself through music.
Whistle
’s Nurse wants to whistle, and
Waltz
’s Leona Samish needs to hear a romantic strain in three-quarter time. Otherwise, these two works are each other’s opposite.
Whistle
was one of the sixties breakaway shows, while
Waltz
, just a year later, was conservative.

Its source,
The Time of the Cuckoo
(1952), was typical of its day: one set and a cast of ten. Shirley Booth played an American spinster in Venice, a thirty-something (though Booth was forty-five) hoping to spark her humdrum life with European romance. She got a taste of it with a suave but untrustworthy local, but could not finally open up and embrace it and took out her frustration on her fellow pensione guests at a party. Alone, she hurled a martini glass to shatter against a wall—a shocking moment in what had at first seemed like a boulevard comedy. One scene later, heartbroken, she returned to America.

Audiences at the play had already heard that its theatre, the Empire, was to be demolished when
Cuckoo
had closed. As the sixty-year-old house’s red-and-gold interior had hosted many a beloved title (including
Life With Father
, to our own day the longest-running music-less play in Broadway history),
Cuckoo
remained a sentimental memory for many. Further,
Do I Hear a Waltz?
arrived a mere eleven years after its antecedent had closed, so the recollection was vivid, not least of Shirley Booth’s superb performance in her trademark blend of baby-doll sarcasm and self-deprecating whimsey. Booth created a character that women in the audience, however ruefully, recognized as a very American type, playful but on the needy side. Katharine Hepburn left her mark on the role in the film version, retitled
Summertime
(1955), the story beautifully opened up with location shooting in Venice itself. Most tourists arrive by train, and, upon exiting the station, find themselves staring at the western end of the Grand Canal, to realize—for the first time—that this city
really is built on water
. The movie caught this famous traveler’s epiphany very precisely, later showing Hepburn falling into a canal when she backs up to take a photograph, which, in
Cuckoo
, of course occurred offstage.

No stage musical could challenge such filming, but the project had potential musical personalities in minor characters—two troubled newlyweds; the seen-it-all pensione proprietor, Signora Fioria … and of course the Venetian Leona becomes involved with someone who could be an Ezio Pinza sort, as in
South Pacific
. An opera guy—perhaps Cesare Siepi, trim and handsome, with a Don Giovanni air about him.

Still, who could equal in a musical
Cuckoo
what Shirley Booth (not to mention Hepburn) had made of Leona? This is not a multi-lead story, like
Guys and Dolls
, nor a triangle tale, like
Camelot
, nor even a two-person piece like
The Music Man
. Leona
is
the story: was there someone in the mid-sixties musical who could encompass the paradoxes of Leona’s friendly and open yet suspicious and even angrily resentful character?

There was one: Shirley Booth herself, a marvelous singer in her own very strange way but now in her late fifties, too old to consider more than momentarily. So was Mary Martin—or so said Richard Rodgers, not only the show’s composer but its producer; his calls were final. And yet. Martin was, above all, an enchanting gamine, with a youthful quality that might have borne her along wonderfully. In the right part—and Leona was perfect for her, though she would have had to finesse the anger—Martin was matchless.

Barbara Cook, one of Broadway’s greatest vocalists, could have justified Leona’s eccentricities as well. But no one would have accepted her as a love-starved spinster; having just come off of
The Gay Life
and
She Loves Me
, she was still in the cute-ingenue stage.

Then Rodgers decided to hire Sergio Franchi, an Italian matinée idol with a phenomenal tenor voice and, after just a few years in America, a huge following. Though not an accomplished actor, Franchi was a life-loving soul with a good heart and a willingness to try anything. The Leona should probably have been someone as big as Franchi, but not too grand a singer, because an extroverted delivery would overwhelm the needed wounded-bird portrayal. (At one point, it was even thought that Leona shouldn’t sing at all, or only after she “heard” her waltz and opened up characterologically.) So Leona would be someone who reads as about thirty-eight, capable of a rich and nuanced portrayal, and just singer enough to interlock with the tonally abundant Franchi.

There was nobody like that anywhere. Rodgers hired Elizabeth Allen, an excellent performer in every respect, but simply too self-assured and attractive for Leona. Even Allen’s singing voice gave her away: a confident, friendly belt with sharp diction, perfect for a glamor role like Mame but wrong for Leona.

So that was Problem One. Problem Two was Rodgers himself, because, after
The Sound of Music
(1959) and the death of Oscar Hammerstein, in 1960, Rodgers had failed to produce a single hit tune. His generation of composers—which took in Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, and Cole Porter, among others—tended to measure success by the number of hit songs they achieved rather than by the overall quality of a given score. Yes, that counted, too. But a certain commercial analysis, let us say, was hardwired into their worldview: if you’re good at songwriting, you have hit songs. And note that Rodgers’ biggest hit shows—
Oklahoma!
,
Carousel
,
South Pacific
,
The King and I
, and
The Sound of Music
, all with Hammerstein—each produced hits by the bunch. Let’s rephrase: if you’re good at songwriting, you have hit
scores
.

