ALPHABET SOUP (7) – BONUS!! FEATURING A RANDOM LETTER OF THE ALPHABET AND SOME SHOWS THAT BEGIN WITH THAT LETTER

ALPHABET SOUP (7) – BONUS!!

FEATURING A RANDOM LETTER OF THE ALPHABET AND SOME SHOWS THAT BEGIN WITH THAT LETTER

F

Usually I chat about five shows when I write an Alphabet Soup post, but, if I'd done that last week, the blog post would have been too long. Instead, I decided to do a bonus Alphabet Soup featuring only the fifth show I'd originally chosen, the wonderfully funny and tuneful A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. I'm a big fan of the show and, coincidentally, Bob will be directing a production of it at Citadel Theatre this April. So will it be "tragedy tomorrow" or "comedy tonight" for these four productions? Let's find out.

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM 

 – McVickers Theatre, Chicago

February, 1972. Stephen Sondheim's debut as both composer and lyricist remains, nearly fifty-four years after its debut, his most enduring commercial success and arguably his most accessible score, full of jaunty melody and sassy, clever lyrics. It is considered by many to be a comic musical masterpiece with an hysterically funny book and a fully integrated score. Written with master comedian Phil Silvers in mind, he turned it down because he didn't like the book. Second choice Milton Berle (!!) also passed before Zero Mostel accepted the role and created one of his iconic roles. Ten years after its first appearance in New York, lead producer and co-star Larry Blyden, brought a slightly revised version starring Phil Silvers to New York, in the role that was written originally for him, via a tryout run in Los Angeles and Chicago. Along with Silvers and Blyden, this production featured a veritable who's who in the theatre, veterans and promising newcomers alike: Tony-winner Peg Murray, Lew Parker, Carl Ballantine, Reginald Owen, Pamela Hall, and John Hansen. Seated in the far upper reaches of the McVickers' balcony, I laughed a lot watching the antics onstage and marveling at the skill and timing of this cast of zanies. Phil Silvers gave Pseudolus an almost off-handed, casual approach, which somehow made the comedy even sharper and funnier. Larry Blyden was suitably frantic as Hysterium. For eye-candy to please a young, gay man, talented John Hansen more than fit the bill. Philia's wonderful song "That'll Show Him" was replaced in this version by a new, definitely inferior song, called "Echo Song," which just sat there, flat and boring. Except for that musical oops, it was fun, it was well-produced, it was a delight. – at the McVickers Theatre, Chicago.

Sidebar: This production of Forum won Tony Awards for both Phil Silvers and Larry Blyden. Interestingly, the role of Pseudolus has won Tonys for each of its Broadway originators: Zero Mostel (original 1962 production), Phil Silvers (1972 revival), and Nathan Lane (1996 revival). While ecstatically received by the critics, the revival apparently did absolutely no business and it closed at a loss after a brief run of 156 performances.

– St. James Theatre, New York

April, 1997. The St. James marquee only had two words on it: "Whoopi" and "Forum." And truly, that was all you needed to know. What Whoopi Goldberg did with this 1962 musical was nothing short of miraculous. Oh, it was still a silly, jolly romp, but with her Pseudolus leading the way, she offered us a less antic, but funnier and more fun show and gave it a new vibrant life. The men who played Pseudolus to Tony-winning success were all noted as scene-stealing, old-school comic actors. Whoopi's humor is more nuanced, hipper, and more audience-centric. You see, we in the St. James audience got the impression that Whoopi liked nothing better than to get cozy with her audience, which made the performance  seem like an afternoon with a good friend. Let me hasten to say, though, this wasn't Whoopi Goldberg just being Whoopi Goldberg. She played the part of Pseudolus and she played it well, while bringing her own inimitable touches to it. She'll never win any awards for her singing, but it worked. And her miming of the images on an erotic vase had me laughing so hard, tears were rolling down my face. Whoopi wasn't alone on the stage, though. Broadway vets Ross Lehman, Dick Latessa, Ernie Sabella and especially master scenery-chewer Mary Testa all contributed solidly to the merriment. This production axed the dreary "Echo Song" and thankfully restored "That'll Show Him," but curiously cut "Pretty Little Picture," which is not only important to the story, but is also a great tune. Maybe the producers wanted to shave some time, but cutting a three-minute song really doesn't accomplish anything. Whoopi. Forum. What a memorable combination. – at the St. James Theatre, New York.

