This survey of the reworked books for Anything Goes in 1962 and 1987 evokes a paradox: comedy seems especially susceptible to becoming dated, yet many of the plays that have survived from the 1930s are comedies rather than serious dramas. Revivals of George S. Kaufman’s and Moss Hart’s comedies You Can’t Take It with You (1936) and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939) or Noël Coward’s British import Private Lives (1930) are frequent guests on modern stages, yet audiences may have to wait a lifetime before getting an opportunity to see Clifford Odets’s Waiting for Lefty (1935). Theater historian Gerald Bordman, who plays an active role in the resurrection of unjustifiably forgotten musicals, concedes “that some older musicals seem old-fashioned,” but is quick to point out that “so are gingerbread houses, Charles Dickens, and Mozart symphonies.”35
Dramatic and Musical Meaning
Is it fair to ask of Anything Goes what we ask of some of the other musicals featured in this volume? What dramatic meaning does the work possess, and how is this meaning conveyed through Porter’s music? What, if anything, goes? In fact, Anything Goes is about many things, including the wrong-headedness of disguises and pretenses of various kinds and the unthinking attraction that common folk have for celebrities, even celebrity criminals.
Perhaps the central dramatic moral of Anything Goes is that sexual attraction and the desire for wealth exert a power superior to friendship and camaraderie in determining long-term partnerships. A few minutes into the play, for example, we learn that Reno has a romantic interest—or, as Sir Evelyn will later declare in his typical malapropian American English, “hot pants”—for Billy that has gone unreciprocated for years. In any event, although Billy thinks Reno is the “top” as well, he nevertheless enlists her help to wean Sir Evelyn from Hope, Evelyn’s fiancée at the beginning of the musical.
The final pairing of Hope with Billy and Reno with Sir Evelyn has some satisfying aspects to it. Billy brings out the “gypsy” in Hope and, because he stays on board the ship, he is eventually able to extricate Hope and her family from a bad marriage and financial ruin. For her part, Hope proves a positive influence in Billy’s life when she persuades him to drop his pretenses and confess that he is not the celebrity criminal Snake Eyes Johnson, even though he will be penalized by the rest of the ship, even temporarily imprisoned, for his newfound integrity. Reno rekindles Sir Evelyn’s dormant masculinity; Sir Evelyn will continue to entertain his future bride by his quaint Britishisms and distortions of American vernacular and, not incidentally, make an excellent provider for the lifestyle to which Reno would like to become accustomed.
But there is a darker side to the happily-ever-after denouement in this rags-to-riches Depression fantasy. Even though Hope appreciates Billy’s persistence and joie de vivre, she berates him for being a clown and will not speak to him until he confesses (at her insistence) that he is not Snake Eyes Johnson. More significantly, the main reason Reno rather than Hope remains “the top” is because Porter’s music for Reno is the top. For all his wealth, the non-singing Sir Evelyn might be considered the consolation prize.
Porter certainly cannot be faulted for giving nearly all his best songs in the show—“I Get a Kick Out of You,” “You’re the Top,” “Anything Goes,” and “Blow, Gabriel, Blow”—to Reno as played by Merman, a singer-actress of true star quality. As the curtain opens, Reno sings the first two of these songs to Billy, the man she supposedly loves, before he asks her to seduce Sir Evelyn so that Billy can successfully woo Hope. The degree to which Reno expresses her admiration for Billy in “I Get a Kick Out of You” and the mutual admiration expressed between Billy and Reno in “You’re the Top” might prompt some in the audience to ask why the creators of Anything Goes could not bring themselves to “make two lovers of friends.”36
In Anything Goes Porter does not attempt the variety of musical and dramatic connections that will mark his relatively more integrated classic fourteen years later, Kiss Me, Kate (discussed in chapter 10). But Porter does pay attention to nuances in characterization and to the symbiotic relationship between music and words. To cite three examples, the sailor song, “There’ll Always Be a Lady Fair,” sounds appropriately like a sea chantey, the chorus of “Public Enemy No. 1” is a parodistic hymn of praise, and Moon’s song, “Be Like the Bluebird,” makes a credible pseudo-Australian folk song (at least for those unfamiliar with “authentic” Australian folk songs).
