Broadway's Most Wanted

by Tom Shea

  3. JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT

  The most profitable kids’ pageant ever conceived, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was indeed written to be performed by and for the kids at Colet Court, the prep school for London’s St. Paul’s. (It was a commission from the school’s choirmaster, who was a Webber family friend.) Their tale was the tale of Joseph, the dreamer and coat-wearer, from the book of Genesis.

  The anything-goes pop ethos of the late sixties, coupled with the audience for whom they were writing, gave Rice and Lloyd Webber freedom to mix styles and genres freely in the piece, and after its premiere in May 1968, it kept growing. Jacob’s favorite son finally made it to Broadway in 1981 and has proven a huge cash cow both occasionally on the Main Stem, and especially on the road.

  4. CABIN IN THE SKY

  Vernon Duke and John Latouche wrote the remarkable score to this adaptation (by Lynn Root) of the folk play The Green Pastures by Marc Connelly. Its premiere in 1940 was an important event, not just because of its intelligent and human black characters, but because of its attitude towards faith and spirituality.

  Cabin in the Sky takes the form of a parable in Negro dialect: The Lawd’s General and Lucifer, Jr. are fighting for the soul of Little Joe, a decent Everyman given to earthly temptations (here, notably gambling and Miss Georgia Brown, Junior’s emissary of hotcha). Joe’s wife, Petunia (Ethel Waters, in her only Broadway musical), fights the good fight to keep him on the straight and narrow, and her outlook and her unwavering goodness is what gives Cabin in the Sky its appeal. Indeed, the “Cabin” she sings of is not only Heaven, but also the perfect life in faith and love on Earth.

  5. LES MISÉRABLES

  Much has been written about the mega-smash musical Les MisÉrables and its tribute to the power of the human spirit. But Victor Hugo’s classic novel, on which the musical is faithfully based, offers a stirring look at the faith that carried France through much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  The hero of Les Miz, Jean Valjean, looks to God at almost every turn and is saved from returning to prison and ruining his life again by the Bishop of Digne, who not only spares Valjean from prison, but also gifts him candlesticks with which Valjean starts his life anew. He is, of course, pursued at every turn by the show’s principled villain, Inspector Javert. Both Javert and Valjean are given fervent anthems of faith and guidance, Javert’s “Stars” his declaration of determination, and Valjean’s “Bring Him Home” a prayer for delivery on the eve of battle.

  6. LEONARD BERNSTEIN’S MASS

  Leonard Bernstein wore many, many hats in his rich life, and two of them were Professional Jew and Friend of President John F. Kennedy. His friendship with the Catholic First Family fueled his fascination with Roman Catholicism, and when he was asked to commemorate the opening of Washington’s Kennedy Center in 1970, he decided to honor the late President with a unique modern Mass.

  A synthesis of the Latin texts of the Catholic Mass, presided over by a celebrant, and modern commentary on the state of belief and faith as they provided by singing and dancing characters, Mass was a mammoth spectacle, employing two orchestras, a marching band, a choir, a children’s choir, dancers, soloists, and the head of Alfredo Garcia. Packed inside the spectacle were the usual Bernstein musical and textual indulgences (many with subpar lyrics by Stephen Schwartz), such as a Gospel sermon in 7/8 time, and the “touch of peace” concluding the ceremony. But also present was some perfectly sublime music, including the plaintive “Thank You,” and one of the finest American songs ever written, “A Simple Song.”

  7. FIDDLER ON THE ROOF

  Sholom Aleichem’s stories, particularly “Tevye and his Daughters,” are rich in folk wisdom and humor and especially strong faith and belief. This pure belief is what keeps simple dairyman Tevye going and is also what attracted Zero Mostel to the character and to Fiddler on the Roof in the first place.

  Tevye’s man-to-Man conversations with God are a gently humorous device to illustrate Tevye’s beliefs, but the show’s musical moments are even richer in spirituality. Tevye’s “want” song, “If I Were a Rich Man,” starts as one of those conversations, and the musical high point of the evening is the unimpeachable, so-simple-it-hurts “Sabbath Prayer.”

