Every year, they do a one-night-only musical up at the Hollywood Bowl. Big stars. Minimal sets. And minimal rehearsal. I'm not at all sure how I feel about stripped-down, hastily-prepped musicals. On the one hand, you do get to see shows that might otherwise never be performed, and you get to see all-star casts that could never be assembled for a long run. On the other hand, you often feel like you're watching the first preview of a show that will get even better with more performances…only there aren't going to be enough (or even any more) performances. Last year, they did My Fair Lady with John Lithgow as Henry Higgins. As I wrote here, the only thing that was missing was that the show needed to be done for more than the one night. Performers grow into a role and a company learns to work together and to enrich one anothers' performances. This is why shows have outta-town tryouts and preview performances.
Last evening, the Bowl offered this year's underprepared musical…Mame, with Michele Lee in the title role. Supporting her were Christine Ebersole (as Vera Charles, the role Bea Arthur made famous), John Schneider, Allyce Beasley, Fred Willard, Cliff Bemis, Edie McClurg, Alan Thicke and a lot of other very talented folks, all backed by the wonderful Hollywood Bowl orchestra. A number of things went wrong. As I mentioned when I was there a month ago, there's a new, very expensive and visually-impressive bandshell adorning the Hollywood Bowl. Looks great but the acoustics in the place are not (yet) as wonderful as they used to be. A friend who arranges for the orchestra there told me that the crew may not have mastered the intricacies of the new configuration and that work needs to be done on the sound system. I'll say. Last night, a number of body microphones didn't seem to be functioning properly, either.
And of course, there were missed cues and flubbed lines. At one point, the actor playing Mame's houseboy announced a phone call and then the phone rang. It was one of those moments when the actors on stage have to just stand there and, like the audience, laugh at the obvious mistake. Fred Willard then got the biggest laugh of the night by saying, "Let me talk on that amazing phone."
But the main thing that went wrong for me, I guess, was that I don't think much of Mame, period. The tunes by Jerry Herman are great (Mr. Herman was there and came out at the end for a huge, loving ovation) but the book, with which I was not familiar, struck me as extremely uninteresting. The life of the free-spirited Mame Dennis was fun and logically illogical in the play, Auntie Mame. Chopped down to accommodate songs, it seemed full of arbitrary twists and turns. She gets married abruptly, then abruptly widowed, then she has an abrupt falling-out with her nephew, and so on. There was a real feeling of "Let's get all this pointless plot stuff over so we can get to the next great song." I'm sure this would not be the case — or as much the case — if the cast had a few more weeks or even days of rehearsal…but last night, the weaknesses in the book showed and really dragged things down. Some of that may have been the audio problems. Carolyn and I didn't have bad seats but we still missed a lot of dialogue that might have made things go smoother. (Yet another problem: The Bowl stage was just too big for this show. A lot of folks had to run to make their entrances.)
Michele Lee is a wonderful actress and I thought she was very well cast as the flamboyant aunt. She seemed to be having a little vocal problem in Act One but rebounded nicely in Act Two. As she and Christine Ebersole were almost nailing "Bosom Buddies," I found myself thinking, "Gee, I'd like to see what she'd do in a real, fully-rehearsed production of this," and then I caught myself and thought, "No, I'd like to see her in a better show than this." I would also love to see Allyce Beasley in just about anything. Perhaps because her role of Agnes Gooch called for her to be unpolished and clumsy, she fared better than anyone and stole the proceedings.
In the end, it brings me back to that conundrum: Is a flawed, could-be-better performance by a great cast better than no performance at all? At times, the show is so wonderful that the answer is a resounding yes. I don't think I feel that way about Mame.