Broadway's Most Wanted

by Tom Shea

  7. VIA GALACTICA

  “Someday: The earth will be perfect. Humans will be beautiful and all the same color. And making love will be easier than making friends.” So said the ad copy for Via Galactica, a 1972 outer-space musical with a space-age flavor. A rock musical set in outer space seemed like a groovy idea at the time, but despite the efforts of distinguished Shakespearean director Peter Hall and a talented cast, Via Galactica just seemed silly when actually staged.

  Trampolines dotted the stage of the new Uris Theatre, so the actors bounced around. Those actors who didn’t either tended to move around in cheesy spaceships (again, better done by the flicks) or on wires. Galt MacDermot wrote the score, which, along with his score for the horrific road musical Dude, was his second disaster of the season. These two bombs were greatly responsible for hastening the demise of the rock musical.

  8. INTO THE WOODS

  Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s moving musical about the inner lives and dreams of fairy tale characters came to Broadway in the fall of 1987 with one of the strongest casts ever assembled for a musical (and the boot of a giant descending from the roof of the Martin Beck Theater).

  The authors examined the lives of Red Riding Hood, Jack (and his beanstalk), Cinderella, and their cohorts to find out what came of their wishes and wants. The characters (plus those of a fairy tale Lapine invented, “The Baker and his Wife”) all have needs, and to get what they need, they have to scheme, lie, cheat, etc., in Act One. Act Two sets the consequences of their actions in motion, after Happily Ever After, forcing these fairy tale characters to make real-life choices. Critics made note of the parallel between Into the Woods and psychologist Bruno Bettelheim’s “The Uses of Enchantment,” in which psychological problems can be examined through analysis of the Grimm’s tales and situations.

  9. CELEBRATION

  After the legendary Off-Broadway success of The Fantasticks, composer Harvey Schmidt and lyricist-librettist Tom Jones had the means to do what they wanted in the theatre, and this very experimental 1969 Broadway show had been percolating for some time. It’s an allegory of youth versus age, poverty and purity versus wealth and corruption, set on “a platform” and featuring an orphan battling against the richest man in the world for the heart of a winsome young beauty.

  Celebration, with its masks, tights, and percussive score, was developed by the Messrs. Jones and Schmidt at their Portfolio Studio, a converted brownstone they purchased after two previous conventional Broadway successes, I Do! I Do! and 110 in the Shade. But the show was clearly too experimental for Broadway, the seasonal and ritual trappings alienating rather than involving Broadway audiences at the close of the ’60s.

  10. BRIGADOON

  This musical masterpiece is imagination personified, a loving tribute to the power of belief in the unreal. Two disillusioned post-World War II Americans, hunting in Scotland, stumble upon Brigadoon, a mystical village which, it turns out, only comes to life for one day every 100 years. One of the Americans, Tommy Albright, falls in love with a lovely lassie from the village. Problems arise when the brokenhearted suitor of another village girl threatens to leave, jeopardizing the village “miracle.”

  Brigadoon was perfectly realized in every way in its premiere in 1947, with a superb book and score from Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, beautiful plaids dancing all over the superb Oliver Smith sets, and brilliant dances by legendary choreographer Agnes de Mille.

  I Think It’s Funny

  10 Musicals Based on the Comics

  Here, for your amusement, are ten full-color musicals you don’t have to wait until Sunday to see.

  1. ANNIE

  The quintessential family musical, with kids (orphans even), a dog, and a rich Daddy. Oliver Warbucks is his name, and he’s less sentimental than you’d think (the show’s authors changed Daddy’s politics to support, rather than criticize, the New Deal), as is this 1977 musical as a whole. Many believed this lack of schmaltz was due to the presence of the non-gooey Mike Nichols as a producer.

  Whatever the reason, this superbly coordinated and performed show yielded the standard “Tomorrow,” which is actually a pretty good pastiche of a Depression-era anthem, despite your niece singing it all the time. Harold Gray’s comic strip heroine with the blank eyes and the adorable mutt became one of Broadway’s all-time smash hits.