  8. BRIGADOON

  Lerner and Loewe’s magical musical sets up two very different schools of belief. Brigadoon, the village which appears only one day every hundred years, was saved from pagan witches by the sacrifice of Mr. Forsythe, a “minister of the kirk,” who was basically a benevolent totalitarian. Invading this world is the outsider, Tommy Albright, an Amerian with postwar malaise, who desperately needs something to believe in.

  Not much is spoken of theocratic religion in Brigadoon, but the basic theme of redemption through faith is powerfully present, especially in the “From This Day On,” the heartbreaking duet between Tommy and Fiona, the village lass with whom he’s fallen unconditionally in love, and he must give up in order to get back.

  9. FALSETTOLAND

  William Finn and James Lapine’s nervy trilogy, the “Marvin Songs,” followed Marvin, an immature, conflicted husband and father who left his family for another man. Episode three, Falsettoland, set in 1981, examines the extended family dynamics set up by the consequences of these actions: Marvin’s lover, Whizzer, is diagnosed with what turns out to be AIDS, and Marvin’s son, Jason, is approaching his bar mitzvah.

  The analogy is fairly routine: Jason’s passage into manhood through the Jewish bar mitzvah ritual plaes in comparison to the life lesson the death of his father’s lover will teach him. But so deep is Jason’s belief in the power of love that his ideas of “the miracle of Judaism” change over the course of the show, from picking which girls he’ll invite to the ceremony to holding the ritual in Whizzer’s hospital room, in the hopes that he won’t die.

  10. MAN OF LA MANCHA

  Joe Darion and Mitch Leigh’s 1965 musical Man of La Mancha is adapted from Cervantes’s classic novel Don Quixote, the story of a knight-errant and his doomed quest for truth and beauty. As dramatized, Cervantes himself is on trial and must defend his manuscript in the kangaroo court of convicts judging him.

  The youth-quake mid-sixties attitude was less about chastity, purity, and devotion than it was about success against odds and rebellion against authority. But Man of La Mancha had belief in both sets of values, the religious hypocrisy of the show’s venal Padre and Quixote’s hollow-pious family offset by Quixote’s unwavering faith in the abilities God has given him and his redemptive power over his Dulcinea, the kitchen wench Aldonza.

  It’s Better with a Bard

  10 Musicals Based on Shakespeare

  Foolhardy to adapt the works of the immortal Bard of Avon to the musical stage? Tosh and forsooth! These ten shows stepped bravely into the breach.

  1. WEST SIDE STORY

  This classic musical from 1957 updated Romeo and Juliet Street gangs, native white and Puerto Rican immigrant—stand in for the Capulets and Montagues, and native boy and immigrant girl fell in love with tragic consequences. Arthur Laurents’ book trimly handled the transition, inventing a kind of contempo slang for his gang kids, rife with “cracko jacko’s” and “kiddando’s.”

  The parallels to Shakespeare matter less than the structure of the show, which moved in a way that no musical ever had. Jerome Robbins directed and choreographed the show to dance almost constantly, to the brilliant rhythms of Leonard Bernstein’s eternal dance score. The movement of the gangs was Robbins’ own heightened, stylized realism, which both underscored the tragedy and drove the action.

  2. YOUR OWN THING

  A radical change in attitude from (and towards) youth in 1968 was key in the creation of this musical version of Twelfth Night The gender politics and examination of unconditional love that mark Shakespeare’s play are spun cleverly in Your Own Thing, which makes no bones about Illyria-on-the-Hudson and the desires of the longhaired cast to do “the
ir own thing” with longhaired man (or woman).

  John Driver’s very funny book used slides, cartoon thought balloons, and other then-new multimedia to comment on the Shakespeare (Viola: “Who governs here?” Mayor John V. Lindsay: “New York is a fun city.” Cough, cough.), while jettisoning the clowns, letting a rock band, The Apocalypse, make the funny instead. A big hit off-Broadway, Your Own Thing is one of the most satisfying uses of Shakespeare in a musical context.

