Thank you, Mr. Prince, for The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, New Girl in Town, West Side Story, Fiorello!, Tenderloin, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, She Loves Me, Fiddler on the Roof, Baker Street, Flora the Red Menace, It's a Bird…It's a Plane…It's Superman, Cabaret, Zorba, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Candide, Pacific Overtures, Side by Side by Sondheim, On the Twentieth Century, Sweeney Todd, Evita, Merrily We Roll Along, The Phantom of the Opera, Kiss of the Spider Woman and all the rest, including the flops. They'd be dimming the lights on Broadway if you'd only been involved in any three of them.
In timely fashion, here comes Randy Rainbow — and if you don't know the song he's parodying, it's "The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues" from Follies, words and music by Stephen Sondheim. You can watch Mandy Patinkin singing it at a concert here.
I'd never seen the 1970 Broadway musical about how four of Minnie Marx's five sons turned into Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo. The show Minnie's Boys opened March 26 of that year after an unusually-long string of previews — 64. Every so often, a new musical tries to open in New York without going outta-town first for tryouts. That means that New York audiences see the actors trying to perfect their performances plus all the stuff that the creative team decides must be tossed out or rewritten.
While Minnie's Boys was doing serious repair work, word got around and I recall reading an article at the time that said that much of the audience was going to see it not because they'd heard it was good but just the opposite. As I mentioned here, a lot of theater fans love it when a show flops and they can savor the pain of its creators and backers. Once it finally did have an opening night, it ran ten weeks and that was that.
Shelley Winters played Minnie and, according to all reports, lacked (1) the ability to sing, (2) the ability to remember lines, (3) the ability to deliver them in any tone but serious angst and (4) the sense and heroism to get out of a show she couldn't handle.
The producers wanted to fire her and bring in comedienne Totie Fields, who just might have had the star power to make the thing work, but Groucho (then 79 years of age) was insistent about how his mother would be depicted and for him, it was either Shelley W. or nobody. Also, it was rumored Ms. Winters announced that if she was ousted, she would sue the show into oblivion and also go on Johnny Carson's and others to denounce the whole project as the utterest of crap. So it was Shelley W. who stayed in it and is usually blamed for the failure, along with Groucho's stubborn refusal to allow her to be replaced.
After seeing a production of it last Sunday evening, I would like to suggest some blame is due to the script, which was by Arthur Marx and Bob Fisher and heavily rewritten on the fly during previews. A number of writers took a crack at fixing it and I dunno if they did too much or not enough but it was one of those. Ms. Winters is gone but the unimpressive book remains.
The production I saw was a one-shot staged reading in Glendale by the Musical Theater Guild, a prestigious organization which often takes on impossible challenges like this and usually succeeds. I really liked Susan Edwards Martin as Minnie and Matthew Patrick Davis, who played the man who would be Groucho. He did a fine job mimicking Groucho's famous delivery. His big problem was that Mr. Davis is 6'8" so even when he stooped over to do the famous Groucho walk, he was still taller than Harpo or Chico. Best of all was the score, which has many delights. It was by composer Larry Grossman (who was there for the performance and the limited rehearsals) and lyricist Hal Hackady.
The Broadway World website has posted two reviews of the one performance. This one I think overpraises it a bit and this one underpraises it a bit.
I admired the effort that the cast and their enablers put into it and there was a certain joy emanating from the stage that made me more forgiving of weaknesses. It also helps to remember that this was never represented as a polished presentation. It was a staged reading that was blocked, rehearsed and presented in a measly twenty-five hours with the actors holding their scripts throughout. I suspect if you saw Laurence Olivier do Hamlet book-in-hand after only 25 hours, you might well think he was among the worst actors ever.
I'm skeptical that we will ever see a major theatrical revival of this show. They don't do that for non-Sondheim shows that close on Broadway in ten weeks. But it does get revived a lot in community and local theaters. I did not have a bad time — and believe me, I've had them at musicals that had a lot more budget, a lot more prep time and a much better script to begin with.
