Broadway's Most Wanted
Page 22
4. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
The biggest commercial hit in Broadway history, The Phantom of the Opera was a monster hit in London, and, as soon as casting snafus were untangled, was a pre-sold hit by the time it opened on Broadway in January of 1988. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s lush musical treatment of Gaston Leroux’s Gothic horror tale played smartly to the romantic notions inherent in the story and yielded some gorgeous music, including the Phantom’s haunting “The Music of the Night,” heroine Christine’s elegy for her father, “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again,” and the clever Puccini pastiche of “Prima Donna.”
The book and lyrics (by Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe) were not up to the level of Lloyd Webber’s music, but the brilliant scenery and costumes of Maria Bjornson, and Harold Prince’s masterful direction, gave the eye much to take in, and the presence of the Phantom, commanding in a deceptively small role, has assured the show’s long-running success. Oh, and that Phantom mask logo sells a LOT of T-shirts and key chains.
5. LES MISÉRABLES
The recently-closed Les Misérables was a profiteer of the 1980s Brit-popera phenomenon. About as non-American a musical as you could create, Les Miz began life as a French (really? Wow!) pop spectacle, adapted from the Victor Hugo novel, which attracted the attention of London’s Royal Shakespeare Company. The superb RSC staging, by Trevor Nunn and John Caird, was picked up for a commercial run by eight-hundredpound gorilla Cameron Mackintosh, and it is still running in London today.
Broadway audiences clamored for the next big thing (especially since the last two Tony winners had been the not-hot, not-sexy, not-foreign Big River and The Mystery of Edwin Drood), and Les Miz set a singleday ticket record when the box office opened in January 1987, and rode high for years as the Broadway engagement settled in, and folks who missed it on tour made a New York field trip to see it.
Interestingly enough, deep into the run, the show’s production team canned its entire Broadway cast and retooled the show considerably, citing a terrible staleness to the proceedings. Most long-running shows do attempt to “freshen up” from time to time, but Les MisÉrables, in performing a major overhaul on cast and script, went the extra yard and, as a result, ran an extra six years.
6. OKLAHOMA!
The first super-hit musical, and rightly so, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! was a cultural phenomenon that changed the way the Broadway game was played. Oklahoma!’s wartime success, unprecedented for any musical, forced Broadway audiences literally at gunpoint to accept and embrace the Rodgers and Hammerstein concept of the integrated musical play and abandon the crudely constructed musical comedies that filled Broadway before it.
Oklahoma!’s startlingly original stagecraft was wedded to what Oscar Hammerstein called a “heartiness” and a simplicity of message that wartime audiences craved. Word-of-mouth built, as it does with all hits, and Oklahoma! became a template for all the Broadway musicals that followed, both onstage and, thanks to the business acumen of producer Theresa Helburn’s Theater Guild, offstage as well.
7. NUNSENSE
Teeny-tiny seems to be the way to succeed off-Broadway. Like The Fantasticks before it, Nunsense is a very small show with a very simple premise. Also like The Fantasticks, Nunsense creator Dan Goggin probably owns a small island by now. By the time it closed it had racked up 3,672 perfromances and spawned countless sequels (including an all-male version, Nunsense A-Men!)
Goggins’s show—about a small group of nuns (from, uh, Mt. Saint Helen’s School) holding a talent show to raise money—is totally tongue in cheek, yet not really blasphemous (unless an occasional PG curse word knocks your lights out) or disrespectful, and a fairly innocuous evening. Religious groups have obviously gotten a huge kick out of it, and lay folk must get a charge out of seeing roller-skating, ventriloquist nuns as well.
8. GREASE
Yet another “little musical that could,” Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey’s tale of better living and loving through doo-wop ran for over eight years, ending its run in 1980 as the all-time long-running champ, with 3,388 performances. From inauspicious beginnings at Chicago’s dingy Kingston Mines club to the heights of Broadway is a strange journey.
Grease is notable not only for its long run and the inexplicably popular film version, but it also had a monstrously successful revival in 1994, with many non-Broadway performers like Brooke Shields, Maureen McCormick, Mickey Dolenz, and Jon Secada slipping into and out of the not-exactly-Shakespearean roles of hot-rod guys, good girls, and Pink Ladies.
