Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Such a little word, but oh, the difference it makes!
As people who pay attention to these sorts of things know, for quite some time the Broadway season, and by that I mean in terms of Tony Award eligibility, usually ends toward the end of April with the awards given in June. However, that hasn't always been the case. For example, though A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum opened May 8, 1962, when it received its Tony nominations they belonged to the crop of 1963 Tony nominations with winners handed out nearly a year later on April 28, 1963. Furthermore, Forum's May 8 opening came a mere nine days after the previous Tony Awards held April 29, 1962 for 1961's Broadway season. On the musical side,
Frank Loesser's How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which had just opened Oct. 14, 1961, hauled away the most awards. It won best musical, best actor (Robert Morse), best featured actor (Charles Nelson Reilly), best director of a musical (Abe Burrows), best authors of a musical (Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert), best producers of a musical (Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin) and best conductor and musical director (Elliot Lawrence). In fact, the only nomination that How to Succeed lost was Loesser's as best composer. Richard Rodgers won for No Strings, his first solo effort since Oscar Hammerstein's death. Loesser did receive the consolation of a Pulitzer Prize for his work — one of several parallels between his career and Stephen Sondheim's, one of which we'll be coming upon shortly. As far as when the Tonys switched their eligibility dates and started holding the awards in June, as near as I can determine (cross your fingers, I'm forced to use Wikipedia as a source), the first time that happened was 1977, the year before CBS began carrying the broadcast which it has ever since, heaven help theater fans (at least as far as the past decade or so has gone). I must note, as I return to the subject at hand, that the photo at the top as well as the one inset in this lead both came from the camera of Tony Walton, the scenic and costume designer of the 1962 production. The inset photo shows his model of what the set should look like when complete. Both come courtesy of Walton via an interview he did with examiner.com. When those 1963 Tony nominations did come out, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, despite having opened so long ago, did very well. It received a nomination for best musical, competing against Little Me, Oliver!, and Stop the World — I Want to Get Off. Sondheim might have felt guilty about lying to David Merrick but he produced the latter two musicals that would be competing against Forum. Merrick also garnered a nomination as best producer of a musical with Donald Albery for their work on Oliver! where the duo faced off against Hal Prince for Forum as well as last year's winners, Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin, for Little Me. Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove picked up a nomination as best authors of a musical for Forum and one of the competition happened to be another veteran from the days of writing for Sid Caesar on television like Gelbart once did — Neil Simon for Little Me. which Simon happened to
write specifically for Caesar, who would face off against Zero Mostel's Pseudolus in Forum, Anthony Newley in Stop the World — I Want to Get Off and Clive Revill in Oliver! for lead actor in a musical. Lionel Bart (Oliver!) and Leslie Bricusse and Newley (Stop the World — I Want to Get Off) rounded out the author of a musical category. The venerable George Abbott's work on Forum earned him a best director of a musical nomination and he also landed a nomination as best director of a play for Never Too Late, a comedy that actually ran longer than Forum. In the musical direction category, others receiving recognition were Peter Coe (Oliver!), John Fearnley (Brigadoon) and Feuer and Bob Fosse (Little Me). (At right, we see Abbott at the 1994 Tony Awards at the age of 106 braced by Gwen Verdon and Jean Stapleton. He died in January 1995 at 107.) David Burns as the leering, patrician Senex and Jack Gilford as the nervous slave Hysterium took half the nominations in featured actor in a musical for Forum. Filling out the category were a young David Jones as the Artful Dodger in Oliver! The recently passed Jones became better known when he changed his first name to Davy and became part of The Monkees. Sven Svenson in Little Me took the fourth slot. The final nomination that A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum garnered was for Ruth Kobart, who played Senex's suspicious wife Domina, as featured actress in a musical alongside Virginia Martin (Little Me), Anna Quayle (Stop the World — I Want to Get Off) and Louise Troy (Tovarich). Sondheim's score got snubbed and wasn't nominated in the category for best composer and lyricist. The composers of the other three nominated best musicals made the cut but the fourth slot went to Milton Schafer and Ronny Graham for Bravo Giovanni, a musical that ran only 76 performances and received only two other nominations for choreography and conductor and musical director. Sondheim, who didn't get nominations for his lyrics for West Side Story or Gypsy either, remained in the ranks of those never nominated for Broadway's top honor. Boy, would he make up for that later.
When Tony night 1963 arrived, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum won almost every award for which it was nominated. Mostel defeated Gelbart's former boss. Gilford lost — but he lost to co-star Burns. Abbott won for director of a musical, though he didn't take the prize in the play category. Gelbart and Shevelove took the prize for their book, so Gelbart beat his former co-worker as well. Prince won as producer. The American Theatre Wing crowned the show best musical meaning David Merrick went 0 for 2 in that category. Other than Gilford, the only Forum nominee that didn't score was Ruth Kobart, who lost to Anna Quayle for Stop the World — I Want to Get Off. (Shown in the photo at left are the 1963 winners in the lead acting categories. From left, Mostel, Vivien Leigh, lead actress in a musical for Tovarich; Uta Hagen, lead actress in a play and Arthur Hill, lead actor in a play, both for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) In Meryle Secrest's biography, Stephen Sondheim: A Life, the composer described watching the ceremony from home. Secrest writes, "Prince…thanked Abbott, Gelbart and Shevelove. Gelbart and Shevelove, who won book, thanked each other, Abbott and Prince. 'Nobody mentioned me on the program at all. As far as they were all concerned, my friends, my colleagues, I did not exist. That's what really hurt,' Sondheim said. 'Hal was the only one — Hal called me the next day and apologized. He said, 'I'm sorry, kid. I should have mentioned you and I didn't.'" The lack of acknowledgment did lead to some rifts such as when the hurt Sondheim confronted Shevelove and Shevelove lashed out at him, saying his songs almost killed the show before it ever got to New York. In an anecdote that appears in Secrest's book and Sondheim's Finishing the Hat, Sondheim shares the tale of a special letter he received that lifted his spirits, though it's unclear when Sondheim got the correspondence. Secrest's book says he received the letter shortly after Forum opened, but places the story right after the Tony story. Sondheim doesn't date it at all, though he adds the detail that Frank Loesser told him in the letter that he commiserated with him because he remembered the reception for his first Broadway musical, Where's Charley?, and wanted to let Sondheim know how good he thought the score of Forum was. Specifically quoted in both books, Loesser wrote, "Sometimes even a composer's working partners, to say nothing of the critics, fail to dig every level and facet of what he is doing. But I know, and I wanted you to know that I know."
Before I discuss the revivals, I've been looking for a place to work in talk of the song "Love, I Hear" somewhere and failed to accomplish my mission. Now, I adore "Comedy Tonight" and "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid" but I can't believe that no one mentions "Love, I Hear" anywhere. Hell, "Bring Me My Bride" found its way into a review. While Sondheim criticizes himself for being clever instead of funny, I love his wordplay (and he can't hide his pride in Finishing the Hat about the alliterative string of double consonants that he pulled off in one line of the song, "Today I woke too weak to walk." Links: First "Love, I Hear" from 1962 original cast recording; Second "Love, I Hear" and "Bring Me My Bride" both from 1996 revival original cast recording.
