LET'S START AT THE VERY BEGINNING – Episode 3

LET'S START AT THE VERY BEGINNING – Episode 3

(a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet Soup)

"Let's start at the very beginning/A very good place to start/When you read you begin with A-B-C…"

Today it's the "B" programs' turn:  a slight comedy about young love by Leonard Gershe; a Broadway financial miss about babies, parenthood, and life choices which enjoyed a six-month run in suburban Lincolnshire; a one-woman show starring the incomparable Julie Harris; a laugh-yourself-silly sex farce, two productions of the light-as-air musical that introduced Julie Andrews to Broadway; a monstrously entertaining musicalization of one of my favorite films. Bevvy ready? Let's begin.

BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE – Studebaker Theatre, Chicago

Got this at the theatre.

'

Kipp Osborne had replaced Wendell Burton by the time I saw the show in September.

September, 1970. A recent reread of the play revealed a slight play with broadly drawn characters that wasted every opportunity in the script to be meaningful, or at the very least, more than just sitcom shallow. In 1970, however, I had a completely different opinion. I had turned twenty two weeks earlier, had been to New York for the first time only six weeks earlier, and was still developing my critical faculties. I thought this play about a cute, very cute, blind boy who falls in love, or at least sleeps with, his "kooky" next-door neighbor, and his controlling mom from Scarsdale was funny and moving. Eve Arden, making her overdue entrance at the very end of Act One, played the controlling mom, and, well, she was pretty damn wonderful. Playing a basically unsympathetic character, she found the humor and humanity in Mrs. Baker and turned in a performance that pleased the opening night critics and certainly pleased her audience at the Studebaker. Kipp Osborne as the cute, very cute, blind boy was adorable, and I developed an instant crush. Hey! I was twenty! Cut me some slack! Ellen Endicott-Jones, as the "kooky" next-door neighbor, and Tom Fuccello, as a pretentious theatre director, rounded out the cast. I thought everything was charming. I suspect it would be painful to sit through today. – at the Studebaker Theatre, Chicago

Butterflies Tidbits: Butterflies Are Free played an impressive 1128 performances on Broadway, opening in October, 1969 and closing in July, 1972. It won a Tony Award for Blythe Danner as the next-door neighbor, and the film version would net Eileen Heckart, as Mrs. Baker, a Supporting Actress Oscar in 1973. For a time, the play was all the rage. Everyone did it, including Waukegan Community Players. Butterflies Are Free would occupy the Studebaker for fifteen weeks, with Gloria Swanson (!!) taking over from Eve Arden for the last two weeks, and continuing with the tour. 

The play is pretty much forgotten today, a once-hot property hopelessly connected to its time. According to its licensor, Samuel French, only three productions are scheduled in North America for the near future. (Actually, I'm surprised there are that many.)

BABY – Marriott's Lincolnshire Theatre, Lincolnshire, IL

October, 1986. Baby has a multitude of fans. I am not among them. A financial failure in its brief 1983 Broadway run, it opened in 1986 at Marriott's in-the-round theatre in suburban Lincolnshire under the direction of its original director, lyricist Richard Maltby, Jr., wowed the critics (Chicago Tribune critic Richard Christiansen opened his review with, "Don't you dare miss Baby."), and ran for a staggering six months. Maybe I missed something. Seeing the show during its last few weeks, I found it uninvolving, whiny, and annoying. I just didn't care about these couples, and the insinuation that your life wasn't complete without a baby was more than a bit presumptuous. The cast was fine. They worked hard. The Maltby/David Shire score had its moments, including the big, belty, goes-on-too-long "The Story Goes On," which became an audition favorite. Completely heterosexual, I don't think it would play especially well in this era of blended families and same-sex families, and adoption was apparently never an option for these people. I was very glad when it ended. – at Marriott's Lincolnshire Theatre, Lincolnshire, IL

THE BELLE OF AMHERST – Studebaker Theatre, Chicago

THE BELLE OF AMHERST – Studebaker Theatre, Chicago

March, 1976. Tryout. I must confess that I just don't get poetry. I read it and it's all a jumble to me. Someone reads it aloud, and my ears shut down. My brain and ears simply can't or don't want to process it. It's really the same with Shakespeare. The minute someone starts doing something Shakespearean, my brain, and ears, turn off. I know. Shocking, especially from a Theatre major/English minor, but there you have it. So going into the Studebaker, I really had very little knowledge or exposure to the play's subject, the esteemed poet Emity Dickinson. For me, the draw for this one-woman show was the incomparable Julie Harris, playing the beloved poetess, and smart folks beat tracks to see Julie Harris. Linda Winer of the Chicago Tribune found the show merely "pleasant" and decried the superficiality of the evening overall and the generous skirting around the documented facts in Dickinson's admittedly unusual life. She even went so far as to say "If I may add one more presumption to an evening full of them, I think Dickinson would have left at the intermission." Wow. Harsh. Sorry, Ms. Winer, but I loved the performance. Like I said before, the reason for my being there was Julie Harris, and Harris did not disappoint. She was charming, she was succinct, she commanded the stage with that ease that genuine stars possess. On the stunning set by H.R. Poindexter, she was the effortless and vibrant hostess, and we were her lucky guests. I was exposed to more Dickinson poems than I'd been exposed to before or since, for that matter, and with Harris doing the reciting, my brain and ears paid attention. I was enchanted. The packed house was as well. – at the Studebaker Theatre, Chicago

