"P" SOUP – THE SEQUEL OF THE RETURN…HUH?

"P" SOUP – THE SEQUEL OF THE RETURN…HUH?

("P" Soup is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet Soup)

More "P" Soup!

I wanna be a producer of a parade where everyone is comfy-cozy in their pajamas.

THE PRODUCERS

– Cadillac Palace Theatre, Chicago

February, 2001. Last tryout performance before heading to New York. The atmosphere outside of the Cadillac Palace was insane. People were literally going up and down the line of audience members waiting to enter the theatre and offering to buy their tickets. I even heard someone say they'd pay $600 for a pair. (And, yes, I thought about it…briefly. Figured if someone was willing to pay that much money, I'd better see the damn thing.) The buzz had been overwhelming; the reviews ecstatic. Anticipation was palpable. And I'm happy to say the show delivered on all fronts. It was a triumph the likes of which I had seldom seen. Stellar performances by Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Gary Beach, Roger Bart, Cady Huffman, and Brad Oscar, filling in for the injured Ron Orbach (Oscar would replace Orbach for the New York opening), had the audience in an almost continuous state of hysterical laughter. Susan Stroman's direction and choreography were inventive, effective, and memorable. I mean, seriously, the "Along Came Bialy" number with the walkers? Brilliant! The Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan book kept the laughs in constant supply and Mel Brooks' score won't win any awards for originality or musical theatre brilliance, but it was tuneful, bright, and toe-tappingly satisfying. "Springtime for Hitler" was ridiculously over-the-top. For me, the highlight was Lane's "Betrayed," a tour-de-force that got the biggest ovation of the night. For a pre-Broadway tryout, it was in sensational shape, ready for New York critics in my opinion. When The Producers opened in New York, the lines at the box office went around the corner, the critics raved, and at the 2001 Tony Awards, it won in every category in which it was nominated, winning a record twelve awards. The Chicago performance was, and remains, a singular experience. – at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, Chicago

– Aronoff Center (Proctor & Gamble Hall), Cincinnati

November, 2002. A funny thing happened to The Producers in its third stop on the "Max" tour…at least for me. And that was, the show I found exuberant, fresh, fabulously funny, deliciously irreverent, and so wrong in all the right ways, was now slick and professional, knowing full well the material was guaranteed to get laughs and therefore everyone involved could just relax and not give it 100%. They could chill out at, oh, 85-90%. The capacity crowd at the Aronoff Center's Proctor & Gamble Hall, a 2700-seat barn, pretty, but with zero intimacy, didn't give a hoot that they weren't getting the same show I saw twenty months earlier in Chicago. My companion, in fact, found it wonderful. But the truth is, in Chicago, that incomparable and definitive cast, the fresh direction and choreography, the hysterical book and score, and the physical production itself all combined to make the theatrical equivalent of a positive perfect storm, if that makes any sense. Here in Cincinnati, though everything looked and sounded the same, it simply wasn't. I frankly did not like Lewis J. Stadlen, playing Max. He underplayed everything, especially in his underwhelming "Betrayed." Broadway vets Fred Applegate (Franz Liebkind), Angie Schworer (Ulla), neighboring Covington, KY native Lee Roy Reams (Roger De Bris), and Jeff Hyslop (Carmen Ghia…he would leave the tour after the Aronoff engagement, and, according to the local review, was absent on press night. Was he fired?) were all fine and hit their marks with assurance. I did like Don Stephenson's Leo a lot. He had charm to spare and just the right amount of nerdiness. The local reviewers and audiences ate it up. I didn't. – at the Aronoff Center (Proctor & Gamble Hall), Cincinnati