Like most Sondheim shows, Forum tends to add and subtract songs in later versions. After missing out on the original production because they wouldn't let him wear his glasses, that didn't seem to be a problem anymore and Phil Silvers took the role of Pseudolus in the show's first major revival, directed by Burt Shevelove himself. It actually started in October 1971 for a 47 performance run at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles. I mentioned in the last part that Reginald Owen played Erronius. The cast also included Larry Blyden as Hysterium, veteran comic actor Carl Ballantine as Marcus Lycus and, the second biggest name in the show after Silvers, Nancy Walker in the role of Domina. In fact, she felt she needed another solo so Sondheim wrote "Farewell" for her. One of the courtesans happened to be Ann Jillian. The only song dropped was Philia's "That'll Show Him" and "Echo Song" put in its place. When they made the move to Broadway and opened March 30, 1972, Walker and Jillian didn't travel with them and another song got the axe. This time, they excised "Pretty Little Picture." Whatever the Tony eligibility dates were for the 1972 awards were, Forum must have cut it close since the awards were given April 23. Shevelove received a nomination for directing but, ironically, lost to Prince and Michael Bennett for their work on Follies. Silvers won lead actor in a musical and Blyden won featured actor as Hysterium. The revival won two of its three nominations. (They hadn't added a revival category yet.) The show seemed to be doing well until Silvers got sick, reportedly because of "food poisoning." An understudy filled in as they hurried to rehearse Tom Poston as a replacement, but ticket sales fell fast. The show only ran 156 performances and it turned out that Silvers had suffered a stroke. Links: "Farewell" info beneath video; "That'll Show Him" and "Pretty Little Picture" from 1962 cast recording.
When the next Broadway revival arrived in 1996, it did so during the era when the Broadway bug had bitten me badly so I actually got to see it soon after its April 18 opening. I had pretty good orchestra seats — I swear at one point it appeared as if Nathan Lane addressed me personally and we locked eyes at one point. Quite different from the couple of times I bumped into Lane accidentally in Manhattan when he always seemed to be the most annoyed, pissed-off man in the universe. Sure, he hammed it up like crazy as Pseudolus but that's a role that doesn't require nuance and it still won him his first Tony Award. Mark Linn-Baker did fine as Hysterium and, as I mentioned earlier, I got to see the late William Duell as Erronius. Ernie Sabella took on the role of Marcus Lycus and the long-cut song of "The House of Marcus Lycus" finally made the show. Lewis J. Stadlen received a Tony nomination for his portrayal of Senex, but he was out the night I was there so I saw Macintyre Dixon in the role. Mary Testa played Domina. The songs followed the 1962 set with the exception of the addition I mention and continuing to keep "Pretty Little Picture" out of the show, though Lane recorded it for the cast album. Jerry Zaks received a nomination for directing the musical, but lost to George C. Wolfe for Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk. By now, the Tonys did have revival categories but Forum lost to The King & I. The revival made a bit of history when it recast Pseudolus
as Lane exited the show by installing Whoopi Goldberg in his place. Casting a woman, let alone an African-American one with Goldberg's reputation, made people wonder what she'd do. Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times, "The work's authors, Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, and its composer and lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, have always said they made a point of constructing a show true to its ancient sources and free of distracting anachronisms. But the leading role of Pseudolus, the wily slave in pursuit of freedom and a part that demands a manic comic spirit, has inevitably gone to wild-card performers unlikely to resist opportunities for their own shtick. As Mr. Gelbart said, in a recent interview with The Sondheim Review, 'after seeing Zero Mostel recite baseball scores in front of the House of Senex, there's not too much that would surprise me.' So there is Ms. Goldberg, queen of the devilish aside, firmly reminding you of just who she is in the production's opening moments. She finds comic fodder not only in her present personal life, but in her professional life in Hollywood as well.…That this occurs early raises delighted expectations that many audience members have brought with them: Just how bad, as in naughty, is their Whoopi going to be? Of course, others — that nasty breed of theatergoers who find Schadenfreude in seeing big stars blow it — are asking the same question with a different emphasis: Can this movie star-comedian possibly carry a musical? Sorry, guys, she can." Following Goldberg, David Alan Grier took on the role. The second revival ran for 715 performances.
The wreckage in that photo in 1993 represents the remains at the time of the outdoor amphitheater of Butler University in Indianapolis
that for decades hosted Starlight Musicals every summer. Other cities around the Midwest also received visits from the touring program that would bring concerts, plays and musicals featuring celebrities. From
the time I was a young child, each summer when we visited my grandma we would take in some shows. Many of the early things we saw tended to be concerts by people such as Mitzi Gaynor, Liberace and the tag team of Jim Nabors and Florence Henderson. In 1979 when I was 10, I got to see my first actual musical. I wish I could locate the program so I'd remember what songs were in that production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. As a youngster, I tended to be an autograph hound so if we got there early, I'd either stake out the entrance to the backstage or I'd assault the performers after the show. For me, Forum boasted an all-star cast. Playing Pseudolus was none other than Arte Johnson from Rowan and Martin's
Laugh-In. I'd see him again when I grew up and he appeared in the Broadway revival of Candide. Avery Schreiber portrayed Hysterium, but to me — unfamiliar with his comedy work with Jack Burns — he was the Doritos guy. When I got his autograph after the show, I even brought Doritos with me so when he
stepped out I had one ready to take a big crunchy bite out of for him. Schreiber raised his hands and said to me, "You got me" then signed my autograph. John Carradine played the role he originated on Broadway, Marcus Lycus. I didn't know that at the time nor did I realize the breadth of his career, but at 73, he looked frail to me, though he'd live another eight years. The final big name belonged to Hans Conried who was cast as Senex. I didn't know at the time that he supplied the voice of Captain Hook in Disney's Peter Pan and I hadn't heard of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. I knew Conried as Wrongway Feldman from an episode of Gilligan's Island. He died less than three years later. Johnson alone remains alive. Schreiber passed away in 2002. That same summer, I saw Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel starring a drunk-as-a-skunk Robert Goulet, who exited his limi when he arrived bellowing, "Nobody owns me!" However, that's another story. Tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight.Tweet
Labels: Awards, Books, Disney, Fosse, Frank Loesser, Gelbart, Hammerstein, J. Carradine, Music, Musicals, Neil Simon, Phil Silvers, Rodgers, Sid Caesar, Sondheim, Television, Theater Tribute, V. Leigh
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
A movie about being someone not doing something
By Edward Copeland
If you're like me, it drives you nuts when the so-called cable news channels continue to call something "breaking news" hours or even days after the initial event occurred. That's why I wonder if I'm wasting space by beginning my review of The Iron Lady heaping praise on Meryl Streep's performance as Margaret Thatcher. Streep Delivers Good Performance isn't exactly a jaw-dropping revelation by now, is it? If it were someone such as Kate Capshaw or Lori Petty turning in a bravura portrayal of the former prime minister of Great Britain, that would be news (as well as a sign of the impending apocalypse). Streep's work though happens to be what's best about The Iron Lady, which otherwise does not offer much worth lauding. Since most of this post consists of brickbats, I may as well begin with something nice.
Actually, I do have something else positive to say about The Iron Lady. The Oscar-nominated makeup job that Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland performed on Meryl Streep to make her look like Margaret Thatcher at various ages deserves the highest praise. It not only succeeds at its primary goal, but achieves this effect without betraying that it is makeup (as opposed to the horrific prosthetics that Leonardo DiCaprio and Armie Hammer suffered beneath in J. Edgar). Coulier's credits include being involved in the prosthetic makeup on all of the Harry Potter films as well as working with the prosthetics on Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, where Coulier also did work with animatronics. Helland has served as Streep's makeup and hair stylist on practically every film she's made dating back to 1982's Still of the Night.