Julie Notes: Julie Harris was a versatile, always-working and in-demand actor, winning five Tony Awards and three Emmy Awards, appearing in countless Broadway productions in addition to her many contributions in television and film (The Member of the Wedding, I Am a Camera, East of Eden, Hamlet, The Haunting and many more). Her sole foray into musical theatre was in 1965's Skyscraper, where she demonstrated a limited voice that somehow managed to put across her numbers. She appeared in both hits (Forty Carats, A Shot in the Dark, I Am a Camera, The Member of the Wedding, And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little) and flops (Voices, Break a Leg, Lucifer's Child). One of her five Tony Awards was for her portrayal of Emily Dickinson in The Belle of Amherst.

BOEING-BOEING – Longacre Theatre, New York

May, 2008. Not a microphone in sight and very few missed words. And I was in the last row of the orchestra. Kudos to the cast!  No easy task in this 20,000-words-per-minute deliciously irreverent and delightfully politically-incorrect sex farce. This play about an American playboy in Paris keeping a stable of three "air hostesses" during Paris layovers requires pitch-perfect staging and, possibly even more importantly, pitch-perfect acting. With one surprising exception, Boeing-Boeing ticked all the right boxes. Matthew Warchus kept everything jetting along at jet stream speed. Gina Gershon, playing an Alitalia hostess, Kathryn Hahn, playing a TWA hostess, and especially Mary McCormack, both terrifying and divine as a Lufthansa hostess, were all wonderfully stereotypical and hilarious, but also added just the right amount of substance to keep them from becoming cartoons. Bradley Whitford demonstrated surprising comic chops as the frazzled Paris playboy trying to keep his harem from discovering each other. Mark Rylance, who would win a well-deserved Tony for his performance as Whitford's BFF from Wisconsin, and his inspired lunacy kept the packed house at the Longacre in paroxysms of laughter. The one exception mentioned earlier was Christine Baranski's muddy performance as the household French maid. She got her share of laughs, but it often seemed forced, and I believe the thick French accent got in the way of her usual impeccable timing. The choreographed curtain call courtesy of Kathleen Marshall kept the fun going right up to the very last minute. At about 2 hours 45 minutes, the show could use a trim of about fifteen minutes and, typically for farces, the setup was a bit slow, but neither is a bad tradeoff for an evening of unrelenting glee. I loved it. – at the Longacre Theatre, New York

Gina, Kathryn, and Mary: I want to give another round of applause for the three ladies who graced the Longacre stage as Bernard's girlfriends. I am a huge fan of Gina Gershon. In my opinion, she was the finest Sally Bowles I've seen. Plus she starred in Showgirls, and let's all admit it, who isn't a fan of that awful, yet wonderfully entertaining,  film. I'll see her in anything. Kathryn Hahn was a glory to behold when she erupted upon suspecting that Bernard was not hers alone. And what can I say about Mary McCormack's dominatrix-inspired Teutonic treasure as Gretchen, the Lufthansa girl? The audience laughed with delight every time she marched across the stage like someone who'd just as soon eat you as look at you. And who didn't enjoy her in In Plain Sight? Brava, ladies, brava!

THE BOY FRIEND

 – Studebaker Theatre, Chicago

November, 1970. In September, 1954, Julie Andrews made her Broadway debut in The Boy Friend, a silly, tuneful, affectionate spoof of Roaring 20s musicals, with book, music, and lyrics by Sandy Wilson. She played an English schoolgirl at a French finishing school. Her next Broadway role would be as an English flower girl in a little musical called My Fair Lady. And the rest, as they say, is history. In 1970, The Boy Friend made a return to Broadway, this time starring Judy Carne in the Julie Andrews role, best known back then as Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In's "sock-it-to-me" girl. Widely dismissed by the critics, it would close after a short, unprofitable run. The physical production and some of the original cast would soldier on in a tour of the show, starring Tony winner and popular singer, Anna Maria Alberghetti. Alberghetti sang well, though seemed a bit too old to be playing a young girl just out of her teens. Priscilla Lopez as Maisie stole the show with her energy and dancing prowess. She would go on later to become the original Diana Morales in A Chorus Line and introduce "What I Did for Love," and a few years later would win a Tony Award for A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine. I love the music, so I was pretty much a happy camper, but William Leonard of the Chicago Tribune was less than enthusiastic and felt the production was heavy-handed, killing the gentleness of the show. Whatever. I had a good time. – at the Studebaker Theatre, Chicago