PARADE

– Vivian Beaumont Theatre, New York

December, 1998. Preview performance. Somber. Unrelenting. Brilliant. The tree that stood tall and foreboding throughout the show set the mood. The story of Leo Frank and the travesty of his trial and execution at the hands of a lynch mob was told with integrity and honesty under the direction of master director Harold Prince with just-right choreography by Patricia Birch. Broadway vets J.B. Adams, Don Chastain, John Hickok, Herdon Lackey, Evan Pappas, and Rufus Bonds, Jr. provided sterling support. The show, however, rests on its two main characters, Leo and Lucille Frank, and those two parts could not possibly have been in better hands than Brent Carver and Carolee Carmello's. Two incredible actors delivering exquisite, nuanced, deeply involving performances.  Don't believe me? Revel in the glory of Carmello's "You Don't Know This Man." Carver and Carmello's duet near the end of the show, "All the Wasted Time," left the audience breathless. This was a show in which you could hear a pin drop, and you often did. "The Factory Girls/Come Up to My Office" segment during Act One's trial is hands down one of the creepiest and most disturbing numbers in musical theatre, right up there with "Yellow Shoes" from The Visit. Not a happy show, the Tony that year went to Fosse, about as safe as you can get. However, Alfred Uhry would win a Tony for Best Book of a Musical and Jason Robert Brown would win for Best Score. Sadly, Parade never found its audience and it ran less than 100 performances. I am simply mad about this show. – at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, New York

– Berkeley Street Upstairs Theatre, Toronto

January, 2011. When it was announced that Parade would make its Canadian premiere in Toronto, Bob and I immediately made plans to see it. And that, as they say, was a mistake. A co-production from Studio 180 and Acting Up Stage Company, this was a hot mess. Full stop. Poorly designed, poorly directed, poorly acted, and with two competent, but unexciting leads, we hated every minute. Plus our seats were mere inches from the too-loud orchestra. Had our seats not been on the far side of the theatre and we would have had to inconvenience our entire row and walk in front of the stage to exit, we would have left almost immediately. We did at the interval. Sad, sad, sad. – at the Berkeley Street Upstairs Theatre, Toronto

– Writers Theatre, Glencoe, IL

July, 2017. In Writers Theatre sparkling, but cold, new home, Parade was a textbook example of just how good Chicago theatre can be when talented folks at the top of their game get together and put on a show. This was simply superb, from beginning to end. My one quibble was that director Gary Griffin still hadn't mastered directing in a thrust environment and directed the show as though it were being performed in a proscenium house. Fortunately, we were in what would be center orchestra in a proscenium house, so we didn't miss a thing. Patrick Andrews and Brianna Borger as Leo and Lucille Frank were so, so good, vocally and acting-wise. They were supported by a cast of fourteen actors, not a weak one in the bunch. These sixteen actors brought this show to brilliant life. Bravo all! The best show we'd seen at Writers…and our last until things change on the artistic level, which, I believe, will never happen, at least by choice, at this North Shore society darling. – at Writers Theatre, Glencoe

THE PAJAMA GAME – American Airlines Theatre, New York

February, 2006. Preview performance. For many in the capacity audience on February 19, 2006, I suspect the highlight of Roundabout Theatre's absolutely delightful production of 1954's The Pajama Game was at the finale's "The Pajama Game" when Harry Connick, Jr. appeared shirtless and wearing pajama bottoms. The audience went wild and for good reason. Connick was a total muffin of masculine tastiness. (Off subject…if only his performance in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever had even a smidgen of that sexiness, perhaps that show wouldn't rate as the worst show I've ever seen to date.) Directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall, this was a lovingly produced slice of musical theatre 1950s fluff. The show has always had a terrific score, and this cast did it full justice. Connick's singing was better than his acting, but he gave it his all, and he just appeared to be having a grand time. His piano riff during "Hernando's Hideaway" made that song the show's undisputed highlight. Co-star Kelli O'Hara was feisty, funny, and sang the crap out of her songs. Michael McKean (Hines), Roz Ryan (Mabel), Joyce Chittick (Mae), Peter Benson (Prez), and Megan Lawrence (Gladys) provided top-notch support, with Lawrence being especially funny and endearing throughout. Curiously, Marshall gave "Steam Heat" to Mae instead of Gladys, and the number was excellent, but I missed the precision and snap of the Fosse original. I'm grateful that Marshall didn't feel the need to update or reimagine the material, but instead treated the show with respect and affection. Yes, much now seems dated (a 7 ½ cent raise?), but when done as a period piece with no irony or affectation, The Pajama Game offers theatergoers a lovely break from the cares of the everyday world. I loved it. – at the American Airlines Theatre, New York

Miscellaneous Tidbits:

o For the record, Connick put on a sleeveless undershirt for bows. Sigh.

o The Pajama Game won the 1955 Tony Award for Best Musical, would run for 1063 performances, and be made into a terrific film starring John Raitt and Doris Day.

o Composer/lyricist team of Richard Adler and Jerry Ross wrote only two complete shows together, The Pajama Game and the following year's Damn Yankees. Ross died at the young age of 29 in 1955. Richard Adler wrote the music and lyrics for two flops, Kwamina and Music Is, but never had another success on Broadway.