Broadway star Laura Osnes, who was in Bandstand there, stars in a series of concerts under the title "Broadway Princess Party," in which actresses sing all those songs about how rough you have it when you're royalty. Here she is singing "My Own Little Corner" from Cinderella, after which she is joined on stage by Corey Cott and Jeremy Jordan to perform Mr. Sondheim's song "Agony" from Into the Woods. You'll like this…
Just fixed a silly typo in the previous post and it wasn't even mine. I have a spell-checker that wants to turn Stephen Sondheim into Steven Spielberg. Which one was responsible for Sunday in the Park with Jaws?
In the past here, I've raved about productions out at the Cupcake Theater in North Hollywood — a little storefront establishment where the shows are low on budget and high on talent and ingenuity. A friend of mine used to call places like this "no frills theater" because you don't get expensive costuming or sets or a big orchestra or huge stars…but it still gets you there.
For several months there, they've been taking audiences Into the Woods and I wish I'd seen it earlier so my high recommendation might be of more use to some locals who read this blog. Alas, it closes next weekend…but it's really good. You could go to a big theater and pay a lot more for a seat and not see a production half as good as this one.
Into the Woods is not my favorite musical or even my favorite Sondheim musical. It's very long and the second act always feels to me like a disappointing sequel to the first act. In fact, I have a friend who loves the first act, hates the second and so goes to productions and leaves at intermission.
So what little I didn't enjoy last night was not the fault of the production. They really performed the heck out of the material…and I wish I could cite some of the actors by name but I can't. As they often do there, this staging is double-cast. They have two people playing each role and they take turns. So now as I look at my faux Playbill, I don't know which actress I saw paying the Witch, which actor I saw playing the Baker, etc. Whoever they were, they handled all those difficult Sondheim lyrics to perfection.
The fellow who runs the Cupcake, Michael Pettenato, is pretty clearly the main reason this place does such good work. He produced and directed Into the Woods and before the show, he welcomed everyone in the lobby and then made a pre-show speech on stage. Watching him scurry about everywhere managing everything, I am reminded of how the essence of theater is enthusiasm — enthusiasm for the project, enthusiasm for the work, enthusiasm for all the participants. He is a grand champion for the people who perform on that stage and for the ones off-stage who contribute, as well. It's a shame he can't be double-cast and cloned because every little theater needs someone like that.
Into the Woods runs through next weekend. They may still have tickets on their site and if you want to be cheap about this, you can sometimes find them discounted on Goldstar. But hurry. I've now been to five or six productions at the Cupcake and I've never seen an empty seat. There's a reason for that.
First, I have one more Thursday event to report on. After that comedy I didn't laugh at, Amber and I went to meet my longtime friend Christine Pedi for a late meal. Some of you may know Christine as a host of the Broadway channel on Sirius XM Radio. Some of you may know her as a frequent performer in Broadway shows, Broadway-style shows and her wonderful cabaret act. I have featured videos of her performing before here like her superb impression of Liza Minnelli…
And she does countless other things to warrant my admiration, including her uncanny mimicry. If she ever took up Groucho, she'd put Frank Ferrante out of business.
So that's Thursday. Friday morn, Amber and I got to the Comic-Con in time to catch the panel for MAD Magazine hosted by its soon-to-retire editor John Ficcara. Also on the dais and in the audience were many MAD contributors, past and present, including also-soon-to-retire art director Sam Viviano, former editor Nick Meglin, MAD's maddest writer Dick DeBartolo and the Energizer Bunny of Cartooning, Al Jaffee. Later, I had a very nice conversation with Meglin and with longtime MAD artist Angelo Torres.
It was a very funny panel, though I would imagine you might not feel that way if you felt the current President of the United States deserved even a smidgen of respect. I will write a long post shortly about the Changing of the Guard at MAD and the many eras that are ending.
Signed books. Talked with people. Had a helluva time finding a cab when we left. But Amber and I eventually made it over to Greenwich Village to meet up with Paul Levitz for an important ritual. Amber, you see, has never been to New York before so we had to introduce her to New York Pizza.
As I'm sure I've written here, I think New York Pizza is waaay overrated. There are some wonderful pizzerias in that city. There would have to be, given how many pizzerias there are. Even if only 2% of New York pizzerias made great pies, that would still be something like thirty great pizzerias — admittedly, more than you'll find in any other city.