– Canon Theatre, Toronto

January, 2011. A huge hit at the Stratford Festival in 2009, Canadian producer David Mirvish, think the David Merrick of Canada, but nicer, and head of Mirvish Productions, brought Stratford's production to downtown Toronto's Canon Theatre (now the Ed Mirvish Theatre) for a limited run over the Christmas-New Year's holidays in 2010-2011. The leading role of Pseudolus was double-cast with two Canadian comic favorites, Sean Cullen and Bruce Dow. We saw Mr. Dow. The better reviewed of the two, Dow gave a thoroughly enjoyable performance as Pseudolus, but the production as a whole, seemed a bit flat and tired. Too often the folks onstage just seemed to be pushing too hard and things that may have worked in the smaller Stratford venue, didn't in the larger Canon. Nobody in the cast was terrible, but, then, except for Dow and a very nice turn by Steven Sutcliffe as Hysterium, nobody stood out either. What really, really didn't work were the anachronisms that I'm sure director Des McAnuff thought were hysterical, but just weren't. For example, Philia using a roll-aboard suitcase while heading off to the harbor. Nope. Stood out like a sore thumb. The audience at the Canon, though they seemed to enjoy it, was relatively quiet. Professional, but subdued and a bit of a disappointment. – at the Canon Theatre, Toronto

Sidebar: Toronto is a terrific theatre town and I've seen some great theatre there. This quick trip, however, wasn't terribly successful, theatrically speaking. The day prior to Forum, we went to a highly-anticipated (for us) production of Parade and so hated it, we left at the interval. Forum, on the next day, sadly didn't live up to expectations. But, all that aside, we had a great time in that fabulous city eating at some tasty local restaurants and doing some touristy stuff. Fun casting factoids: Steven Sutcliffe (Hysterium) was the original Younger Brother in Ragtime and Chilina Kennedy (Philia) is currently playing Carole King in Beautiful in New York.

– Stage 773, Chicago

The odd graphic design. Uh..the show's about Pseudolus, folks. It's not about Philia in a contemporary red dress. Design miss.

May, 2015. Porchlight Theatre's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was a mixed bag indeed. Both Bill Larkin's Pseudolus and Matt Crowle's Hysterium got off to slow, somewhat unfocused starts, but got increasingly better, and funnier, as the show progressed. Best scenery-chewing went to Caron Buinis' wonderfully over-the-top Domina. The orchestra sounded great and, scenically, the show looked good. But then, we had those pretty terrible costumes, juvenile leads that were insipid rather than innocent, lackluster choreography, pedestrian direction, an Erronius who was bewilderingly channeling Leslie Jordan (why did he have a southern accent?), a Lycus who was neither gay enough nor sleazy enough and who wore an ugly white caftan that took me back to the fashion-challenged 70s, Courtesans who weren't sexy, and, really, was it absolutely necessary for us to see our 18-year-old Hero, his actual age, drop towel at the top of Act Two and show us his bare ass? Worst of all was the fact that the guaranteed show-stopping Everybody Ought to Have a Maid didn't stop anything. It was just dull. The Chicago critics fainted over it, as they tend to do over anything the revered and seemingly critic-proof Porchlight produces. I liked parts of it, hated parts of it, was indifferent to most of it, and overall thought it missed the mark. – at Stage 773, Chicago.

And that's it for a while. Off to Puerto Rico for a month. See you in March!