Tidbits: My ticket stub says I was at the penultimate performance of the tour. The show was originally scheduled for a five-week run in Chicago. It lasted two. As early as that Monday, it was advertising running through November 28. On Tuesday, November 3, the following short notice appeared in the Chicago Tribune offering no reasons, just the basic facts:

The Broadway show ended in July, so the tour was very short indeed, and I'm sure very unprofitable.  In 1971, director Ken Russell would direct a film version based on the musical, starring Twiggy, Tommy Tune, and Christopher Gable. It was an odd film, not quite The Boy Friend, yet not quite not The Boy Friend. I'm rather fond of it.

– Chicago Theatre, Chicago

November, 2005. Thirty-five years after The Boy Friend played its abbreviated run at Chicago's Studebaker Theatre, the show returned to Chicago in a Broadway-bound (??...it was never quite made clear about the show's intentions) production of the show, this time directed by its legendary original star, Julie Andrews. Now, Ms. Andrews is one of the truly great entertainers of our times, but, sadly, her talents do not extend to her directorial skills, if the DOA production that arrived at the Chicago Theatre was any indication. This was just an unfortunate train wreck from start to finish. There was no style, no attempt at either playing the fluff honestly or playing it with broad, ironic winks. Even the score, of which I am a huge fan, didn't seem as sparkly and fun. A shame, too, since this was somewhat of a family affair. This particular staging started out at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, NY, where Andrews' daughter, Emma Walton, was a Director of Education and Programming for Young Audiences at the time, and Andrews' ex-husband and Emma's father, Oscar, Tony, and Emmy Award-winning designer, Tony Walton, designed the sets and costumes. For whatever reason, however, this show, which should be lighter than air, remained firmly on the ground. It looked cheap, like an underfunded bus-and-truck tour. It never connected with its audience. It was flat and uninteresting. Its venue, the 3600 seat Chicago Theatre, was far too large for this musical. The Wednesday night audience was very sparse, with many, many completely empty rows of seats on the Chicago's massive main floor. We were in the 10th row center, and there were empty seats in our row. The audience response was merely polite, the production lost a number of folks at the interval, and it was all just sad. – at the Chicago Theatre, Chicago

BEETLEJUICE – Winter Garden Theatre, New York

September, 2019. You'd never know that Dana Steingold was filling in for the usual actor in the key role of Lydia. She was that good. Alex Brightman took on the iconic title character and made it his own in a hysterical performance. Leslie Kritzer was deliciously over-the-top as Delia. Adam Dannheisser was a stalwart Charles. New cast member David Josefsberg and always-good Kerry Butler were endearing as Adam and Barbara. The book and score got the job done with style and professionalism, but it was the set and all the other tech goodies that gave the show its atmospheric pizzazz. Faithful to the film, one of my favorites, there were moments when the show slowed down and actually was, dare I say it?, touching. Sixth row center seats courtesy of TKTS. Sadly many empty seats in the orchestra for the Wednesday matinee. Pure entertainment. We smiled and laughed and applauded…a lot. We had a blast. – at  the Winter Garden Theatre, New York

RIP Beetlejuice: A steady box office earner, Beetlejuice built up steam slowly, but consistently, until it was selling out, or close to it, during its final months. It had been originally scheduled to close on June 6, 2020 to make way for a fall production of The Music Man. Theatre websites lit up with indignation. Why did Beetlejuice have to lose its theatre and close? Why couldn't the producers of The Music Man find another theatre? The "official" excuse given was that the show dipped below its "stop clause" early in the run, and the Shuberts, owner of the Winter Garden, used that as its reason. Total bullshit. In my opinion, the real reason is this: the Winter Garden is prime property. It has a large orchestra section, where loads of overpriced "premium" seats can be sold. It has a very high-priced leading man. It will cost a lot to produce and a lot to keep it running every week. The show can make more money at the Winter Garden than at a lot of other theatres. And that's important, since once the two leads, Hugh Jackman and, to a lesser extent, Sutton Foster, leave the show, one can safely assume the box office will suffer. So it's all about money. It's always about money. It's all about producer greed. Always. Then COVID-19 hit, Broadway shut down, and when the closure was extended to June 7, the day after Beetlejuice's announced closing, the producers officially closed the show. So sad, since Beetlejuice didn't try to be anything except a show that would give its audience a grand time. It was slick, it was funny, it was tuneful, it was professional, and I loved it and talked it up to everyone.There have been rumors that the show could reopen at another theatre once Broadway reopens for business, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Remember, it's all about money. It's all about producer greed. Always.

That's it for now. Stay at home! Social distancing! Be safe!

© 2020 Jeffrey Geddes