A sequel to a sequel! Well, that's it for "P" Soup. Until next time!

© 2018 Jeffrey Geddes

OFF THE RAILS OR THEATRICAL TRAIN WRECKS - Part Four

OFF THE RAILS OR THEATRICAL TRAIN WRECKS

Part Four

And now the show that, after forty years as the Gold Standard of Theatrical Train Wrecks, booted Wild and Wonderful from its pedestal. It deserves a blog post all its own. It was a re-imagined revival or "revision" or whatever the hell they called it of one of my personal favorites. Here it is. Drum roll, please!

ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER – St. James Theatre

I thought the marquee, though bright and colorful, was pretty ugly. Especially when compared to the design for the 1965 cast recording. It's pretty obvious that Harry Connick, Jr. was the main thing here and not the show itself.

December, 2011. Blessed with one of the finest scores from the sixties, and arguably among the best from any decade (lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner/music by Burton Lane), On a Clear Day You Can See Forever was perversely cursed with a problematic and muddy book. When it kept to its basic story -- that of a mid-1960s lass, Daisy, who is the reincarnation of a late 18th century English woman, Melinda, and the psychiatrist who falls for Melinda -- everything chugged along nicely. When it veered off course, however, that's when trouble occurred. Why is this character here? Why is this song there? Why is Dr. Bruckner being mean to Daisy and whatever happened to his professional ethics? Overall, though, it's a pleasant diversion and, actually, one of my favorite shows. Part of the charm is that the same actress plays both Daisy and Melinda and, with a talented performer (Barbara Harris in the original; the sensational Barbara Lang on tour), the part(s) can be a true tour de force. It had a modest nine-month run on Broadway, a year-long national tour, and then, sadly, a monumental flop of a film version, starring a woefully miscast Barbra Streisand, who mugged her way through the picture. Until 2011, it had not had a full-blown Broadway revival. Enter Michael Mayer, Tony-winning director for Spring Awakening, who decided, apparently with the blessing of the Alan Jay Lerner estate (they must have been on some really heavy duty drugs), to "re-conceive" ("Danger, Will Robinson, danger!") Clear Day by keeping big chunks  of the original score, jettisoning the 18th century storyline, and interpolating songs from Lerner and Lane's film musical Royal Wedding and a song or two from the Clear Day film, and rethinking most of the character arcs in general. To make his vision a reality, book writer Peter Parnell was hired to refurbish the problematic and muddy Alan Jay Lerner original. The end result was even more problematic and muddier. A hot, icky mess is a better description of it. Where to start? First of all, let me state unequivocally that Clear Day needed some retooling if it had any hope of succeeding in 2011. But Mr. Parnell somehow managed to take every bit of charm and humor out of Alan Jay Lerner's book. Then the reimaginers bumped up the time period from present day (in 1965, present day was 1965) to a specified 1974. Why they just didn't figure out a way to reimagine the script to present day 2011 is beyond me. All going to the psychedelic, Me Decade 1970s did was force us to look at ugly sets and costumes and watch really cheesy choreography. But then, ah, but then, the creative power folks went on their own psychedelic trip and made Daisy/Melinda into two separate parts played by two separate actors. The fun of seeing the same actress switch characters with a change of posture, attitude and voice? Gone. And not only that, but Daisy is now David, a commitment-challenged smoker who is eager for the good doctor to cure him of the habit so he can move in with his boyfriend, and Melinda is still Melinda, but instead of being an 18th century Londoner, she's now a 1940s nightclub singer who can apparently make time travel between 1974 and the 1940s a reality, since she and the good doctor actually interact in real time or, rather, theatrical real time. In the Mayer/Parnell vision, Dr. Bruckner is now the show's central focus, a shift which causes the entire show to spin dizzily out of control. And let's not even talk about how many violations of doctor-patient ethics are shamelessly broken in this version. Yikes! With the stage presence and charm of a 2x4, Harry Connick Jr., who was sexy and fun in a revival of The Pajama Game five years earlier, bored the living crap out of me as Dr. Bruckner. Looking puffy and seriously uncomfortable, he didn't even sing all that well at the preview we attended. Kerry O'Malley was shamefully misused as Connick's adoring colleague. Sarah Stiles, as David's BFF, was bitch-slap perky and generally supremely annoying. Drew Gehling, as David's boyfriend, was not only cute as all get-out, but also the true bright spot among the supporting players. David Turner played David, née Daisy, and took the challenges and ran with them. He was as charming as the script and direction would allow him to be and really shone with the songs. His "What Did I Have That I Don't Have?" was right up there with the best and provided the show's second showstopper. (The first was Jessie Mueller's "Ev'ry Night at Seven." Connick didn't stop anything. Well, he did, but not in a good way.) Jessie Mueller, in her Broadway debut, played the new version of Melinda. Blessed with a fine voice and charisma and presence to spare, she sang the daylights out of her material, but sadly wasn't given a character, so she almost seemed like an extraneous character in the proceedings. Ironically both Jessie Mueller and David Turner could have easily played the Daisy/Melinda role with great charm and talent depending on the direction the show wanted to go in…a gay theme or the traditional one, though the former would have posed some lyric challenges for the luscious "Melinda." None of the interpolated songs quite worked, the book was part caricature, part pseudo-serious, part stereotypes, and, oddly considering that Michael Mayer is a gay man, I found it bordered on homophobic. Since the biggest problem onstage was Connick, perhaps another leading man would have better served this new vision. Will Swenson? Brian d'Arcy James? Will Chase? This handily became the new Gold Standard because they took a lovely, if flawed, property and, unforgivingly, made an unrecognizable hash of it. During the interval at our preview performance, we were standing next to Michael Mayer and some of the creatives. It was obvious something wasn't quite going the way they planned. (Really?) Mayer asked, "What do you think we should do?" I so wanted to tap him on the shoulder and say, "Close the show." The days were not clear for Clear Day. The reviews were mostly negative and the audiences did not flock to the box office for Harry Connick, Jr. The show closed after 29 previews and a paltry 57 performances. It is perhaps telling that Tams-Witmark, the show's licensing agent, only offers the original version for performance rights. – at the St. James Theatre, New York