It seems appropriate that Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar should come up while discussing The Iron Lady because both exemplify the difficulty filmmakers have making biopics. Somewhere, a book must exist on writing the screenplays for movies about historical figures and chapter one must emphasize, "Find a Framing Device." Inevitably, this almost always means having the movie's subject look back at his or her life (unless it's an epic biopic and the protagonist got killed or assassinated — then the film must begin with his death as in Lawrence of Arabia or Gandhi). In both of the 2011 films about Hoover and Thatcher, the results suffer from Cliffs Notes-like summaries of the subject's greatest hits. At least in J. Edgar, despite the hideous makeup, it comes in the form of Hoover dictating memoirs to a series of agents Hoover enlists as typists, which makes that film slightly better than The Iron Lady, which chooses the controversial path of having the current Thatcher, in her 80s and suffering from Alzheimer's, going through old items and believing she's having conversations with her long-dead husband Denis (played with a complete sense of frivolity by Jim Broadbent, who behaves at times as if he's back on the set of Moulin Rouge waiting for his cue to break out into "Like a Virgin.")
If you go by the description of the film put on The Weinstein Company's official website for the movie, it's hard not to laugh since their description doesn't really match what's on the screen, but then the paragraph below that admits how telling a factual story wasn't a top priority either.
"Set in the present day, The Iron Lady finds Margaret Thatcher, now in her 80s, struggling with the confines of her simple domestic life in Chester Square, London. Haunted by visions of her deceased husband Denis, Margaret is swept away by memories of her past — both personal and political — which shaped her life and career. As Margaret traces her rise to political prominence…(she) must come to terms with a legacy that is both admired and reviled, and grapple with the great personal cost that her convictions have exacted on her supporters, her family, and, finally, herself."
Sounds like that would make for a fascinating movie. Unfortunately, The Iron Lady didn't end up being that movie. I do have to ask if there's an implication that Thatcher's convictions somehow led to her Alzheimer's. Myself, a political and history buff, I would have liked to see an exploration of Thatcher's rise to power and the nitty-gritty of her governance with more that explained why her policies drew both admiration and revulsion. Instead, we keep returning to her old-age dementia and occasionally flash back to her young days as a student (where she's played by Alexandra Roach) and the movie seems like a remake of Iris. The Iron Lady though, much like J. Edgar, lacks any sort of attitude toward its subject. Look how that same website describe the film's director's approach (and why on earth would she be the choice for the film in the first place?)
"Combining fact, fiction and poetic flights of imagination into a new breed of biopic, director Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia!) creates a piercing portrait which reveals the many faces of Margaret Thatcher: the hard-nosed conservative; the woman who demolished barriers of gender and class in a male-dominated world; the spirited wife and mother who longed to change her country for the better. Exposing the private life behind the headlines, The Iron Lady is a moving journey into the heart of an extraordinary complex woman."
On the plus side, Law's "poetic flights of imagination" didn't include having Streep crawl across the roof of No. 10 Downing Street singing some appropriate cut from Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" as a group of protesters appear from nowhere and begin crawling toward her. Actually, that might have improved the movie. I can't be certain this portion of The Iron Lady falls into fact, fiction or a poetic flight, but in a flashback to Thatcher (then Roberts) and her first runs for office as a Conservative seeking the strong Labour seat at Dartford in 1950 and 1951, she meets Denis Thatcher, who proposes and they wed in late 1951. After his proposal, the film shows them dancing to "Shall We Dance?" from Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical The King and I, which didn't open on Broadway until March 1951 and didn't mount a West End production until 1953. How soon the original cast recording came out and the song made its way across the ocean, I have no idea.
As if selecting Lloyd as director for her second feature film wasn't an odd enough choice, the screenwriter turns out to be Abi Morgan, co-writer of the overrated, empty-headed Shame so I suppose we should be grateful that we didn't get any scenes of Maggie in bondage gear. Actually, adding Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher to Shame might have helped that film — Lord knows all the characters in that film needed a stern talking to. I should say, to Morgan's credit, she also wrote the fine HBO miniseries Tsunami: The Aftermath, so she's eclectic.
Which brings us back to Streep, the best thing The Iron Lady has going for it. She looks and sounds like Margaret Thatcher, though I have to ask — is this truly a great Streep performance or an example of great Streep mimicry? The foundation upon which she must perform isn't sturdy in the least, so how deep can Streep delve into Thatcher when she's in a movie that freely admits it's mixing fact, fiction and "poetic flights of imagination" for some new kind of biopic? Does her work in The Iron Lady really equal or top her performances in Doubt, The Devil Wears Prada, Adaptation, The Bridges of Madison County? I know it doesn't come close to A Cry in the Dark, Out of Africa or Sophie's Choice.
Tweet
Labels: 10s, Broadbent, DiCaprio, Eastwood, Hammerstein, HBO, Musicals, Rodgers, Star Wars, Streep
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Truth be told, you two are both dragging me down
By Edward Copeland
By the time I finally found myself in a position to watch Shame, my expectations rested on two separate planes. The first, for the film itself, had settled on not anticipating being wowed, based not only on what I'd heard but also because (I must admit) I never managed to make it all the way through director Steve McQueen's first film, Hunger. The other plane existed on a much higher level, formed solely on what I'd witnessed of Michael Fassbender in 2011, giving great performances in movies that couldn't be more different — X-Men: First Class and Jane Eyre. I haven't even had a chance to catch him as Carl Jung in David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method. However, I've witnessed many an actor or actress rise above mediocre material and I expected that if Shame turned out to be a subpar film, Fassbender still could deliver a superb performance. Unfortunately, thespians can do only so much with scripts as aimless, pointless and devoid of meaning as Shame. While Fassbender lets it all hang out in service to this lackluster screenplay, Carey Mulligan delivers the film's best performance, far better than Shame deserves, as Fassbender's character's sister.
Fassbender plays Brandon Sullivan, an Irish transplant to the U.S. who works as an executive in Manhattan. For what kind of business, it's never clearly stated, but it allows Brandon enough free time to leave the office for hours during the day to go to a hotel and have vigorous sex with multiple women. Now, sometimes Brandon does have to stay in the office. You might not be able to smoke inside public buildings in New York anymore, but masturbation breaks seem to be OK. At night, Brandon occasionally carouses with his married boss, David Fisher (James Badger Dale), who doesn't even try to hide his adultery from his employees. However, when loads of particularly nasty paid porn sites turn up on the hard drive of Brandon's work computer, Fisher immediately assumes that someone has hacked into Brandon's account or been using his computer when Brandon isn't there.
Based on the portrait painted in Shame, it seems that nearly all currently living in New York — including the women — carry attitudes toward sex that's more likely to be found in 14-year-old boys, only real 14-year-olds aren't getting laid at this high a percentage and the teens probably display more maturity and hold fewer fears of long-lasting relationships. Yes, I understand that Brandon is a sex addict, but the screenplay by director McQueen and Abi Morgan may depict the life of a sex addict but it never deals with the subject of sex addiction. Imagine a film about a heroin addict and the entire movie consists of the addict shooting up or snorting the drug, showing little in the way of consequence and no discussion of the addiction before the film finishes. That's almost what Shame amounts to as a film. Hell, the TV sitcom Cheers treated sex addiction more seriously and with laughs when in a later season Sam sought treatment for it.