  2. SYLVIA’S REAL GOOD ADVICE

  Nicole Hollander’s comic strip Sylvia features a smart-aleck single woman, her daughter, and her no-good cats, who communicate with her by hand-written (paw-written?) signs. Sylvia’s Real Good Advice, written by Hollander herself in collaboration with Steve Rashid, premiered at Madison Rep in Wisconsin and was given a commercial run at the Organic Theater in Chicago in 1990, with real live actors playing the cats. (Sounds like a novel idea. Would that work for a full evening?) Sylvia dispensed her advice in sketch formula in this show, which has had some regional success.

  3. YOU’RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN

  The whole world was watching when Charles Schulz finally animated his beloved Peanuts characters in the landmark 1965 television special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and all eyes were off-Broadway when Clark Gesner musicalized the gang two years later. The primary difference: The TV special used Vince Guaraldi’s great combo jazz score, while Gesner’s score was pure theater.

  Gesner’s book featured short blackout sketches modeled after Peanuts strips themselves, as well as longer story ideas (Lucy being queen of her Queendom, Schroeder leading a quarrelsome choir rehearsal of “Home on the Range”). Gesner’s score successfully captured the spirit of Schulz’s wonderfully unique characters, particularly in Snoopy’s joyous “Suppertime,” Charlie Brown’s up-and-down “The Kite,” and the anthemic standard “Happiness.”

  4. LL’L ABNER

  It’s ironic that one of the sexiest musicals in Broadway history should spring from one of the most grotesque comic strips ever drawn. Al Capp’s legendary Li’l Abner and its denizens of Dogpatch, USA, were lifted off the funny pages and on to the stage with Capp’s topical humor and “inhoomin” characters intact. Political satire is the order of the day, as in the strip, when Dogpatch is chosen as a missile site and Abner’s all-American physique is examined by government agents for quality control.

  The musical was at its best (and best-looking) when it danced, thanks to the presence of Michael Kidd as director and choreographer. Also good to look at were the leads: Peter Palmer as the perfect specimen Abner Yokum, Edith Adams as the lovely Daisy Mae Scragg, and Julie Newmar, playing to type if ever type existed, as Stupefyin’ Jones, stopping the menfolk dead in their tracks with her, uh, many charms.

  5. DOONESBURY

  Garry Trudeau stopped writing his comic strip Doonesbury for a year in order to adapt his characters for the musical stage. The 1983 result was a fairly uneven and definitely unsuccessful evening, at least on Broadway.

  The main characters of Doonesbury, here ready to graduate and move away from Walden Commune, were there: everyman Mike, his girl J.J., hippie Zonker Harris, mellowing radical Mark Slackmeyer, no-good-nik Uncle Duke, and football hero B.D. and his girl Boopsie. Composer Elizabeth Swados, not exactly a light tunesmith, wrote the not-exactly-light-and-tuneful music to Trudeau’s only-fair lyrics. The novelty of seeing these well-known comic strip characters live in 3-D faded quicker than old newsprint, and the show closed after just 104 performances.

  Many felt the lack of political satire, Trudeau’s strong point in his strip, doomed the show to mediocrity. Trudeau and Swados fared better with the unabashed anti-Reagan satire Rap Master Ronnie: A Partisan Revue, which played off-Broadway in 1984.

  6. “IT’S A BIRD… IT’S A PLANE… IT’S SUPERMAN”

  David Newman, Robert Benton, (who would later win two Oscars for Kramer Us. Kramer), and the talented songwriting team of Adams and Strouse (Bye Bye Birdie) took Siegel and Shuster’s legendary Man of Steel off the DC Comics pages and put him on stage in 1966.

  Jack Cassidy played M
ax Mencken, Clark Kent’s personal and professional rival at the Daily Planet, and he was joined in evil by the Flying Lings, professional acrobats who hate Superman because he flies for nothing, and also by the villainous Dr. Abner Sedgwick, a Nobel prize-loser bent on revenge. Harold Prince was the producer, and, wanting to lure kids and cheapies to the theater, the show played four matinees a week with sharply cut ticket prices. Despite a few good notices, the show closed after only 129 performances.