© 2016 Jeffrey Geddes

ALPHABET SOUP (7) - FEATURING A RANDOM LETTER OF THE ALPHABET AND SOME SHOWS THAT BEGIN WITH THAT LETTER

ALPHABET SOUP (7) -

FEATURING A RANDOM LETTER OF THE ALPHABET AND SOME SHOWS THAT BEGIN WITH THAT LETTER

Happy 2016! For the first post of the new year, I thought I'd go to my blue London coffee mug and pick a letter and select the first few shows from that letter's pile of programs.

To kick off the new year, today's letter is ….

F

Here's some of what "F" has to offer… two all-but-forgotten plays and and two pre-Broadway tryouts. Let's begin.

FINISHING TOUCHES – Studebaker Theatre, Chicago

Way back then, it was no problem scurrying up to the upper reaches of the top balcony.

March, 1974. Jean Kerr was an Erma Bombeck-like essayist (or was Erma Bombeck a Jean Kerr-like essayist?) whose essays and books about her family and suburban life were like Bombeck's, but infused with a homey, but knowing, sophistication. Her most famous book, Please Don't Eat the Daisies, was adapted for the dated, but still very funny film of the same name starring Doris Day and David Niven. She was the wife of renowned theatre critic, Walter Kerr. As a playwright, her biggest hit was Mary, Mary which ran for over 1500 performances and for quite a while was the longest-running non-musical Broadway production. In Jean Kerr's world, nothing terribly heavy or serious happens. Oh, heavy and serious things threaten to occur, more or less, but with a few well-placed gags, those heavy and serious things disappear in audience laughter. A devout Catholic, she pretty-much toed the Church line, which makes her plays today play as dated, even a bit unbelievably naïve, period pieces. It's sort of like watching early Neil Simon. You still laugh, but perhaps not as often as you did when the work was new. In Finishing Touches, Kerr takes us to the well-designed home (courtesy of Ben Edwards) of the Cooper family. Mr. Cooper is a college professor suffering from a case of mid-life crises and student infatuation. Mrs. Cooper, his faithful and stalwart wife, in a bit of retaliation, dallies with the idea of having an affair with their handsome neighbor. The eldest son, a college senior, brings home his actress girlfriend and, the parents, not pleased that he's, gasp, slept with the lass, forbid that sort of activity in their house. No affairs happen, of course, because in a Jean Kerr play that sort of thing just isn't done, and everything ends happily and the audience leaves feeling satisfied. Directed by Joseph Anthony and featuring several of the original Broadway cast, I laughed a lot and was charmed by the performances given by celebrated stage/film/television actress Barbara Bel Geddes (in a body of work that included an Academy Award nomination and creating the role of Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, she is, somewhat perversely, best-known for her Emmy-winning role as Miss Ellie in the television soap, Dallas), Robert ("Twelve O'Clock High") Lansing, Gene Rupert and the wonderful Jill O'Hara. Never a smash hit, and perhaps too wholesome for 1973 New York audiences, the show did much better on the road. I liked it; I can't see anyone doing it today. – at the Studebaker Theatre, Chicago

From the Six Degrees of Separation Department: Gene Rupert appeared in the New York company of Promises, Promises with Jenny O'Hara, Jill's older sister. Jill O'Hara created the role that her sister played opposite Rupert, introduced "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" to the world, and won a Tony nomination in the process. I saw Jill in PP at the Muny in St. Louis and a year or so earlier had seen Rupert as Cliff Bradshaw in the national tour of Cabaret at Chicago's Shubert.  Want more? Janis Paige was Doris Day's nemesis in the film Please Don't Eat the Daisies. Janis Paige created the role of Babe Williams in The Pajama Game on Broadway. Doris Day played the role in the film. I'm not making this stuff up.