9. MY FAIR LADY
My Fair Lady’s success came at a time when America was on top of the world, and Broadway shows were very chic. The biggest hit of the 1950’s, My Fair Lady was what the pundits called a “snob hit,” but without the snobbery. A revival of Shaw’s Pygmalion might have received polite nods of approval, but a musical version adapted by Lerner and Loewe? Starring Julie Andrews? Cha-ching!
Like Oklahoma! and South Pacific before it, My Fair Lady was a status symbol show, one that people arranged their lives around in an effort to see. The presence of the My Fair Lady cast album in one’s den gave one social Brownie points, and well, dear, if you had tickets, would you like to run for PTA president?
10. FIDDLER ON THE ROOF
Fiddler on the Roof surpassed Hello, Dolly! to become the all-time longest running musical in Broadway history (not surpassed until Grease, many years later). Many elements, not the least of which was its quality, combined to make it a 3,242-performance success.
Fiddler was produced by Hal Prince, staged by Jerome Robbins, with score by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick and book by Joseph Stein. It starred Zero Mostel. Mercy! But as brilliantly crafted a show as it is, Tevye and his daughters ran forever for two big reasons. One reason was the success with the theater party business, which caters to large ticket-buying groups, many of which are Jewish and play right into the hands of a Jewish-themed show like Fiddler. The other, larger reason was the warm-hearted universality of the show, which was embodied by its magnificent opening number, “Tradition,” which placed the Russian-Jewish village of Anatevka firmly in the Neighborhood of Man. Such loving care assured that the show would play in Oslo, Tokyo, and Buenos Aires as well as Broadway’s Imperial Theater.
Index
Abbott, George: The Boys from Syracuse, 65, 175; Damn Yankees, 46; Music Is, 179; Pal Joey, 268; Where’s Charley, 185–86; On Your Toes, 217
actors, who write, 219–22
Adams, Edith, 26
Adams, Lee, 27, 50
Adler, Richard, 45, 179
The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother, 261–62
Agron, Salvador, 103
Ahrens, Lynn, 39, 243
Aida: The Musical, 69–70
Ain’t Misbehavin’, 194, 215
Aldredge, Tom, 75
Aleichem, Sholom, 172
Alexander, Cheryl, 101
Alexander, Jason, 225
Allegro, 265
Allen, Debbie, 227
Allen, Jonelle, 176
Allen, Peter, 103
All My Children, 75
All That Jazz, 93–94
Amadeus, 93
Amsterdam, Morey, 74
Andersen, Hans Christian, 242
Anderson, Maxwell, 127, 150–51, 169
Andersson, Benny, 7–8, 48, 149–50
Andreas, Christine, 216
Andrews, Julie, 108–9, 114, 237, 279
Andy Capp, 29
animals, musicals about, 240–45
Animaniacs, 257–58
Annie, 24, 112–13, 165
Annie Get Your Gun, 49
Ann-Margret, 115–16
Antoinette Perry Award, 1–6
Anything Goes, 57–58, 160–61
Apolinar, Danny, 211
Applause, 167
Arden, Leslie, 66
Aristophanes, 159
Arlen, Harold, 88
Armitage, Richard, 53, 214
Arnaz, Desi, 46, 205
Aronson, Boris, 111, 266, 273
art forms, other, musicals on, 196–200