  In his book Contradictions, Prince opines that the show as written in 1965 would have set the style on Broadway, but in the “Batman” pop-art year of 1966, the show appeared merely to follow the trend. A hit performance by Linda Lavin as Mencken’s secretary and sets by Robert Randolph, including the coup de theatre of having one number sung on a huge, multi-leveled set made to look like a comics page, were the most memorable things about this Superman. Newman and Benton later collaborated on the successful Superman film franchise, where Our Hero’s abilities could be greater exploited through special effects.

  7. CASPER, THE MUSICAL

  In June 2001, the well-regarded Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera mounted the world premiere of Casper, The Musical, based on the Friendly Ghost of Harvey Comics (to say nothing of kids’ TV) fame. The decidedly family-friendly show was written by Matthew Ward, Stephen Cole, and David H. Bell. Bell also directed and choreographed the show.

  The less-than-genius plot has little Casper haunting a house with his nutty uncles Stretch, Stinky, and Fatso; they’re set into a tizzy by reality-game show hostess Magdalena Monteverde, who uses the house for her Treasure Hunts and decides to stay. Uh-oh. Soon, with the help of the gentle Casper, all and sundry realize that the greatest treasure to be found is within. Ahhhh.

  More important than the good reception Casper got in Pittsburgh before touring to Kansas City and Dallas was the good feeling engendered by the presence of the show’s star, Chita Rivera. Looking and sounding great as always, the ultra-classy Rivera came in for the lion’s share of, well, everything, because she’s Chita Rivera.

  8. SNOOPY!!!

  Like Bart Simpson stealing The Simpsons from the show’s ostensible hero, Homer, Snoopy eventually eclipsed Charlie Brown as the most popular character in Charles Schulz’s Peanuts strip. Such was Snoopy’s popularity that he became the de facto mascot of America’s space program and even ran for President. Following in the footsteps of his master, Snoopy became the star of his own musical.

  Larry Grossman and Hal Hackady wrote the score for Snoopy!!!, which boasted three librettists. The show started life in San Francisco way back in 1975, finally reaching New York in the 1982-83 season. Snoopy!!!, like You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, featured Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts gang as well as Snoopy’s feathered friend, Woodstock.

  Snoopy!!! was written in much the same style as well, with many short blackouts suggested by actual Peanuts strips, as well as longer stories with more character arc. But despite a good score (including a standalone ballad called “Just One Person”) and the famously lovable characters, Snoopy!!! has had only a sliver of the success of his master’s show.

  9. ANDY CAPP

  Ruddy smashers! Andy Capp, Reg Smythe’s red-nosed, work-phobic cartoon yob, was given the West End treatment in 1982. Capp, an extremely popular strip in America as well as the (UK, was first seen onstage in Manchester, England. British actor Tom Courtenay played Capp, with Val McLane as Flo, his long-suffering missus.

  Andy Capp was written by Alan Price and Trevor Peacock, and after it played in Manchester it moved to London’s Aldwych Theater. The evening concerns itself with the impending nuptials of two of Andy’s and Flo’s mates, Elvis and Raquel, and Andy’s chronic avoidance of anything labor-intensive. Not at all intended for a Broadway audience, it boasts song titles like “Good Old Legs,” “Gawd, men … Beasts!” and “I Have a Dream.” Try getting that title into an American musical.

  10. R. CRUMB, THE MUSICAL

  The brainchild of artist/writer/composer Michael H. Price, R. Crumb, The Musical is an iconoclastic celebration of iconoclastic cartoonist Robert Crumb. The musical was produced at the Hip Pocket Theater in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1995.

  After Ralph Bakshi made Crumb’s adult cartoon Fritz the Cat into a movie, Crumb was displeased with the results, so any Crumb musical was going to need his approval. Price ensured the endorsement by having an actor dress up as Crumb and shadow him through the airport, which impressed the prickly cartoonist no end. (Crumb actually played banjo with the band at the premiere, so great was his enthusiasm.)