But New Yorkers talk about their pizza like every last one made in the 212 area code is the work of angels and it ain't. The average New York Pizza is not John's or Joe's or Grimaldi's or Lombardi's or Totonno's or Paulie Gee's. The average New York Pizza is Sbarro's or Pizza Hut or Villa or Ray's. When someone from this town brags about the pizza here, they don't have Ray's in mind. Their claim of vast New York superiority is based on comparing the best anywhere in New York to the average somewhere else.
I hesitate to tell you where we took her in New York because it's impossible in this world to say any place has good pizza without someone else telling you, "Their pizza is crap! I'll tell you where to get real good pizza!" And then they name some place — usually geographically difficult to get to and not worth the effort — that they swear has the best pizza in the galaxy and you're a boob to deny it.
I don't want all that mail so I'll reveal our dining place in a link but first, you have to promise not to tell me — in person, on the phone, by e-mail or via any other form of communication — of the place you know that's so much friggin' better. By clicking on the following link, you agree you have so promised. Is it a deal? Fine. Here's the link. The pizza there was quite wonderful.
And so was the play Amber and I attended afterwards. Insert graphic here, Mark…
Sweeney Todd, which I've seen several times including once with Angela Lansbury and George Hearn, is usually performed on a big stage with a big cast and big sets. This new production is performed in a pie shop by eight actors.
Well, actually it's the Barrow Street Theater in Greenwich Village but for this occasion, it's been transformed into a pie shop — a working pie shop where a renowned chef actually makes meat pies — presumably not with human fillings — and you can dine on one if you pay extra and come early. We did not do this. We went for another kind of pie.
So you sit in this little pie shop that is small enough that the actors need no amplification. Quarters are cramped and so no latecomers can be seated…or if you absolutely have to leave, you're not allowed back in 'til after the intermission. The play takes place all around you. Depending on where you're seated, Sweeney himself may scream in your face and brandish a gleaming razor. If you're balding, the gent selling Pirelli's Miracle Elixir may apply a dab of it to your head. The actors sometimes walk and dance on the tables so watch where you put your fingers.
A friend arranged for us to get what are probably the best seats in the place so for much of the show, Amber and I were 2-4 feet from the performers. Sweeney tried to strangle one of the actors on our table. Another performer sat with us as she feasted on Mrs. Lovett's infamous, human-flavored meat pies. Some refer to all this as an "immersive" production. You're right in the middle of it.
Effective? Involving? Very much so. Like I said, I've seen Sweeney Todd several times. I don't think I ever understood the show so totally before. I don't think I ever heard every word of it with so much clarity.
Yeah, the nearness of it all can be a bit distracting. I have large feet and a new right knee that can't stay in one position for very long. I always have to keep moving it and there were moments there where I had to relocate my foot hastily so as not to leave it where an actor might stumble on it. One of the actors also tended to project a bit of moisture from his mouth as he projected his louder notes. But Amber and I both loved the whole experience. She had never seen the show in any other form and now wants to see it in all. In the cab on the way back to our hotel, she called up scenes from the Johnny Depp film version on her iPhone.
And hey, let's talk about those eight actors, most of whom play multiple roles. If you're familiar with the show, you might wonder how eight people can fill all those parts and even convey the sense of a crowd where the plot calls for a crowd to gather. They do. Just as you use your imagination to place scenes not in Mrs. Lovett's pie shop in other settings, you fill in for the lack of more bodies on the stage. A mob of four can feel like forty when you're totally immersed in this immersive production. A three-piece band (piano, violin and various woodwinds) can feel like a symphony orchestra.
Hugh Panaro plays Sweeney. Carolee Carmello, whom I've adored in several other shows, plays Mrs. Lovett. Both did fine jobs of making me forget others I've seen in those roles. There is no margin for error here. It's one thing to become a character seen from yards away. It's another to get every gesture, every facial expression perfect when viewed up close and personal. I never saw either of them as anything but the characters they were playing. And Ms. Carmello got every single laugh it was possible to get and only when appropriate…many of them laughs due to a subtle expression or eyebrow raise. Every performance there was perfectly scaled for the venue.