But Rodgers’ recent work, on
No Strings
(1962) and the new numbers for the
State Fair
movie remake (1962), produced no genuine hits; the
State Fair
inserts were especially feeble. So Rodgers was in a cranky mood. Then, too, he felt crowded by all the gays on the scene, for, besides Sondheim and Laurents, the director, John Dexter, was gay, and Dexter’s assistant, Wakefield Poole, was gay. And the doctor called in to cure the show’s ailments in Boston, our old friend Herbert Ross, was gay-friendly. Rodgers definitely was not, though he had collaborated for over twenty years with Lorenz Hart, not only gay but of that mischievous and ironic spirit that we nowadays recognize as the gay style in art.

At least
Waltz
would enjoy a unique look. Beni Montresor (yet another gay artist) designed shimmering backdrops depicting views of Venice, with mobile pieces—bridges, the pensione furnishings—in front of them and lighting creating cinematic “dissolves.” The plan was to capture the beauty of the city by suggestion, anticipating techniques Julie Taymor uses to create reality through unreal devices. Further, there was to be no dancing, in order to emphasize the dramatic core of the story. There was a chorus, but it was used as little more than the equivalent of LEGO mini-figs or Hollywood extras: window dressing.

Thus,
The Time of the Cuckoo
would not be musical-comedyized, as other plays were, in the manner of
Hello, Dolly!
(1964),
Mame
(1966), and
Cabaret
(1966). Instead, the original text would be deepened with the addition of songs but not inflated with production numbers. It was actually a somewhat daring notion, likely to frustrate a public now used to splashy play-into-musical adaptations. Why is there a chorus if not to sing? And if the principals don’t dance, isn’t
somebody
going to?

As well, there was Problem Number Three, the director. John Dexter, an Englishman, was a very difficult man, intense and bitter. He was also not a seasoned director of musicals. Dexter forged his career largely in the progressive social drama that seized the British stage from Noël Coward and Terence Rattigan. You know … fluff. True, Dexter directed Peter Shaffer’s
Black Comedy
. (The “black” denotes not the macabre but a lighting stunt: the electricity goes off and the characters fumble about in the darkness, though the audience sees everything in blinding light.) Incredibly, Dexter directed also the most old-fashioned of English musicals, the light-as-lace
Half a Sixpence
, just a year before he did
Waltz
. (Dexter and his crew staged the London
Sixpence
only; the New York production was completely repurposed by others.) Later, as Director of Production at the Metropolitan Opera, Dexter was to revolutionize the house presentational style, emphasizing modest optics but genuine acting from the singers. So Dexter must have had sound instincts in music theatre. Yet on
Waltz
he seemed unable to deal with the form and heedless of its effect on the company.

Then, too, Dexter can’t have been glad when Herbert Ross came in during the Boston tryout, in effect to bring
Waltz
more in line with audience expectations for a sixties musical. One of Ross’ best improvements invigorated the title number, the heroine’s exuberant celebration of her love—requited love—for the Venetian. At first alone on stage, she was gradually joined by more and more of the locals—two young girls, carabinieri in their very colorful uniforms topped by plumed headgear, a sailor, a nun, a balloon seller. Rodgers of course cast the music as a waltz, a form he was particularly adept in, and the irresistible three-quarter time captivated everyone on stage. Allen began to move to the beat, then the sailor and one of the girls danced separately on either side of Allen. Two Alpine tourists appeared, to take turns sweeping along the floor with Allen as now, suddenly, the whole place—the city, the world—began dancing to share Allen’s joy. It was a moment basic to the musical since the 1920s, portraying the thrill of loving and being loved back. The number became a high point, and it was at this time, apparently, that Dexter stopped coming to rehearsals almost as a rule.

So perhaps what hurt
Waltz
—the show opened on March 18, 1965, to play for 220 performances in an atmosphere of disappointment from which it has never recovered—was its conception as a drama punctuated by song, modest and limited. The play would be the thing—but
The Time of the Cuckoo
isn’t all that interesting in itself. Shirley Booth made it compelling. Without that performance, or something comparable, the piece seemed flat.

Rodgers didn’t get a hit tune out of it, but he and Sondheim wote a solid story score, tuneful and clever. Carol Bruce, as the worldly Signora Fioria, had an amusing turn in “This Week Americans,” excoriating the other nationalities she had to host; near the show’s end, a reprise, “Last Week Americans,” now welcomed the British. Bruce took part also in a trio, “Moon In My Window,” as she, the young American wife, and Leona each took a chorus of a beguiling melody, the lyrics changing to reflect three different views of love.

Sondheim buffs especially admire the Second Couple’s ironic “We’re Gonna Be All Right,” as Stuart Damon and Julienne Marie anticipated
Company
’s fears of the difficulties of marriage. As originally written, the song included one strophe with commentary so scathing that, after first appreciating its break-the-rules honesty, Rodgers later became enraged at it. Sondheim told me that, at dinner at the Chambord restaurant, Rodgers rolled up the lyric sheet and repeatedly banged it on the table in scorn—possibly because Mrs. Rodgers had detected in it a summation of her less than Happily Ever After with Dick. Sondheim had to rewrite that verse, though revivals reinstate the original.

With Franchi’s smashing tenor at their disposal, Rodgers and Sondheim dreamed up an exhibition piece for him, “Bargaining,” in which he gives Allen a lesson in shopping for the best price—not simply haggling but winning a contest of wills. The song was a “duet for one,” Franchi voicing the seller in his natural tones and then the buyer in a pinging falsetto, switching back and forth with flashy dexterity till he capped the number with a gigantic high A flat.