More significantly, Reno’s music, as befitting her persona, is rhythmically intricate, ubiquitously syncopated, and harmonically straightforward. It is also equally meaningful that in “You’re the Top” Billy adopts Reno’s musical language as his own but changes his tune and his personality when he sings the more lugubrious “All through the Night” with Hope. But even this song, dominated by descending half steps and long held notes, exhibits Reno’s influence with the syncopations on alternate measures in the A section of the chorus and especially in the release when Billy laments the daylight reality (Hope does not sing this portion). Billy’s syncopated reality partially supplants the long held notes: “When dawn comes to waken me, / You’re never there at all. / I know you’ve forsaken me / Till the shadows fall.”
Although rarely faithfully executed in performance, Porter’s score also gives Reno an idiosyncratic and persistent rhythmic figure in “I Get a Kick Out of You,” quarter-note triplets in the verse (“sad to be” and “leaves me totally”) and half-note triplets in the chorus (“kick from cham-[pagne],” “[alco]-hol doesn’t thrill me at [all],” and “tell me why should it be”), the latter group shown in Example 3.1a. Because they occupy more than one beat, quarter-note and half-note triplets are generally perceived as more rhythmically disruptive than eighth-note triplets.37 Consequently, Reno’s half-note triplets shown in Example 3.1a, like the quarter-note triplets that open the main chorus of Tony’s “Maria” (“I just met a girl named Maria” [Example 13.2b, p. 283]), are experienced as rhythmically out of phase with the prevailing duple framework. A good Broadway example of the conventional and nondisruptive eighth-note triplet rhythm (one beat for each triplet) can be observed at the beginning of every phrase in Laurey’s “Many a New Day” from Oklahoma! (Example 3.1b). Broadway composers have never to my knowledge articulated the intentionality or metaphoric meaning behind this practice. Nevertheless, with striking consistency, more than a few songs featured in this survey employ quarter-note and half-note triplets in duple meter (where triplets stretch in syncopated fashion over three beats instead of two) to musically depict characters who are temporarily or permanently removed from conventional social norms and expectations: Venus in One Touch of Venus, Julie Jordan in Carousel, Tony in West Side Story.38 In Guys and Dolls, rhythms are employed or avoided to distinguish one character type from another. The tinhorn gamblers and Adelaide frequently use quarter-note triplets, while Sarah Brown and her Salvation Army cohorts do not.
Porter’s use of Reno’s rhythm in the chorus of “I Get a Kick Out of You” constitutes perhaps his most consistent attempt to create meaning from his musical language. Half-note triplets dominate Reno’s explication of all the things in life that do not give her a kick; they disappear when (with continued syncopation, however) she informs Billy that she does get a kick out of him. Reno will also sing her quarter-note triplets briefly in the release of “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” (not shown), when she is ready to fly higher and higher.39 By the time Hope loses some of her inhibitions and finds the gypsy in herself (“Gypsy in Me”) in act II, she too will adopt this rhythmic figure on “hiding a-[way],” “never been,” and “waiting its” (Example 3.1c). By usurping Reno’s rhythm, Hope will become more like the former evangelist and, ironically, a more suitable partner for Billy.40
Example 3.1. Triplet rhythms
(a) “I Get a Kick Out of You” (Anything Goes)
(b) “Many a New Day” (Oklahoma!)
(c) “Gypsy in Me” (Anything Goes)
The verse of the title song shown in Example 3.2 offers a striking example of Po
rter’s “word painting,” Kivy’s “textual realism” introduced in chapter 1. Even if a listener remains unconvinced that the gradually rising half-steps in the bass line between measures 3 and 7 (C-D-D) depict the winding and consequently faster ticking of a clock, Porter unmistakably captures the changing times in his title song. He does this by contrasting the descending C-minor arpeggiated triad (C-G-E-C) that opens the song on the words “Times have changed” with a descending C-major arpeggiated triad (C-G-E-C) on the words “If today.”41 The topsy-turvy Depression-tinted world of 1934 is indeed different from the world of our Puritan ancestors. Porter makes this change known to us musically as well as in his text.