FATHER'S DAY – Ivanhoe Theatre, Chicago

November, 1973. I don't know what motivated producer George Keathley to mount a production of Oliver Hailey's 1971 one-performance Broadway flop, Father's Day, at the Ivanhoe, and I'm sure by the time the endeavor was over, he was wondering that exact thing. I know what motivated me…the opportunity to see Chita Rivera for the first time. Mind you, this is 1973 Chita Rivera, already a bankable star, but not yet the iconic legend she is today. In fact, her program bio states, "Miss Rivera looks forward to the new musical Chicago being written especially for her and co-star Gwen Verdon…," a show that would premiere some 18 months later. Broadway flop or not, Time magazine's T.E. Kalem, usually an astute critic, chose it as one of the year's ten best plays. Here's the thing, though. I remember nothing about this play. Zero. Nada. Zip. And for a production, that's not good because it means it was neither good enough nor awful enough to register in the memory bank. William Leonard's review in the Chicago Tribune implied that it was predictable and messy. And despite Mr. Leonard's claim re: directorship of the play, the program doesn't list a director. Anywhere. Not on the credits page, not in the bios. You know the thing didn't direct itself, but when a director doesn't want it known that he/she was responsible for the goings-on onstage, well, that implies it was indeed a very rough haul to opening night. According to Chita Rivera's webpage, she considered Father's Day an "exquisite experience in the theater" and based on the success (??) of the Ivanhoe engagement, was produced to better reviews and a longer run off-Broadway in 1979. I'll take your word for it, Chita. Lest it be thought that Mr. Hailey was a hack, he achieved great success as a writer for television and wrote for several leading series of the day. He just couldn't crack the playwriting code and all three of his Broadway tries were one-performance wonders. Samuel French holds the rights, if anyone's interested. – at the Ivanhoe Theatre, Chicago

FOUR ON A GARDEN – Palace Theatre, Milwaukee

I love it when I find intact old-school tickets.

My first visit to 1776 was in Milwaukee and Uihlein Hall. Hair was coming to the Palace and Gloria Swanson was ready for her closeup in the innocuous Butterflies Are Free, a wildly popular show back then.

An undated picture of the Palace's interior. I suspect this was taken during the theatre's heyday as a movie palace. I don't remember it being this grand.

The original poster co-starring Barry Nelson. The design tells you nothing about the show, but implies Channing will be playing an older Lorelei Lee.

December, 1970. Well, shades of Plaza Suite, but, instead of taking place in a hotel suite, the (in)action of the Broadway-bound Abe Burrows' adaptation of a work by French théâtre de boulevard masters Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy (Cactus Flower, Forty Carats) took place in a garden apartment in Manhattan. And it was Four on a Garden in name only. Somewhere along the way from New Haven, where the tryout started, to Milwaukee's Palace Theatre, one of the playlets got dropped, presumably for rewrites and other such tryout-y things, and the title really should have been Three on a Garden. The missing playlet would be restored in time for its New York opening a few weeks after the Milwaukee run. Four, three, it didn't really matter. The show was a dog. And this was a play that had Oliver Smith and Martin Aronstein and William McHone on the design team, Abe Burrows as the director, David Merrick as the producer and Carol Channing and Sid Caesar as its stars. How could this go wrong? Well, for starters, the play just wasn't funny. Oh, there were funny, very funny, bits and bobs throughout the evening, but anything remotely humorous was due to the comedic skills of Channing and Caesar, who both could wring a laugh out of a stone. The two stars both worked their asses off and used every trick in their considerable arsenals to breathe some life into the proceedings and we loved them for it, but it was like beating the proverbial dead horse. No amount of comic genius or star presence could save this despite the skill and professionalism of the folks involved. It looked great and was directed with a crisp pace, but it was a lost cause. Broadway vet George S. Irving was in the cast, though I can't remember him. Also, a young Tom Lee Jones (now known as Oscar-winner Tommy Lee Jones) who back then was very hot. I do remember him. The Milwaukee critics loved Channing and Caesar, hated the play. I pretty much felt the same way. – at the Palace Theatre, Milwaukee

Meanderings and related Garden thoughts:

 o The Palace Theatre was demolished in 1974 to make way for a hotel.