Ashman, Howard, 51, 102, 121
Assassins, 102
Astaire, Fred, 92
Atkinson, Rowan, 258
Audley, Eleanor, 260
Avenue Q, 209–10
Ayers, Lem, 40
Azito, Tony, 53
Babenco, Hector, 208
Babes on Broadway, 94
Baby, 194
Bacall, Lauren, 140
Bach, Sebastian, 136–37
Bacharach, Burt, 81
back stage: movies, 91–94; personnel, 31–37
Bacon, Lloyd, 92
Bailey, Pearl, 88
Baker Street, 67–68
Bakshi, Ralph, 30
Ball, Lucille, 111, 130, 205
The Ballad of Little Jo, 191
Ballard, Kaye, 90
Banderas, Antonio, 143
The Band Wagon, 92–93
Barnum, 196
Barrie, J. M., 205
Bart, Lionel, 166
Bart, Roger, 2
Bates, Kathy, 165
Battle, Hinton, 259
Beach, Gary, 188
Beatlemania, 182–83
Beatles, 148
The Beautiful Game, 46
Bee Gees, 154
Bell, David H., 28
Bells Are Ringing, 118
Benedict, Paul, 263
Bennett, Michael, 5–6, 34; A Chorus Line, 270–71, 275–76; Company, 266; Dreamgirls, 197; Scandal, 248
Benton, Robert, 27
Bergmann, Ingmar, 246
Berkeley, Busby, 92, 94
Berle, Milton, 254
Berlin, Irving, 49, 97
Bernstein, Leonard, 38, 54, 83, 171, 174
Besoyan, Rick, 218
The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public, 79–80
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, 132–33, 247
Bettelheim, Bruno, 21
Big, 40–41
big business, musicals about, 76–82
Big River, 10, 161
Billy, 160
Bjornson, Maria, 68, 276
Blake, Eubie, 269
Blazer, Judy, 106
Blitzstein, Marc, 58, 88–89, 92, 147
Bobbie, Walter, 222
Bock, Jerry, 16, 79, 98, 123, 253, 279
Bolger, Ray, 185
Bosley, Tom, 123, 144
Boublil, Alain, 66
Bourne, Matthew, 229
The Boys from Syracuse, 65, 175
Bracken, Eddie, 46, 245
Bramble, Mark, 98, 196
Bravo, Luis, 229
Braxton, Toni, 135
Brecht, Bertolt, 58, 147–48
Brennan, Eileen, 218
Breuer, Lee, 168
Brice, Fanny, 119
Bricusse, Leslie, 67, 136, 141, 237
Bridge, Andrew, 68
Brigadoon, 23, 172
Brightman, Sarah, 68
Bring Back Birdie, 181
Bring in ’da Noise Bring in ’da Funk, 230–31
Brittan, Robert, 96
Broderick, James, 205
Broderick, Matthew, 2, 74, 205
Brook, Peter, 190
Brooks, Mel, 94, 156, 188, 245
Brown, Jason Robert, 106, 195
Brynner, Yul, 63, 119–20
Buchanan, Jack, 93
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 259
Bufman, Zev, 239
Bullmoose, General, 166
Burgess, Anthony, 60
Burke, Johnny, 149
Burnett, Carol, 112–14, 165
Burr, Charles, 157
Burrows, Abe, 41, 76
Burton, Kate, 203
Burton, Richard, 203
Butler, Michael, 214
Butz, Norbert Leo, 105
Bye Bye Birdie, 115–16
Cabaret, 55–56, 117–18, 272–73
Cabin in the Sky, 170
Caird, John, 276
Camelot, 165–66
Candide, 54, 83–84
Candy, John, 261
The Capeman, 9, 103
Capote, Truman, 88
Capp, Al, 166
Carlton, Bob, 177
Carmines, Al, 211–12
Carnelia, Craig, 43, 195
Carnival in Flanders, 149
Carousel, 151–52
Carroll, David, 244
Carroll, David-James, 65
Carroll, Diahann, 266
Carson, Johnny, 149
Carter, Nell, 165, 215
Carver, Brent, 208
Carvey, Dana, 72
Cascio, Anna Theresa, 66
Casey, Warren, 278
Casper, the Musical, 27–28
Cassidy, David, 50, 200
Cassidy, Jack, 27, 200
Cassidy, Patrick, 200
Cassidy, Shaun, 200
cast albums, 83–90
Cats, 241, 274–75
Cavanaugh, Michael, 232