The film's complication, i.e. Brandon's complication, stems from the arrival of his estranged younger sister, Sissy (Mulligan), who crashes at Brandon's apartment because she and her boyfriend are on the outs. Her arrival, according to the production notes and a couple of dialogue scenes inserted to break up the monotony of Brandon's boffing, throws his world into "chaos." As near as I can tell from the movie, chaos for Brandon (as well as McQueen and Morgan) equals having Sissy living in his apartment meaning he must go elsewhere to fuck. Poor baby. What also upsets Brandon is that Sissy gets a booking to sing at a New York club, which Brandon's boss David hears about, forcing Brandon to reluctantly accompany Fisher to see her show. The scene actually ends up being one of the film's few highlights as Mulligan performs the most downbeat version of Kander & Ebb's "New York, New York" you'll ever hear. It's reminiscent of the scene in Georgia when Jennifer Jason Leigh performs Elvis Costello's "Almost Blue." It certainly bears no resemblance to Liza Minnelli's version in Martin Scorsese's film of the same name that introduced the song or Sinatra's recording that immortalized it. Rubbing salt in Brandon's wound about Sissy interfering in his nightlife and his apartment, she and David end up going back to Brandon's place and having loud, boisterous sex, forcing a pissy Brandon to leave.
While visually, cinematographer Sean Bobbitt provides a cool blue tint that comes across as wholly appropriate to the film, Shame suffers from being overscored — not just by the original music composed by Harry Escott but the misuse of lots of Bach, mostly taken from Glenn Gould's recording of "The Goldberg Variations," alongside John Coltrane's instrumental cover of Rodgers & Hammerstein's "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music, Chet Baker's "Let's Get Lost" and Blondie's "Rapture" — all of which get played at near deafening levels at times to compensate for the largely dialogue-free sections. In a way, Shame sounds as if it's trying to be one of those late-night Skin-emax movies, only employing a classier soundtrack to play over the continuous coitus.
When Shame finally comes to a stopping place, they do allow Brandon and Sissy to have a conversation (more like a fight) to pretend that a point might have been hiding all along. Brandon has had it not being able to screw strangers in his own bed so he orders his sister out, telling Sissy that he's not responsible for her. He didn't give birth to her. "I'm trying to help you," Sissy tells him. "How are you helping me,
huh? How are you helping me? How are you helping me? Huh? Look at me. You come in here and you're a weight on me. Do you understand me? You're a burden. You're just dragging me down. How are you helping me? You can't even clean up after yourself. Stop playing the victim," Brandon responds bitterly. I have to agree with Brandon there. The film hasn't given any indication that Sissy has arrived to stage some sort of intervention. Hell, aside for her stumbling upon some live sex chat woman calling out for Brandon on his laptop and walking in on him beating off once, nothing indicates that Sissy has clued in on her brother's lifestyle. Then again, I don't notice much of a mess. "I'm not playing the victim. If I left, I would never hear from you again. Don't you think that's sad? Don't you think that's sad? You're my brother," Sissy declares. No, what's truly sad about this situation is watching talented actors such as Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan attempt to squeeze some sort of emotional truth from a movie that contained nothing but artifice up until that point. Fassbender tries his best, but he's burdened with the heavy lifting since he's in every scene and the shallow script leaves him rudderless. Carey Mulligan comes off looking so much better because her part takes up less time on screen so it's easier to give Sissy life even if the screenplay doesn't provide her any more depth than it does Brandon.That scene between the siblings toward the end of the movie reinforces what we got a slight glimpse of in an earlier scene where Brandon takes a co-worker named Marianne (Nicole Beharie) out for dinner. She's separated from her husband. While Brandon behaves meek and pliable at the restaurant, accepting every suggestion that either Marianne or the waiter (Robert Montano) makes, relationship talk brings out the opinionated side of him. He tells her that he doesn't believe in relationships — sees no point in them. When Marianne asks him how long his longest relationship lasted, Brandon answers four months. The two part for the night at her subway stop. The next day at work, we see what kind of universe Shame resides in. Marianne expressed a bit of dismissive judgment about Brandon the night before, but he takes her into the break room and kisses her passionately and Marianne willingly skips off from work with him to a hotel for a sexual tryst. This exemplifies the filmmakers' attitude toward pretty much every character in the movie.
The longer I think about Shame, the worse the film gets. If you set out to make a provocative film, it helps to have something to say. Your aim should be to provoke thought, not anger about the time wasted by talents such as Fassbender and Mulligan making it and movie lovers such as me watching it.
Tweet
Labels: 10s, Carey Mulligan, Cronenberg, Ebb, Fassbender, Hammerstein, J.J. Leigh, Kander, Liza, Music, Rodgers, Scorsese, Sinatra
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
A Timeless Love Story
By Damian Arlyn
I was recently playing the board game Loaded Questions with my wife, her brother and his wife. It was my brother-in-law's turn to guess. The card asked the rest of us to name our favorite animated feature film. His wife picked Beauty and the Beast. I selected The Hunchback of Notre Dame (although I could just as easily have gone with Pinocchio, The Secret of NIMH, The Prince of Egypt or The Nightmare Before Christmas). Being fairly familiar with my wife's tastes in animated films, I suspected she would name either Sleeping Beauty, The Lion King or Hunchback of Notre Dame as well. To my surprise, she also named Beauty and the Beast. I knew she loved the film, but was not aware that it was her favorite. After her brother correctly guessed all of our answers, I told her I was surprised by her choice because I always was under the impression she favored these other animated films. "I admire aspects of the other ones," she informed me. "I think the backgrounds and music in Sleeping Beauty are beautiful and I like the story and themes of Hunchback, but with Beauty and the Beast, I just love the whole package." I not only learned something new about my wife that day, I was reminded of something that I guess I had forgotten: namely, that Beauty and the Beast (which celebrates its 20th anniversary today) is deservedly one of Disney's most beloved animated features because, unlike numerous others (which can be very uneven), it excels in ALL of its areas. It is arguably the perfect Disney movie.
Beauty and the Beast came at a time when Disney was experiencing a real renaissance in animation. Throughout the '70s and early '80s, some decent movies such as The Fox and the Hound, The Great Mouse Detective and The Black Cauldron were produced, but they failed to achieve the kind of critical or commercial success that had come to be expected from a Disney product. To make matters worse, the live-action arm of the studio (which was churning out such "clunkers" as The Black Hole, Tron and Return to Oz) wasn't faring much better. The studio was finding it tremendously difficult reaching contemporary audiences with its somewhat antiquated material. Their attempt to produce something more "modern" and "cool" with the pop song-heavy Oliver and Company only reeked of desperation. Meanwhile Disney's competitors (including former Disney animator Don Bluth's An American Tail and The Land Before Time) were gaining a lot of ground. So, in the mid-1980s some "new blood," in the guise of former Paramount executives Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, was brought in to change things at the struggling studio and special attention was paid to the once-great animation department. Their plan was to try to recapture the essential elements of Disney's golden age: good stories simply but expertly told with gorgeous animation, interesting characters and memorable music.
