Went last night to Opening Night for The World Goes 'Round, the newest musical presentation of the Reprise group. They revive old musicals for very short-but-sweet runs in the Freud Theater up at U.C.L.A. This production is there through September 16 and it stars Dawnn Lewis, Larry Cedar, Kelley Dorney, Michael Starr and my friend of more years than she's likely to admit, Valerie Perri. It was directed by Richard Israel and has musical direction by Gerald Sternbach.
Here's the plot of The World Goes 'Round: Five talented people come out and sing various songs that were written by Fred Ebb and John Kander. That's it. The songs are selected from various shows by that team (Cabaret, Chicago, Kiss of the Spider-Woman, et al) and other projects for which they wrote songs. There is no storyline; just lots of good singing of good tunes accompanied by a good orchestra. It starts with "And The World Goes 'Round" and closes with "New York, New York," both of which were written for the movie, New York, New York.
If that sounds like a fun evening to you and you're within commuting distance of U.C.L.A., you should go see it because they really do a fine job of it. All the performances are strong and they cast singers who know how to "sell" the lyrics and wring everything out of them. We tend to forget — or at least, I tend to forget — how perfect some of Mr. Ebb's words were.
The World Goes 'Round was not, by the way, a Broadway show. It opened Off-Broadway in March of 1991 where it was called And the World Goes 'Round. It stayed there for 408 performances, then dropped a word, went on tour and became one of those shows that every group that stages musicals does eventually. It's a good show but just as important for some, it's a budget-balancing show.
It has a cast of five (and it's been done with less), almost nothing in the way of sets, props or costumes and you can do it with a small orchestra if need be. When your company goes seriously in the red staging Ragtime or South Pacific or any costly-to-do show, you bring in one of these to make back the dough you lost on the previous show or expect to lose on the next one. Nothing wrong with that, especially when the less expensive show wows an audience like this one did last night. Coming up next at Reprise is Grand Hotel, which requires a lot of people on stage, two of which (they just announced) will be Hal Linden and Sharon Lawrence.
Before that, there are thirteen more performances of The World Goes 'Round. If you'd like to catch one of them — and I recommend you do — here's the link you need to get tix.