Celebration, 21–23
Cervantes, Miguel, 107
Champion, Gower, 16, 87, 154, 178, 189–90
Channing, Carol, 109
Channing, Stockard, 72
Chapin, Harry, 10–11, 64
Charisse, Cyd, 93
Chenoweth, Kristin, 224
Chess, 7–8, 48–49, 149–50
Chicago, 210
A Chorus Line, 210–11, 270–71, 275–76
Christopher, Sybil, 203
Chute, B. J., 17, 84
City of Angels, 197, 198
The Civil War, 183–84
Clark, Petula, 138
Close, Glenn, 91, 142–43
Coburn, Charles, 151
The Cocoanuts, 97
Cohan, George M., 49–50, 125, 220
Cole, Stephen, 28
Coleman, Cy: Barnum, 196; City of Angels, 197; I Love My Wife, 249, 253; Sweet Charity, 39; Welcome to the Club, 183; Wildcat, 130
Colette, 157
Collins, Judy, 150
Comden, Betty, 38, 118, 153, 181, 252
comics, musicals based on, 24–30
Company, 266–68, 267
Connelly, Marc, 170
Connick, Harry, Jr., 103, 104
Contact, 228–29
Cook, Barbara, 20, 84
Corman, Roger, 101
Cotton Patch Gospel, 64
Courtenay, Tom, 29
Courts, Randy, 106
Coward, Noel, 162, 219
Cox, Nikki, 226–27
Crabtree, Howard, 208
Cradle Will Rock, 92
Crane, Bob, 260
Crane, Richard, 163
Crawford, Michael, 68, 164, 184
Crazy for You, 54–55, 129
Cricket, 51
Crivello, Anthony, 66, 101
Cross, David, 263
Crothers, Scatman, 72
Crouse, Russel, 57
Crouse, Timothy, 57
Crowley, Bob, 70
Crumb, Robert, 29–30
Cryer, Gretchen, 261
Cullum, John, 254
Cumming, Alan, 55
Curtis, Tony, 97
Cusack, John, 92
Cyrano, 60–61; the Musical, 60–61
Da Costa, Morton, 118
Dames at Sea, 161
Damn Yankees, 45–46, 120
dance captain, 35
dance musicals, 228–32
Dance of the Vampires, 184
Dancin’, 228
Daniele, Graciela, 105, 193, 250
Daniels, William, 119, 235–36
Dante, Nicholas, 210–11, 222, 270–71
Darin, Bobby, 147
Darion, Joe, 173, 245
Darnell, August, 9–10
Das Barbecu, 131
David, Hal, 81
Davies, Ray, 8
Davila, Diana, 176
Davis, Bette, 143–44
Davis, Clifton, 176
Davis, Frenchie, 135–36
Davis, Luther, 61
Davis, Sammy, Jr., 50
Dead Like Me, 227
Debbie Does Dallas, 250
DeLuise, Dom, 262
de Mille, Agnes, 23, 265, 272
Dempsey, John, 127
Demy, Jacques, 157
DePaul, Gene, 19
de Shields, Andre, 215
Destry Rides Again, 129–30
Diamonds, 51
Dick, Seth III, 261
The Dick Van Dyke Show, 74, 259–60
Diener, Joan, 137
Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, 135
diva moments, 233–39
Doctorow, E. L., 39
Do I Hear a Waltz?, 253–54
Dolenz, Mickey, 279
A Doll’s Life, 181
The Donkey Show, 178
Dooley, Paul, 263
Doonesbury, 25–26
Doyle, Arthur Conan, 67
drag, characters in, 185–91
Drake, Alfred, 61, 157
Drat! The Cat!, 145–46
Dreamgirls, 197–99
Drew, Anthony, 243
Driver, John, 175, 211
duelling musicals, 60–70
Duke, Vernon, 170
Durante, Jimmy, 233
Durocher, Leo, 48
Eagan, Daisy, 4
Easton, Sheena, 137
Eastwood, Clint, 132
Ebb, Fred, 15, 51, 55, 142, 208, 272
Edwards, Blake, 237
Edwards, Sherman, 15, 119, 128
Egan, Susan, 226–27
Eighty Days, 8
Eliot, T. S., 241, 275
Ellington, Duke, 179
Elton, Ben, 46
Emick, Jarrod, 226
Encore! Encore!, 223
Epstein, Julius J., 40
Epstein, Philip, 40
Essex, David, 163
Evans, Albert, 190
Everything’s Ducky, 243
Evita, 113–14, 124–25