The result was The Little Mermaid, an enormously entertaining creation that seemed to include all of the classic characteristics of Disney fairy tales as well as a few new qualities that made it resonate with both children and adults alike. I remember seeing it in the theater with my family in junior high and just being utterly charmed by it. It even went on to win two Academy Awards: one for the score and one for that catchy little tune "Under the Sea," proving that the music was a major ingredient for the film's success. That music came for the imaginative minds of the composer Alan Menken and his lyricist Howard Ashman, the team responsible for the subversive yet immensely melodic off-Broadway hit-turned 1986 movie Little Shop of Horrors. Thus, when Mermaid earned hundred of millions of dollars (much of it from the home video release, the first time a current Disney animated feature appeared in that format) and marked a real return to form for the endangered studio, it seemed only natural that its successor would try to build on the same foundation that it had laid (including the Menken/Ashman songs). Expectations were understandably high and whatever it was to be, they would have to make it something really special.
Disney decided to go with the well-known French fable of a beautiful woman (whose name was wisely changed from "Beauty" to "Belle") who stays in an enchanted castle run by a monstrous beast. Although she is repulsed by him initially, she eventually learns to see the kind, tormented and beautiful person hidden beneath the hideous veneer and in the process warms his own cold heart. In the end, she declares her love for him which transforms him back into the handsome prince that he was before being bewitched by an evil spell and the two live happily ever after. The story had been told onscreen before (most famously in Jean Cocteau's stunning 1946 adaptation La Belle et la Bête) but never in feature-length animation. Borrowing several elements from the Cocteau film (such as furniture within the castle coming to life) but adding quite a few touches of their own (including the heroine's rescue from a pack of wolves by the beast), the animators fashioned a colorful, sweet, funny and at times scary product. Not surprisingly the animation is gorgeous. The design of the beast is a particular standout. Whereas in other incarnations the beast usually resembles a really hairy human, this beast is fully animal with equal parts buffalo, lion, bear and various other carnivorous creatures. Despite all this, an undeniable humanity still comes through loud and clear in the character's facial expressions and body language.
This is no doubt due to the fact that his design was supervised by the eminent animator Glen Keane who has a track record of making huge, lumbering creatures look strangely graceful (see the bear in The Fox and the Hound and Professor Ratigan in The Great Mouse Detective). In fact, all of the characters in Beauty and the Beast, from the leads right down to the minor characters, are beautifully rendered with with distinct looks and interesting personalities. This is especially impressive when one considers that most of the characters in the film are sentient household objects such as clocks, teapots, candelabras, etc. The only other animated film I can think of that so effectively turns inanimate objects into living, breathing beings (not including the Toy Story trilogy) is the woefully underrated Brave Little Toaster. Of course, the believability of the characters is aided in no small way by the bravura vocal performances of the excellent cast. Beauty and the Beast followed another wise Disney tradition in that they decided to hire talented actors to give voice to these characters and not A-list movie stars. At the time I saw it, the only voice I really recognized was Angela Lansbury. Even though I was somewhat of a teenage movie buff, I had no idea who Jerry Orbach, Paige O'Hara, David Ogden Stiers and Robby Benson were and I suspect most audience members were like myself. Their ignorance of the actors working behind the scenes helped make it easier to merely accept the characters on screen at face value. Unfortunately, ever since Robin Williams was cast as the Genie in Disney's next animated blockbuster Aladdin, this turned into a practice that seemed no longer viable. Feature animation now appears to be populated primarily with celebrities (which is no doubt why so many distinguished voice actors such as Maurice LaMarche, Frank Welker and Rob Paulsen all have to work in television) and it creates a bizarre disconnect between the figures we see moving on screen and the voice we hear coming out of their mouths. We know that it's Cameron Diaz we are hearing but it is not Cameron Diaz that we are seeing (at least Pixar is trying to continue the tradition of casting the right actors for the roles regardless of their celebrity status).
Another significant development in the history of animation that occurred in Beauty and the Beast was the combination of hand-drawn characters with a completely three-dimensional CGI environment in the now iconic ballroom sequence. It wasn't the first time such a thing was attempted (the climactic clock tower scene from The Great Mouse Detective did the same thing) but this was the first time such a feat was accomplished so seamlessly. Though it may not be quite as impressive to us now, the sight of the "camera" gliding around the characters, swooping down toward them from above and even moving between them as they danced (almost as if we are dancing right along with them) really helped draw audiences even further into what was already an emotionally-charged scene a) because of what was happening in the story at that point and b) because of the lovely title song that was being sung by Angela Lansbury's matronly Mrs. Potts during it. As corny as it may sound, it really is a magical sequence that somehow seems to transcend all of the numerous technical achievements that helped make it so. One would have to be pretty jaded and heartless to not find themselves in some way touched by it.
Like The Little Mermaid, the songs that Howard Ashman and Alan Menken collaborated on for Beauty and the Beast are superb. Clearly modelling their work on Broadway showtunes, every song just pops. There is not a weak tune in the bunch. Also, every song either furthers the story or develops character. The opening number "Belle," for example, introduces the protagonist, establishes how the townspeople feel about her, acquaints us with handsome but obnoxious Gaston who is pursuing her and just generally sets the "stage" perfectly for everything that follows. Gaston even gets his own song wherein the townsfolk sing about how great he is and he in turn
agrees with them mentioning all of his accomplishments and hilariously pointing out that every last inch of him is "covered with hair." The big show-stopping number of the piece, however, is "Be Our Guest," a massive extravaganza showcasing a parade of food and cutlery led by a spotlight-hogging candelabra named Lumiere (voiced and sung by the multi-gifted Jerry Orbach). Seriously, Joel Grey's Master of ceremonies from Cabaret has got nothing on him. Finally, the darker and more sinister "Kill the Beast," wherein Gaston reveals his true colors, rounds out an already impressive collection of melodies. It was a no-brainer that the film would receive Oscar nods for its music. The songs "Belle," "Be Our Guest" and "Beauty and the Beast" were all nominated but it was the title song that took home the statuette. What was unexpected, however, was that Beauty and the Beast would become the first animated feature film to ever be nominated for best picture. It was a milestone in the history of animation and made everyone who worked on it very proud. Alas, one individual who never got to see the awards, the critical acclaim or the commercial success that the film garnered was Howard Ashman. During production of Beauty and the Beast it became painfully clear that Howard was dying of AIDS and although he continued to work very hard on the film (helping with the script as well as with the music), on March 14, 1991, Howard died and what was perhaps the most auspicious musical teams since Rodgers and Hammerstein came to a sudden and tragic end. The film's final credits featured one of the most poetic dedications I've ever seen: "To our friend Howard, who gave a mermaid her voice and a beast his soul, we will be forever grateful."Although some could argue it was The Lion King that represented the pinnacle of Disney's "renaissance period" (a time when Disney seemed to have the Midas touch, well before Eisner drove Katzenberg away and then proceeded to wreck the very company he had once saved), I think Beauty and the Beast is the true supreme achievement from that era. Everything just came together in such a way that the film managed to catch that ever elusive lighting in a bottle. Twenty years later it still looks, sounds and feels great. Recently it was released on DVD/Blu-ray in a "special edition" which included such notable features as a newly animated music number which was excised before the film's original release (the song was called "Human Again" and it's a charming little tune but I think they made the right decision cutting it as it sounds to my ears too similar to "Be Our Guest") as well as the "work-in-progress" version which the studio courageously premiered at the New York Film Festival. Though it gave birth to several inferior direct-to-video sequels and a successful Broadway show, its true legacy will be as one of the greatest (if not arguably the greatest) animated features that Disney ever produced. The word "masterpiece" gets thrown around a lot, but I feel it truly is a masterpiece, not just of animation but of cinematic storytelling. It is also the last time that a genuine fairy tale was depicted on the big screen. In our increasingly cynical culture, feel-good stories of princesses, monsters, villains, magic and, most of all, happy endings are becoming increasingly rare. Even when a film does attempt to bring a fairy tale to theaters it has to be done in a very sarcastic, self-aware manner (a la Shrek, Enchanted and Tangled); more of a "meta" fairy tale than an honest-to-God "true" fairy tale. Beauty and the Beast is a timeless love story with an enduring message, but it is also in some ways a relic of a bygone era. Unless Pixar's upcoming Brave can reinvigorate the genre, it may be a long, long time before we see another bona fide fairy tale told with such unapologetic enthusiasm and sincerity.