  3. THE BOYS FROM SYRACUSE

  George Abbott authored and directed this breezy 1938 farce based on The Comedy of Errors. The twins plot was maintained, and the part of the courtesan, who shows up to throw a wrench in the plans of her “Master Antipholus,” was expanded for good, sexy comedy. But best of all was the score, one of the Rodgers and Hart classics. “The Shortest Day of the Year,” “This Can’t Be Love,” and the riotous “Oh! Diogenes!” all point up the farce. A seriously rewritten version was presented, to little acclaim, on Broadway in 2002.

  4. SHAKESPEARE’S CABARET

  Talented composer Lance Mulcahy conceived this intriguing evening, setting many of the Bard’s words to music. Developed off-Broadway at the Colonnades Lab, Mulcahy’s pen embraced Shakespearean verse both familiar (“Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?,” “If Music Be the Food of Love”) and less so (“Crabbed Age and Youth,” from The Passionate Pilgrim). Despite the show’s lasting only fifty-four performances on Broadway in 1981, Mulcahy’s music received a Tony nomination.

  5. TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA

  Director Mel Shapiro asked Galt MacDermot to set “Who is Silvia?” to music for his 1971 New York Shakespeare Festival production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Shortly afterward, their “grand new musical” version was the hit of the summer and moved on to win the Best Musical Tony on Broadway later that season.

  This musical version (which dropped “The” from the Shakespeare) was a quite agreeable mix of musical styles, with rock, soul, Latin, and even country jostling for position. Shapiro’s typically anachronistic direction gave us a bustling Milan (and, thanks to wordsmith John Guare, a pregnant Julia) which bore a striking resemblance to a scaffold-clad Manhattan. The youthful tone of the show was served by a superb cast, including Raul Julia and Clifton Davis as the two gents, with Diana Davila and the luminous Jonelle Allen as their ladies fair.

  6. RETURN TO THE FORBIDDEN PLANET

  This musical version of The Tempest was, pun intended, a monster hit in London but less so on American shores. The show’s creator, Bob Carlton, had wanted to fashion a campy Shakespeare musical as a late-night offering on the London fringe, and word-of-mouth spread on Return to the Forbidden Planet like wildfire.

  Planet was a major award winner after it opened in London in 1989 and remains a favorite on tour in the CJK. The show’s tacky approach to the rock tunes it incorporates may have doomed it in America. Weaving the Tempest plot points in with its ’50s and ’60s tunes and framing it all inside a Forbidden Planet-like cheeseball space flick (the film is based on The Tempest), this one practically screams “cult musical.”

  7. KISS ME, KATE

  The great Cole Porter’s greatest score brilliantly supports Sam and Bella Spewack’s 1948 treatment of The Taming of the Shrew, which turns out to be a thorny rose to the theater biz (and, oh yes, a masterpiece of musical comedy). Smart, funny, tuneful– let’s eat!

  The Spewacks wrapped a musicalized Shrew around the onstage and offstage foibles of the troupe performing the show, trying it out on the road, in the “land of Mencken and Nod.” Here’s the egomaniacal director/star, his estranged wife, the star-crossed secondary couple, funny gangsters, and some of the very best songs ever written for the theater. Porter’s beguine, “Were Thine That Special Face,” is here, as is the minor-key scorcher, “Too Darn Hot,” the torch song, “Why Can’t You Behave?,” and the funniest song ever written, “Brush Up Your Shakespeare.” Check, please.

  8. ROCKABYE HAMLET

  A 1978 flop, Rockabye Hamlet is folly made flesh: Let’s musicalize the greatest play in Western history! And make it a rock musical! That’s really a concert! Here’s the downside, though: It’ll suck. (Cast member Meat Loaf called it “the most horrifying experience of my life.”)

  Hello, Dolly! director Gower Champion was a little at sea with this rock setting of Hamlet, the brainchild of Canadian Clifford Jones. Too much pumped-up, concert-style bombast couldn’t hide the serious shortcomings of the amateurish score, which had songs called “Pass the Biscuits, Mama,” “The Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Boogie,” and Ros and Guil’s set-up for Hamlet, “Have I Got a Girl For You.” Stephen Sondheim, who makes pancakes better than Rockabye Hamlet, might have sued over that last one, if he gave a damn.