We often go to theater for the "take-home" part — the memories that will linger a long time after. I can still summon up certain moments from certain plays and musicals that have stayed with me for years, even decades later. I took home a lot from this presentation of Hugh Wheeler's book and Stephen Sondheim's songs. If you can get there, get there.
And see if you can get the seats we had, which were D-11 and D-12. You'll feel so much a part of the production, you'll think maybe you should have an Equity card to sit in them. And maybe you'll worry about the Demon Barber of Fleet Street coming by to give you a trim or a tracheotomy.
Here's a nice rendition of one of my favorite Sondheim songs. The singer is Greg Hildreth, who I don't know at all except that he works a lot on Broadway and is currently in the Broadway-bound stage version of Disney's Frozen. In fact, I think he plays Olaf. Good song here, good singer…
This runs 43 minutes but I'll bet some of you will watch the whole thing and enjoy it. It's a 1961 program about American musicals and the guest is Stephen Sondheim who at the time hadn't even composed the entire score yet for a produced Broadway show. He was "just" the lyricist for West Side Story and Gypsy. About 22 minutes in, Sondheim gets on the subject of what he didn't like about some of his work in West Side Story, which I find interesting…
I'm mentioning this because I doubt a lot of the press will give it the attention it deserves. Bob Holiday, who had the title role in the 1966 Broadway show It's a Bird…It's a Plane…It's Superman died this morning at his home in Hawley, PA. He was 84.
The show opened March 29, 1966 at the Alvin Theater in New York. It received what they call "mixed notices" and it closed there July 17, losing its entire capitalization. Usually, shows that have that short a run and are not by Sondheim are never seen again but productions of Superman are still done all the time. I attribute the many revivals to how much fun it sounds like it would be to do a musical about the character, not to the merits of this particular musical about Superman. In any case, Mr. Holiday was expertly cast. He had made a rep for himself in the musical Fiorello! and as anyone who has heard the cast album can attest, had a fine singing voice.
He subsequently played the Man of Steel in several touring companies and revivals but for the most part, transitioned out of show business and into building homes. Still, he remembered the show as a great time in his life and was always available for ceremonial appearances and interviews. His performance does not seem to exist on video anywhere but it will live on thanks to that cast album. And he will always be the first singing Superman.
Last night, I went to see a new production of Merrily We Roll Along at the Wallis Theater in Beverly Hills. It's there through December 18 and tickets are still available — though apparently not many since it's real good. Director Michael Arden has reconceived the show in a way, staging it on a unique set. There are areas like small backstage dressing rooms all around with mirrors ringed in light bulbs, and sometimes you see actors at them getting ready for their next entrance.
Also, as you may know, the show is about three Old Friends — played here expertly by Wayne Brady, Aaron Lazar and Donna Vivino. But they're also played by three younger actors who appear and reappear, dancing about like real-time flashbacks, a la the dream sequence in Oklahoma! or maybe the ghosts in Follies. It seemed to me like an effective way to underscore the conceit of Merrily, which is that we are watching key moments from the Old Friends' lives in reverse. I've seen this show several times but never a production with this much unity and grace as it rewinds three lives.
And yes, that's Wayne Brady from Let's Make a Deal and Whose Line Is It Anyway? playing Charlie the Lyricist. I would not have thought of him in the role as Charlie is usually played by someone weaker and more nebbishy than Mr. Brady but it worked fine, maybe even a little better that the traditional way. His partner Franklin seems less unlikeable, less like he's taking advantage of a partner who can't fight back.
(Brady inserts a few moments of mime and improvisation that were not in the book by George Furth. They're funny but reviewers seem to think they're out of character. I'm not sure. Maybe they change the character for the better, just as the casting of someone who seems less a victim does.)
Merrily We Roll Along is, of course, one of those Sondheim musicals that didn't work on Broadway — it lasted 16 performances — but which lives on in production after production, each trying to find a way to finesse its inherent structural problems. This version did that for me. I stayed with it, fully engrossed, in a way that I don't think I did in previous versions I've seen.