Tweet
Labels: 90s, Animation, Disney, Hammerstein, Lansbury, Movie Tributes, Musicals, Orbach, Oscars, Pixar, Robin, Rodgers, Theater
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Act II: Plenty of roads to try
By Edward Copeland
Those three people laughing above, if you don't recognize them, play a large part in the next chapter of Merrily We Roll Along, the chapter that began to resuscitate the show from its near-death Broadway experience as a musical Old Yeller,
certain to be taken out and shot for its own good. As I mentioned in Act I (which if you somehow got here first and didn't read it, click here), I've never been fortunate enough to see a production of the show so I know it only by its score, which I love. (Full disclosure: Just what I gleaned of the story from the score and reading liner notes, it never quite seemed logical to me for a successful composer to transform himself suddenly into a successful movie producer. How would that work? Anyway, I digress.) From left to right, they are Chip Zien, John Rubinstein and Heather Mac Rae, and in June 1985, those three performers took on the roles of Charley Kringas, Franklin Shepherd and Mary Flynn, respectively, when The La Jolla Playhouse in La Jolla, Calif., decided to stage the show. Now, Merrily did have one intervening production between Broadway and La Jolla — The Guildhall School of Music of Drama in London gave the musical its European premiere in March 1983 and later transferred it for a run of about a week at London's Bloomsbury Theatre. However, that production didn't receive the input and cooperation of Stephen Sondheim to write new songs, rewrite old songs and dump some songs altogether and George Furth to revise the libretto. This Merrily was directed by James Lapine, who had just completed his first collaboration with Sondheim as director and book-writer on Sunday in the Park with George, which won the new team the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and still was playing on Broadway as they began tinkering with Merrily We Roll Along in California. In Finishing the Hat, Sondheim describes that La Jolla production as "The critical moment in the rehabilitation of Merrily We Roll Along" going on to emphasize that Lapine, "being both a writer and a director, firmly suggested that casting young but experienced adults rather than talented but inexperienced teenagers was only part of the solution: in order to accommodate the change in casting, the writing would have to be reexamined as well." Both Sondheim and Furth attended rehearsals for the La Jolla production, making changes to both book and score. No longer did Merrily begin with Frank giving a commencement address. Instead, it opens with him at a big Hollywood post-premiere party. Gone were songs such as "The Hills of Tomorrow" and "Rich and Happy," added were new tunes "Growing Up," "That Frank" and "The Blob" and others that stayed got revisions. While gather as much material as I could preparing for this, I stumbled upon a fascinating blog called The Ugly Bug Ball. The author had an entry dated Oct. 5 of this year called "My Sondheim Summer." It is a fascinating read that I'm not going to spoil here, but you should read for yourself about a college student studying technical theater at San Diego State who volunteered to work on a show at the La Jolla Playhouse having no idea that it would be Merrily
We Roll Along (revised edition) and that Sondheim, Furth and John Rubinstein would be there or that when it opened, it would attract celebrities such as Gene Hackman. The writer tells of some wild events during rehearsals and performances including a fire alarm going off after it opened and also reminds me of outside events happening around that time in the summer of 1985 such as New Coke. Check it out. Another member of the cast playing the role of Beth was Marin Mazzie, who would later earn a Tony nomination as featured actress in a musical as Clara in Passion the most recent original Sondheim show to premiere on Broadway. She also received lead actress nominations for the musical Ragtime and the revival of Kiss Me, Kate opposite Brian Stokes Mitchell. In five years, she'd play Beth in Merrily again. Sylvie Drake, reviewing for The Los Angeles Times, found this Merrily to be better, but thought it could still use work. "Certainly the Merrily that opened Sunday night at the La Jolla Playhouse is an improvement over the Broadway original, but it's not improved enough," Drake wrote, adding later, "If this Merrily requires anything, it is, in fact, more shaving. The streamlining Furth did on his book isn't sufficient. Having thrown off earlier shackles (including, at the top of the list, the monstrous Broadway set by Eugene Lee that did everything but slice and spit up actors), this Merrily deserved to really roll. It doesn't." Dan Sullivan, also writing for the L.A. Times, wrote on the day of the last La Jolla performance a piece that asked if the production were good enough to take to New York. The headline though misled, based only on a high demand for tickets, not Sullivan's opinion of the production, though he admits he never saw the original for comparison. "Something's missing in Merrily II. It is not skill of presentation. The piece has the snap of a Broadway show, with a cast that one might well see on Broadway.…It rolls backward, however — which brings up a problem that has dogged Merrily We Roll Along ever since Kaufman and Hart wrote it as a straight play in 1934. To wit: How to interest an audience in a story when you have already shown them how it comes out?" Needless to say, the La Jolla Merrily didn't go to New York.It was now 1990 — 10 years since the original Merrily We Roll Along had planned to start rehearsals. Five years after the mostly positive reception to the revised version staged in La Jolla, another version was about to be produced by Arena Stage in Washington at the Kreeger Theater. It opened Jan. 30 and ran through April 8, by far the longest run of any Merrily so far. The three lead roles were filled by Victor Garber as Frank, David Garrison as Charley and Becky Ann Baker as Mary. Marin Mazzie repeated the role of Beth she played in La Jolla. More tinkering with the book and the songs took place. "The Hills of Tomorrow" returned at the end. Gussie, Frank's second wife who is an older star and used to be married to the producer Joe, got two reprises of "Growing Up," the new one added to the first act. Lyricist and
book-writer Bill Russell, who had a job that allowed him to type the script of the original, journeyed to D.C. to see the production. "I thought they made a very wise decision — casting older actors. It was much easier to accept starting with them older and then going backward to when they were young," Russell told me. "The other way…was much harder to swallow. It just didn't make sense for the characters to first appear as middle-aged and jaded and be played by all those fresh (and super talented) faces." Someone else paid a return visit for the Arena production: Frank Rich. The headline on his review read, A Show Keeps Coming Back, Getting Closer on Every Orbit. "At the end of Merrily We Roll Along, three young people of 1957, all with dreams of theatrical or literary glory, stand on a roof in New York City to spot Sputnik, a symbol of their high hopes, as it streaks across a starry sky. Nine years after its failure on Broadway, Merrily continues to follow its own alluring, elusive trajectory through the musical theater," Rich wrote. "In various revised versions, this Stephen Sondheim-George Furth adaptation of the 1934 play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart has been sighted at small companies from Los Angeles to London in recent seasons. Each production raises the hopes of partisans that a resurrected Merrily will soon redeem their faith in the show by splashing down triumphantly in New York. Arena Stage's rendition of the musical…is the closest the reworked Merrily has gotten to Broadway — geographically, at least. One hopes the authors will not let up now. As it stands in Washington, the much improved Merrily still falls short of its exceptional score…There's still some work for Mr. Sondheim and Mr. Furth to do." Merrily would stop in Leicester, England, two years later (without "The Hills of Tomorrow" again), but then after that it would return to New York, albeit not Broadway.As Maxwell Smart used to say, "Missed it by thatmuch." The year 1994 was the first time I traveled to New York to see a Broadway show. I did it in April to see both halves of the play Angels in America. I returned soon after and squeezed a show in while on a movie junket — a
Sondheim show no less. I saw Passion while it still was in previews. Of course, I love that score but at the same time, The York Theatre Company was presenting director Susan H. Schulman's revised Merrily We Roll Along at St. Peter's Church. I hadn't heard the reviews or heard the CD and didn't know the city well enough to realize it actually was closer to my hotel than Passion was. I wouldn't have wanted to have to choose anyway, though in retrospect — fuck! Then, you are reading someone who, before other things happened like losing a dear friend to a heart defect no one knew she had and having made a mistake by having a surgery that has left me bedridden and unable to travel far or see theater, I always said if time travel were possible, I'd first use it to see Ethel Merman live in Gypsy. Every road has a turning, that's the way you keep learning. By this time, Frank Rich had given up the theater beat to be an invaluable op-ed columnist and David Richards was serving his very brief tenure as The New York Times' chief theater critic. "When it opened it 1981, Merrily We Roll Along had a dazzling score that put stars in your eyes, and a troublesome book that left a sour taste in your mouth. While the show folded after 16 performances on Broadway, no one was willing to lay it to rest," Richards wrote. "If the book could be tidied up and some of its sourness tempered, the thinking went, the creators would surely have a full-fledged hit on their hands. The repair work began with a revival at the La Jolla Playhouse in California in 1985 and continued at Arena Stage in Washington in 1990. Still more adjustments were made two years ago at the Haymarket Theater in Leicester, England. Now the new and revised Merrily We Roll