 o Carol Channing is one of those performers who more or less owes their entire career to a signature role. In Channing's case, it was two signature roles: Lorelei Lee and Dolly Levi. Four on a Garden was only Channing's second non-musical role on Broadway, the first was a forgotten flop long before Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. After the quick closing of Garden, Channing went back to more familiar, and safer, fare, reprising Lorelei Lee in a "new" version of Blondes called Lorelei (it was entertaining, but not terribly good and Channing was far too old to be playing the role) and bringing Dolly! back to Broadway in two revivals. But just because she built her career on two roles, it would be foolish to underestimate Channing's talents. She's justly acclaimed for her razor-sharp timing, her inimitable voice that can go from basso profondo to squeaky soprano in two seconds flat, and for her dead-on impressions. She could read the phone book and have you weak from laughter. (And before anyone starts on about her role in Thoroughly Modern Millie, her performance was a mix of Lorelei Lee and Dolly Levi. I felt she was wrong for the part and the Academy Award nomination was her consolation prize for the loss of the film of Hello, Dolly! to the woefully miscast Barbra Streisand.) Carol Channing is old-school pro and she's earned her legendary status.

o Four on the Garden started off in New Haven with Barry Nelson as the male lead. By the time the show reached Pittsburgh, one week before the Milwaukee engagement, he was out of the show, either by choice or by request, and replaced by Sid Caesar.

o Four on the Garden arrived in New York immediately following Milwaukee's run. It played a very long preview period, opened to terrible reviews and closed after a short, unprofitable run. I tried reading the play a few years ago and couldn't get through it.

FIRST WIVES CLUB – Oriental Theatre, Chicago

The oddly-designed marquee.

An audience survey form which I diplomatically did not fill out.

See what I mean? What is with this design? This inattention to detail was, sadly, present throughout the production.

February, 2015. On its second pre-Broadway shakedown, "First Wives Club" was definitely not ready for Broadway and needed to return to the musical hospital for some more surgery. Stat! The three talented leading ladies, Faith Prince, Carmen Cusack and Christine Sherrill, deserved a better book, a better director, and, most importantly, a better score. Loaded with either power ballads that all sound alike and ear-splittingly amplified or filler songs that were just not good, the show, remarkably, and in spite of itself, was entertaining and enjoyable. The book by Linda Bloodworth Thomason often reminded me of an episode of "Designing Women" and sometimes pushed too hard for a laugh. Sorry, Linda, no laugh track in the theatre. The choreography by David Connolly was not terribly inspired and was still being executed with some trepidation by the mostly extraneous ensemble. (Not their fault; there was just no real reason for them to be there.) The husbands were all professional and competent, but forgettable. Patrick Richwood as the gay BFF was cringe-worthy…all stereotype and offensive; the type of portrayal I thought died a long time ago. The first act was definitely better than the second. The second started off with an embarrassingly bad production number and things sort of lurched towards the finale from there. Missing and greatly missed was the movie's iconic finale of "You Don't Own Me." Final thoughts: For the most part, this was fun and one should never miss the opportunity to see Faith Prince chew some scenery. The modestly-sized audience seemed to enjoy it, though there was a fair share of interval departees. Is it Broadway material? No. Could it do well in regional and amateur theatre circles? Absolutely. - at the Oriental Theatre, Chicago

Sidebar: The show's logo/marquee confused me. One of the wives appeared to be African-American, yet the wives in Chicago were all very white and, with one exception, so was the rest of the cast. Odd design. However, on further research, I may have solved the mystery. The show had its first tryout in the summer of 2009 at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park and starred Barbara Walsh, Karen Ziemba and Sheryl Lee Ralph, hence the design with two Caucasian and one African-American first wives.  The male leads, such as they are in this show, included Brad Oscar, John Dossett and Sam Harris. The Chicago casting, while using talented folks indeed, was, with the exception of Prince, less "starry" than the San Diego cast. My question to the producers is this…you spent all this money mounting another production of a show that didn't get terribly good reviews the first time out, but you couldn't spend a few lousy bucks to redo the logo? Really?

Next week…a BONUS Alphabet Soup featuring "F"!!. See you soon!

© 2016 Jeffrey Geddes