  9. THE DONKEY SHOW

  Another post-modern update of Shakespeare, this one takes A Midsummer Night’s Dream and sets it in the glam world of New York disco clubs. It opened in 1999 and has proven tremendously popular.

  Subtitled A Midsummer Night’s Disco, The Donkey Show (so named because of Bottom’s transformation) concerns club owner Oberon and his Puckish sidekick, Dr. Wheelgood, who feed four nightclub patrons a potion to set their emotions in motion. Spectators can join the company in shaking it on the dance floor or watch from the rafters.

  10. MUSIC IS

  Perhaps it’s the cross-dressing, perhaps it’s the exotic locale, perhaps it’s those most musically apropos opening lines, but Twelfth Night has spawned numerous high-profile musical adaptations, including Broadway’s Play On! in 1997, which moved the action to a swingin’ Harlem and used Duke Ellington songs, and Love and Let Love, which around the same time of the previously mentioned Your Own Thing, but fared much worse. Two thousand two brought Illyria, by Peter Mills, to New York.

  Which brings us to 1976 and Music Is. Legendary showmeister George Abbott authored the book, with lyrics by Will Holt and music by the great Richard Adler (a longtime Abbott collaborator, dating back to Damn Yankees and The Pajama Game). Adler’s work was probably the best thing about this unimaginative, straightforward treatment of Twelfth Night.

  You’re Responsible! You’re the One to Blame! It’s your Fault!

  10 Musicals to Scratch your Head Over

  Some musicals can seem almost impossible for one reason or another, yet they end up being wonderful. But some ideas for musicals are just so hard to believe that to learn of their very existence is to smack one’s forehead. Here are ten musicals whose existence remains, as the King of Siam said, a puzzlement.

  1. INTO THE LIGHT

  Perhaps the all-time head-scratcher, this six-performance 1986 bomb was the work of folks who decided there was something Broadway-worthy in the Holy Shroud of Turin. All serious questions of faith aside, how does one make scientists and religious figures look credible when they have to sing and dance? And since the shroud’s veracity is still an open question, what’s the point?

  2. BRING BACK BIRDIE

  This 1981 horror is People’s Exhibit A as to why sequels never work in musicals. The great Bye Bye Birdie told its tale and went its way, and there was no pressing need to pick up with these characters twenty years later. Especially not when Birdie is an overweight Elvis clone, teen couple Kim and Hugo are nowhere in sight, and Rosie and Albert’s kids are in a punk rock band. But a smash is a smash, and many felt the desire to update the tale, suggesting that economics really ruled the day. Four performances later, everyone felt much, much dumber.

  3. A DOLL’S LIFE

  Another ill-advised catch-up job, A Doll’s Life examined what happened after Nora Helmer slammed the door and walked out of her husband Torvald’s life in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Why, exactly? Add to this the conceit of having the actors playing these roles in rehearsal for a production of the Ibsen play, only to warp into the musical’s reality, and the head-scratching increases. Despite the presence of old pros Harold Prince, Larry Grossman, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green, 1982’s A Doll’s Life never made much theatrical sense.

&nbs
p; 4. RACHAEL LILY ROSENBLOOM (AND DON’T YOU EVER FORGET IT!)

  A show with a defiantly gay-camp point of view, Rachael Lily Rosenbloom (the extra “A” in “Rachael” being the one Barbra Streisand dropped) told the rags-to-bitches story of the eponymous heroine, from kittenish maid to ferocious movie star. Tom Eyen (who later mainstreamed this story into Dreamgirls) and Paul Jabara wrote it, and a weird, in-no-way-coked-out-of-everyone’s-mind time was had by all. Until it closed after a week of previews.

  5. ONE NIGHT STAND

  The great Jule Styne (Gypsy, Bells are Ringing) collaborated with playwright Herb Gardner (I’m Not Rappaport, A Thousand Clowns) on this 1980 eye-blinker about a tunesmith who intends to kill himself for our entertainment. The show proper was the back-story to the aforementioned suicide, but why anyone ever thought it should have been a musical is a question for the ages. It closed during its try out period en route to Broadway.