Along can be seen at the Theater at St. Peter's Church in a spirited production by the York Theater Company. The score, having acquired several new numbers over the years, is, if anything, more brilliant than ever. As for the book, half of it, the second half, is moving in a deeply melancholy way. Getting there is the problem. It always was." Vincent Canby, who was serving as The Times' Sunday theater critic after decades of reviewing films, did have some nice things to say, though he showed that it's hard to remove the movie references from an aging critic's brain who just switched beats. "Only Crazy for You on Broadway, has a pop score to match the songs in Merrily We Roll Along, including the title number, which provides the transitions between the scenes. These transitions, sung by various members of the company, are reminiscent of the visual transitions by which Luis Buñuel connected the episodes in his surreal dream of a comedy The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie: six friends stride with implacable but breezy purpose down a country road through a field of golden wheat. In much the same way, the characters in Merrily We Roll Along march, heads up, through the fine Sondheim score to their predestined fates," Canby wrote. Despite what any critics said, the score already had given Merrily a cult status and when a recording of the York production came out, that almost saved its stature. I'm a huge Sondheim fan and I've managed to see productions of most of his shows and, inevitably, the assessment almost always turns out the same: Magnificent score, weak book. Of the Sondheim shows I have seen, the only one that really managed to have a book that equaled Sondheim's songs was Hugh Wheeler's book for Sweeney Todd.Social media truly can be a wondrous thing. As it allowed me to get comments from original cast members Liz Callaway and Tonya Pinkins and lyricist/book-writer Bill Russell for this piece, I also got responses from others, including two who were in that great York Theatre Company production. Danny Burstein, who played three roles in the show — Ru, The Floor Manager and a Pianist — can be seen on stage,
screen and TV. He received a Tony nomination for the recent revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, plays the recurring role of casino manager Lolly Steinman on Boardwalk Empire and will be seen next year in the film Nor'easter. "I had no idea we salvaged the reputation of the show. My memory of the production, which was about 17 years ago, is slightly vague now, sadly. All I know is that Steve was happy and George was happy. They felt it worked and that was good enough for me," Burstein told me. "I remember coming offstage after the curtain call and Steve hugging Susan Schulman saying 'Yes, yes,' as if she'd finally solved it and figured it out. The show worked." The other York cast member who spoke with me I'm proud to boast that I've spoken with online and for real long before I thought about this article. Anne Bobby, who played Beth in the York production, has done a little bit of everything and still does, but I'd hate to pick out any of her credits for her. "I was honored to work with Steve on Merrily — of all his shows, that's the one I've always felt elicits the most heartfelt fondness from both actors and audiences. The universality of the theme — how we become who we are — to me makes the show his most poignant and personal," Anne said to me. (I feel funny using her first name and everyone else's last name, but like I said I communicate with her more and Bobby sounds like a first name also.) "What gets me about Merrily is that different aspects of the show affect me more deeply than others as I get older. When I was playing Beth at the York I was 27, and “Our Time” was the moment that brought tears to my eyes. Through my 30s, “Good Thing Going” did the same. Now in 2011, surprisingly, it's “Now You Know” that sends a charge through me. Who knows what song will be the resonating soundtrack in my head when I retire? But again, that's the miracle of Merrily — we roll, we just roll, and the songs roll, too." 
The musical's story didn't end at the York. In 2000, the Donmar Warehouse in London did one and they must have gone old school — they brought back "The Hills of Tomorrow" at the beginning and the end, dumped "That Frank" and restored "Rich and Happy." In 2002, Merrily came back twice. Once as part of a Sondheim celebration at the Kennedy Center where they performed in repertory for four months, in addition to Merrily, productions of Sweeney Todd, Company, Sunday in the Park With George, Passion and A Little Night Music. Eric Schaeffer, artistic director of The Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virg., served as artistic director for the Kennedy Center festival. Later in 2002, for one night only, the original Broadway cast reunited for a one-night concert for charity that pretty much stuck to the original song list, though it added "Growing Up," "The Blob" and "Thank You for Coming," a song cut before previews. The Kennedy Center cast included Emily Skinner, who shared a Tony nomination for lead actress in a musical with Alice Ripley as Skinner played Daisy Hilton to Ripley's Violet Hilton, the conjoined twins at the center of Side Show, whose lyrics and book Bill Russell wrote. In Merrily, she got to play Gussie, the star who steals Frank away from his first wife Beth. "Merrily is one of my very favorite musicals I've ever had the joy to be in. Fantastic score, gritty, smart book. Like all of Sondheim's work, so brilliantly thought out, exploring complicated yet universal themes. Merrily is a juicy gem," Skinner told me. "We reveled in throwing ourselves into it. And our Kennedy Center cast was absolutely sublime." Since Beth and Gussie are two of the major roles in the show, I asked both actresses what it was like to age backward live. Skinner said she "didn't really find it particularly difficult. The costumes and wigs did most of the work." For Anne, it remained about the music, not the aging or the chronology. "Moving back in time didn't have as much of an effect on my show as the music. What a workout that show was — we were all like athletes, assembling every night for a full vocal warmup that was critical. We were un-amplified, on a stage that had exactly one
place where you could really project and the sound bounced off the walls instead of getting absorbed by them," she said. "By the end of the run my diaphragm had expanded to the point where some of my costumes barely fit. The show changed the way I sang, changed the way I interpreted song and ultimately, changed the way I looked at my future — and my past. Which is what I think Merrily does for everyone." Though I haven't seen the show, having love those other works that went backward, I don't think the reverse chronology dooms it to failure. That problem can be solved. Burstein agrees. "I think the backwards motion of the musical can work well. It's intriguing, isn't it?" Burstein said. "To see where the characters wind up first and then watch how they got there? The musical takes the concept and expands on it delivering on of Steve's most brilliant scores. But, what score by Sondheim is not one of the most brilliant things you've ever heard?" The music certainly proved infectious to Skinner and her castmates, even between acts. "One of my fondest memories was of dancing (with wild, silly abandon) with the entire cast onstage right behind the curtain to Jonathan Tunick's amazing 'Entr'acte' music. A party every night," Skinner said. "One night, Sondheim actually came and watched us do this, as apparently word of our ridiculous dance rave had reached him. Yes, that production was absolutely one of my favorite theatrical experiences." The show's story doesn't end there either. Eric Schaeffer in 2002 directed his own production of Merrily at his Signature Theatre. There have been too many others to catch them all. Director John Doyle, who brought revivals of Company and Sweeney Todd to Broadway where the actors also played the instruments, did the same with Merrily in Cincinnati. Early next year, Encores plans its concert version directed by James Lapine, which already has added an extra week of performances. Several Encores productions have then made the leap to Broadway, the most famous being the still-running Chicago. Could it happen again? The City Center even has produced a YouTube ad for the Merrily concert.I thought it would only be fair that I toss out some plugs for the people who were kind enough to give me comments for this post. I also thought I'd try to put a song in a link with their name, though not necessarily from Merrily We Roll Along. In alphabetical order:
Anne never would give me something she's working on, but I know she's been writing and helping feed the Occupy Wall Street protesters.