Example 3.2. “Anything Goes” (verse, mm. 1-10)
In the chorus of “Anything Goes” Porter abandons “textual realism” in favor of a jazzy “opulent adornment” and does not attempt to convey nuances and distinctions between “olden days,” a time when “a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking,” and the present day when “anything goes.” Much has changed between 1934 and today and the chorus of “Anything Goes” remains one of the most memorable of its time or ours. Nevertheless, it is difficult to argue that this central portion of the song possesses (or attempts to convey) a dramatic equivalence with its text, even if it brilliantly captures an accepting attitude to a syncopated world “gone mad.” Similarly, in “You’re the Top” Porter does not capitalize on the text’s potential for realism and opts for inspired opulent adornment instead. Thus, although the “I” always appears in the bottom throughout most of the song, the “you” blithely moves back and forth from top to bottom.”42 The upward leaping orchestral figure anticipates the word, “top,” but the sung line does not, and at the punch line, “But if Baby I’m the bottom, / You’re the top,” both Billy and Reno (“I’m” and “You’re”) share a melodic line at the top of their respective ranges.43
In the end a search for an underlying theme in Anything Goes yields more fun than profundity. An Englishman is good-naturedly spoofed for speaking a quaint “foreign” language and for his slowness in understanding American vernacular, and the celebrity status of religious entertainers like Aimée Semple McPherson and public criminals like Baby Face Nelson are caricatured by evangelist-singer Reno Sweeney and Public Enemy No. 1 (Moon Face). On a somewhat deeper level, the music suggests that the friendship between Reno and Billy has more vitality and perhaps greater substance than the eventual romantic pairings of Billy and Hope and Reno and Sir Evelyn. Not only does Porter demonstrate their compatibility by having Billy and Reno share quarter- and half-note triplet rhythms, but he shows his affection for them by giving them his most memorable songs. By the end of Anything Goes some may wonder how a person who cannot even sing could deserve a gem like Reno who sings nothing but hits.
Anything Goes does not conform to the organic “Wagnerian” model of some pre- and post-Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals beginning with Show Boat. Instead it presents a striking parallel with the generally less ostentatiously organic world of Baroque opera, in which great stars and show-stopping arias can ensure at least short-term success (which is all that is required). In any of its forms, including the 1962 Anything Goes that held the stage for almost three decades and the 1987 reincarnation with its new book and numerous interpolated songs (today’s default rental version), Anything Goes still works. And even if the book that changes with the times falls short of the integrated ideal, it continues to provide marvelous vehicles to drive and showcase a parade of timeless hit songs. Times have changed, but Anything Goes is apparently here to stay.
CHAPTER FOUR
PORGY AND BESS
Broadway Opera
Porgy and Bess, described by its composer George Gershwin (1898–1937) as “a serious attempt to put in operatic form a purely American theme” and “a new form, which combines opera with theatre,” began its public life in 1935 before a Broadway audience.1 While the possibilities of a Metropolitan Opera production had been explored, a Theatre Guild production offered a more extended rehearsal schedule (six weeks), many more performances, and fewer logistical problems in assembling a large cast of operatically trained African-American singers.2 Six years earlier the Met had signed a contract with Gershwin to produce an opera based on Sholem Ansky’s version of the Jewish folktale “The Dybbuk” but abandoned the project after Gershwin was denied musical rights to this property.3
After a disappointing initial Broadway run of 124 performances, Porgy and Bess achieved a wider audience seven years later in the most successful Broadway revival up to that time. But in contrast to the 1935 operatic form, the 1942 revival presented a Broadway opera shorn of its operatic accoutrements, that is, without recitatives (sung dialogue). Although some spoken dialogue replaced Gershwin’s recitative, in the 1950s Porgy and Bess regained more of its operatic form as it toured opera houses all over the world (including La Scala).