It's not a happy story. It's about the failure of idealism — three starry-eyed kids who envision doing great things with their careers and though they achieve some of what most would call success, wind up unfulfilled and unhappy. Because the story is told in reverse, we see the unfulfillment and unhappiness at the beginning and the youthful idealism at the end, which makes the idealism seem sappy and naive.
But along the way, you also see things happen which change the context and explanation for events and clashes you've already seen and with that comes a kind of understanding of how deeds and decisions have consequences — an effect-and-cause relationship. If that's what the playwrights intended when they said "Let's tell the story backwards," this production achieved it. I really liked it. It also helped that the cast is so strong and that they sing Mr. Sondheim's lyrics with expert clarity, which not every singer of Sondheim can manage.
Like I said, some seats are still available. Goldstar has some of the cheaper seats but I doubt they have many. And if you've never been to the Wallis, it's not only one of the newest theaters in town, it's also one of the nicest. I guess you'd call this a real good review.
A forthcoming revival of the musical Company will, with the okay of Mr. Sondheim, do a gender reversal. The lead character, Bobby — an unattached man, will become an unattached woman named Bobbie. The song "Have I Got a Girl For You" will become "Have I Got a Guy For You," the female flight attendant will become a male fight attendant, etc.
Not that anybody cares what I think of this…but I don't know what I think of it. I usually see these kinds of things as stunts, not performances. The female version of The Odd Couple just plain didn't coalesce for me, for instance. Then again, Company is a play that always struck me as gender-confused in many ways…so maybe this will straighten things out. The show will be mounted in London so I probably won't see it but I'm curious about how it will work. That is, if it works at all.
Not long after the Iran-Contra hearings, the great comedy writer Larry Gelbart decided to try and see if he could top that absurdity and the use therein of the English language to deceive. He wrote Mastergate, a play that had a brief Broadway run of 69 performances but which has lived on via regional productions. There was also a radio drama version that starred Walter Matthau, Ed Asner, Harold Gould, Hector Elizondo and Charles Durning, plus there was a 1992 Showtime TV-Movie version which also had a helluva cast.
It presents to us the television news coverage of a series of Congressional hearings. On the spot is a soldier named Major Manley Battle who, not unlike Oliver North, arranges for some U.S. weapons to go someplace they weren't supposed to go — in this case to guerilla forces in Central America, ostensibly to use in filming a war movie.
But it's not just a parody of what went on with Iran-Contra but also of Watergate and the Joe McCarthy inquisition and every time our legislators sit before TV cameras pretending to seek some important truth from witnesses who do their best to reply without actually saying anything. Indeed, it even parodies hearings that have occurred since Gelbart wrote it. As the L.A. Times noted when the Showtime version was released…
"I feel that these kinds of situations are going to be with us forever with government, the military and business being as big as they are," said Gelbart, whose long list of credits includes creator of TV's M*A*S*H and Tony-winning writer of City of Angels. "But first and foremost, Mastergate is a play about the language. It's not for me to discover that politicians are corrupt or full of hot air. It's really about what they and television have done to the way we speak and the way we listen."
The dialogue is amazing…and difficult. Broadway singers have been known to say that the lyrics of Stephen Sondheim are wonderful but very, very challenging for the performer who has to perform them. The speeches, many of them lengthy that Gelbart wrote for Mastergate present the same challenge.
Wanna see it? Well, you can. Today, the video of the 1992 video version becomes available again. My buddy David Jablin who produced it has arranged for it to viewable for a small fee on Vimeo's On Demand service.
As I mentioned, it has an incredible cast that includes James Coburn, Robert Guillaume, Dennis Weaver, Bruno Kirby, Ed Begley Jr., Marcia Strassman, Darren McGavin, Henry Jones, Pat Morita, Tim Reid, Buck Henry, Jerry Ohrbach, Richard Kiley, David Ogden Stiers, Paul Winfield, Ken Howard and Ben Stein. Here's a preview that will make you want to see the whole thing…
You can view it on this page for $1.99 for a one-week streaming period or $9.95 for unlimited streaming. All proceeds go to Norman Lear's People For The American Way Foundation in memory of Larry Gelbart, who was a big supporter. It's 90 minutes of pure Gelbart wit.