Burstein currently plays Buddy Plummer opposite Bernadette Peters in Eric Schaeffer's acclaimed revival of Sondheim's Follies on Broadway through Jan. 22.
Callaway and her sister, Ann Hampton Callaway, will co-host the annual Yuletide Celebration with the Indianapolis Symphony in Indianapolis from Dec. 2–23. She's almost always performing somewhere. Check out her Facebook Fan Appreciation page for information.
Pinkins appears in the play Milk Like Sugar at Playwrights Horizons' Peter Jay Sharp Theater through Nov. 27.
Unexpected Joy, Russell's new musical with composer Janet Hood, will have its first reading in early December.
Skinner is playing Mrs. Wilkinson in the 2009 Tony-winning best musical Billy Elliot at the Imperial Theatre through its closing Jan. 8.
Thanks to all of them for helping me out.
Tweet
Labels: Awards, Boardwalk Empire, Books, Buñuel, Hackman, Hammerstein, Merman, Music, Musicals, Rodgers, Sondheim, Theater Tribute
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Betty Garrett (1919-2011)
With a talent that spanned generations, decades and the mediums of stage, screen and television and who kept working almost to the very end, we have lost the great Betty Garrett, who has passed away at the age of 91.
Born May 23, 1919, in St. Joseph, Mo., Garrett debuted on Broadway in 1942 in the musical revue Of V We Sing, one of many musical revues in which she took part in the beginning of her stage career that were intended as rousing support for our troops serving in World War II.
Her third Broadway production certainly sounded like more of the same with the title Something for the Boys, but it was an original musical comedy produced by Michael Todd with songs by Cole Porter, a book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields and starring Ethel Merman. Garrett not only had a part in the show, she also served as Merman's understudy, but as her reputation goes, Merman never missed a performance.
She followed that with another musical comedy called Jackpot where her co-stars included Nanette Fabray and Mary Wickes. Her final Broadway appearance of the 1940s would be the musical revue Call Me Mister where one of her co-stars was Jules Munshin, who would appear in one of her biggest successes where she was heading: Hollywood.
She made her film debut in 1948's Big City about an abandoned baby raised by three men who grows up to be Margaret O'Brien and, though the film wasn't really a musical, gets to have her young singing voice dubbed by Marni Nixon. That same year, she did co-star in a musical, Words and Music, a fictionalized version of the story of Rodgers and Hart that dragged out practically every MGM star available such as Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Mickey Rooney, Cyd Charisse, etc., to play either themselves or characters. Both of Garrett's first two films were directed by Norman Taurog.
1949 brought three big movie musicals for Garrett, including one of the best of all time. Busby Berkeley directed her in Take Me Out to the Ball Game, which for the first time put her in the same film with Kelly, Jules Munshin and Frank Sinatra, tossing in Esther Williams for good measure.
She worked with Williams again as well as Ricardo Montalban and Red Skelton in the musical comedy Neptune's Daughter, which featured Frank Loesser's Oscar-winning song "Baby, It's Cold Outside."
Garrett's final 1949 musical though is the one that has stood the test of time. Pairing Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly as co-directors for the first time and starring Kelly, Sinatra and Munshin as three sailors on leave in New York, On the Town really raised Garrett's profile with her role as Hildy (short for Brunhilde), the man-hungry cab driver. With its screenplay and lyrics by Comden and Green and music by Leonard Bernstein, it's still a blast.
Unfortunately, the communist witchhunt brought Garrett's career at that point to a screeching halt. She was married to actor Larry Parks, who admitted membership in the communist party, but refused to name names before the House Un-American Activities Committee. This also coincided with Garrett being very pregnant with their child. The two survived in nightclubs, but Garrett didn't resurface on Broadway or movie screens until 1955 when she landed a role in the movie My Sister Eileen with Janet Leigh and Jack Lemmon. That same year she began making TV appearances on some episodes of The Ford Television Theatre.
In November 1956, she returned to the Broadway stage, replacing Judy Holliday in Bells Are Ringing during Holliday's vacation. She returned to the Great White Way again in 1960 in the original musical Beg, Borrow or Steal and did two other appearances on Broadway as well as various episodic TV spots throughout the 1960s.
The next role that really brought Garrett back into national prominence didn't come until 1973 when she was cast in the recurring role of Irene Lorenzo, a new neighbor and foil for Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker on All in the Family. The role earned her a Golden Globe in 1975 for best supporting actress on television. Vincent Gardenia also was cast to play Irene's husband Frank. Garrett played Irene for 24 episodes from 1973 until 1975 when she joined the cast of another hit comedy, Laverne & Shirley. There, she played the girls' landlady Edna Babish before eventually becoming Laverne's stepmom when she wed her widowed father Frank DeFazio (Phil Foster). She stayed with the show until 1981. She never had another role as a series regular but did appear frequently as a guest, most recently on Grey's Anatomy in 2006. In 2003, she was nominated for an Emmy as guest actress in a comedy for an appearance on Becker.
She appeared on Broadway three more times: in a play, The Supporting Cast, in 1981, in a stage version of Meet Me in St. Louis in 1989 and in the revival of Stephen Sondheim's Follies in 2001, where she got to perform "Broadway Baby" as Hattie Walker.
Her final credit on IMDb is for a 2009 mystery comedy called Dark and Stormy Night starring Jim Beaver, the noble Ellsworth on Deadwood, and currently on Supernatural.
R.I.P. Ms. Garrett.
Tweet
Labels: Awards, blacklist, Cole Porter, Comden and Green, Cyd Charisse, Donen, Frank Loesser, Garland, Gene Kelly, Mary Wickes, Merman, Musicals, Obituary, Rodgers, Sinatra, Sondheim, Television, Theater
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