In 1976 the work gained additional acceptance as an authentic as well as an accessible operatic classic when the Houston Opera performed the first largely uncut stage version since the Boston tryouts in 1935. By 1980 two competing unexpurgated recordings, one by the Houston Opera and another by the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus, had appeared. Then, after fifty years of negotiations, Porgy and Bess appeared at the Met in 1985.4 Nevertheless, despite its newfound popularity and acclaim among opera audiences, Porgy and Bess remains best known to the general public today as a collection of Broadway show tunes including “Summertime,” “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin,’” and “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” sung, played, and recorded by jazz and popular artists as diverse as Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, Sammy Davis Jr. and Diahann Carroll, Harry Belafonte and Lena Horne, Mel Tormé and Frances Faye, and Miles Davis.
Gershwin’s exposure to the European classical tradition began two years after he started to play the piano at the relatively late age of twelve in 1910, when his teacher Charles Hambitzer introduced him to the music of Debussy and Ravel. Following his apprenticeship as a popular song “plugger” for the publishing house Remick & Company and some modest success in his own right as a songwriter for various revues between 1919 and 1921, Gershwin studied theory, composition, and orchestration with Edward Kilenyi. For more than a decade before completing Porgy and Bess Gershwin had composed a small body of jazz-influenced classical instrumental works including Rhapsody in Blue (1924), Concerto in F (1925), and An American in Paris (1928) that earned the respect, or at least the attention, of composers as diverse as Ravel, Prokofiev, and Berg. Between 1932 and 1936, partly in preparation for his first opera, Gershwin continued his studies in composition with Joseph Schillinger, a theorist who had developed a teachable system of melodic composition (including some techniques that Gershwin was able to incorporate in Porgy and Bess).
For the revue, George White Scandals of 1922, Gershwin created an unusual work that revealed an interest in opera parallel to his interest in instrumental music, a work that similarly combined the cultivated European tradition with the American vernacular. This modest first effort, Blue Monday, a one-act verismo opera about blacks in Harlem, was dropped after opening night. For the next thirteen years Gershwin would undergo a rigorous Broadway apprenticeship that eventually gave him the technique and the experience he needed to attempt a full-length opera in the European tradition, again using the black experience for subject matter.
By 1924, with Lady, Be Good!, George had found a first-rate lyricist in his brother Ira (1896–1983), and over the next decade the Gershwins produced mostly successful musical comedies filled with great songs and great stars such as Tip-Toes (1925) with Queenie Smith, Oh, Kay! (1926) with Gertrude Lawrence, Funny Face (1927) with Lady, Be Good! leads Fred and Adele Astaire, and Girl Crazy (1930) with new stars Ethel Merman and Ginger Rogers. All of these shows were produced by Alex Aarons (who had independently presented George’s first book musical La La Lucille in 1919) and Vinton Freedley.5 From 1930 to 1933 the Gershwins created a trilogy of musicals that satirized contempo
rary politics: Strike Up the Band (1930), Of Thee I Sing (1931), and Let ’Em Eat Cake (1933). In addition to the opportunities they provided for musical humor and wit, these political musicals allowed Gershwin to continue the practice he started in Oh, Kay!, in which extended ensemble finales are presented continuously with a minimum of intervening dialogue.
George and Ira Gershwin. © AL HIRSCHFELD. Reproduced by arrangement with Hirschfeld’s exclusive representative, the MARGO FEIDEN GALLERIES LTD., NEW YORK. WWW.ALHIRSCHFELD.COM
The act I Finale to Of Thee I Sing also displays a substantial passage of accompanied recitative or arioso (a singing style between recitative and aria). This passage is sung by Diana Devereaux, the character who, by winning first prize in a national beauty contest, was entitled to become the First Lady but was passed over in favor of Mary Turner because the latter could make irresistible corn muffins. When instead of muffins Diana serves President Wintergreen a summons for breach of promise, Gershwin gives the jilted Southerner a blues-inflected musical line in recitative that would not be out of place in Porgy and Bess.
When Gershwin finished reading the novel Porgy (1925) by DuBose Heyward (1885–1940) after a sleepless night in October 1926, he wrote a letter to the author, a leading Southern novelist and poet, informing him that he wanted to use the novel as the basis for an opera. Nine years later Porgy and Bess appeared on Broadway, a delay that can be contributed both to the successful run of the Theatre Guild production of the play Porgy in 1927 and to Gershwin’s many commitments and excuses and his sense that he needed more experience before tackling a full-scale opera.
Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber Page 10