  The show itself is a mixed bag, consisting mainly of sketches of Crumb’s characters bouncing off each other (and Crumb). The score is similarly weird, consisting of the early lightnin’ blues Crumb holds so dear as well as contemporary dirty blues numbers by Price. None of this is particularly stage-worthy, although there is one amusing number, “Stardust Laundry and Dry Cleaning,” in which a laundry bill is awkwardly set to the tune of the Parrish-Carmichael classic “Stardust.”

  Show Me

  Behind the Scenes

  For every star performer, brilliant set designer, or whiz kid director on Broadway, there are tons of other people working hard to make musical theater magic. Here are ten of those jobs, and ten who excel at them, working just outside the spotlight.

  1. GODDARD LIEBERSON, RECORD PRODUCER

  An accomplished musician, the late Goddard Lieberson was perhaps the man most responsible for the popularity of the original cast recording. The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS Radio) had expanded to become Columbia Recordings, and Lieberson’s love of classical music and his business acumen allowed him to eventually rise to the top.

  Following World War II, Lieberson began to challenge the supremacy of Decca Records in the cast album market by aggressively pursuing a show’s recording rights by buying into many shows in order to assure those rights and recording shows from the twenties and thirties which had never been given LP treatment. His recordings of must-have hits like My Fair Lady and West Side Story for CBS insured the upper-middle-class audience these recordings needed, and their massive popularity allowed him to record many less well known shows as well. The other record labels followed suit. The industry’s niche in the popular culture is, basically, due to the foresight and acumen of Goddard Lieberson.

  2. AL HIRSCHFELD, CARTOONIST

  The graceful, gorgeous, and hilarious pen-and-ink drawings made by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld illuminated every theatrical season (as well as the worlds of movies, TV, and music). The New York Times had featured his drawings since before Show Boat, and he was drawing right up until the very end, when he passed away, in January 2003.

  In between, he had seen everything, drawn everyone who was anyone, and become not only rich and famous (The Line King, a documentary film about him, was made in 1996), but also entered the popular lexicon. Hirschfeld’s corner of pop culture was staked in 1945, when his daughter, Nina, was born. He featured her in a drawing, as “NINA The Wonder Child,” and from then on, hid “NINAs” in nearly every drawing, allowing faithful readers to find them. It’s not an exaggeration to suggest that Al Hirschfeld, due to his presence in the Times, did as much to make mass audiences aware of Broadway as anyone else.

  3. MATHILDE PINCUS, MUSIC PREPARATIONIST

  Beginning in 1953, with Wonderful Town, Mathilde Pincus worked as a music copyist, notating by hand the music scores used by the pit orchestra and singers. By the end of her career, she had served as either copyist or preparation supervisor on over 40 Broadway shows. Working at Chelsea Music, a sort of clearinghouse for score preparation, she mentored many of the best copyists of the era and oversaw a uniform handwriting and notation style.

  It’s hard to imagine how important this type of consistency was before the advent of computer software programs made everyone a cubicle copyist. How important was it? So much so that the Tony Awards Committee, in 1976, voted her a special Tony “for outstanding service to the musical theater.”

 
; 4. PAUL FORD, PIANIST

  At the 1988 Tony Awards, Stephen Sondheim, accepting his award for Best Score for Into the Woods, thanked his orchestrator, Jonathan Tunick, and his conductor, Paul Gemignani. Then, as an afterthought, he thanked Paul Ford, and a shriek of joy went up from the audience. Who the mad screamer was we may not know, but Ford has been getting even better response to his name in recent years. Paul Ford is a rehearsal pianist.

  Ford (no relation to the fine character actor of years past who shares the same name) is Sondheim’s pianist of choice, a valued member of the legendary composer/lyricist’s inner creative circle. The rehearsal pianist is often the first line of communication between the composer and the rest of the world, helping to shape the score as the composer and director hear it played in rehearsal. Tempos, textures, even phrasing are aided greatly by the presence of a good rehearsal pianist.

  5. ROBERT THOMAS, REHEARSAL DRUMMER

  The rehearsal drummer is elemental to a choreographer, helping to create rhythms that eventually serve as templates for the dances in a show. Perhaps nowhere was the need for a competent rehearsal drummer greater than for the seminal “workshop” musical, A Chorus Line. And A Chorus Line’s rehearsal drummer was Robert Thomas.