Sidebar: I have somewhat of a history with Clear Day's delightful "Hurry! It's Lovely Up Here." When I was high school senior, I was invited to join Modern Music Masters, now Tri-M, a secondary school honor society for music. At the installation ceremony for the new members, each new member had to do some sort of musical performance. I accompanied two of my classmates as they performed an operatic aria. This in and of itself is remarkable since I can't actually play the piano, but can bang out the right notes if the piece is simple. (I also, astonishingly, during my days at ISU, played the piano, as a sort of substitute for a bass, for a campus-wide evening of musical entertainments put on by each of the dorms.) I digress. For my MMM performance, I went unconventional (lots of classical and art song stuff went on that night) and sang "Hurry! It's Lovely Up Here." As the only theatre song that evening, it got a great response. Then later that year in drama class, one of our assignments was to perform a 15-minute scene from a play. I chose the opening scene from On a Clear Day You Can See Forever and, foretelling by some forty-plus years what Michael Mayer and Peter Parnell would attempt to do, changed Daisy Gamble to David Gamble, but also changed Dr. Mark Bruckner to Dr. Melinda Bruckner. Part of that scene gave me yet another opportunity to perform, this time to a taped accompaniment, "Hurry! It's Lovely Up Here." And last, but not least, jump ahead to 1980-81 to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and that year's entertainment for the National Word Processing Association's conference. Working with the same people, more or less, that I'd worked with the previous year in New York for that year's conference, the hour-long show was a story about word-processing and romance in the work place (I think) and somehow or another, the second number in the show had me singing, yep, you guessed it, "Hurry! It's Lovely Up Here." (Haven't a clue what this had to do with anything in the story, but it was a big hit with the happily drinking audience.) And, yes, it's still a favorite of mine.

And that's the end of the series on my Top Ten Theatrical Train Wrecks. Coming up in future posts...more Alphabet Soup, more Musical Mayhem, and more Walking in a West End Wonderland. Cheers!

© 2015 Jeffrey Geddes