The Saturday List: Favourite Songs from 1990s Musicals

Posted on April 6, 2013 by David Fick
RENT

To purchase the original Broadway Cast Recording of RENT, click on the image above.

The 1990s. The next decade to be the subject of a Saturday List. Looking at the 1990s is very different to looking at the 1960s or 1970s, or even the 1980s. For one thing, Off-Broadway musicals – while certainly a presence in earlier decades – start to hold a much higher status and offer more competition for places on the list. It’s also a decade that features some very finely integrated scores, which makes separating a song out for a list like this a bit difficult. Also, there are some scores in the 1990s that stand better as complete units, which also makes it hard to feature them in a list like this. So some of my favourite musicals from this decade, like Marie Christine, Passion and Hello Again, end up not being represented in this list, while other shows that perhaps aren’t so great – you’ll know which those are – end up with a spot on the list simply because they have a brilliant, unforgettable song or two that has wedged its way into my heart forever. That said, for the sake of a more even spread, I’ve allowed myself to select only one song from any given musical for this list. But before we get started, here are a few honourable mentions that almost made my top ten: “Lily’s Eyes” from The Secret Garden, “Dressing Them Up” and “Where You Are” from Kiss of the Spider Woman, “Stars and the Moon”, “Surabaya Santa” and “One Small Step”)from Songs For a New World, “This is Not Over Yet” and “The Picture Show” from Parade and “I’d Rather Be Sailing” from A New Brain.

10. “I’ll Cover You (Reprise)” from RENT

The first version of “I’ll Cover You” is a fabulous love song. The reprise is heartbreaking. For all its problems, RENT has some great songs in its score, but there is none more moving than this one. Perhaps if Jonathan Larson had realised how much his choice to have Mimi live at the end of the show flew in the face of the show’s entire thesis, he might have come up with something to top “I’ll Cover You” for Roger’s final song instead of the rather insipid “Your Eyes”. But because the opposite decision was made, it RENT reaches its emotional climax midway through Act II. It’s one of the shows’s biggest flaws. Nonetheless, the reprise of “I’ll Cover You” and its segue into “Seasons of Love” for the coda make for compelling and moving drama.

9. “Unsettled Scores” from Whistle Down the Wind

Sometimes a song just strikes a chord with you. Perhaps you aren’t sure why at the time and even though you are sure you might find some technical flaws if you delve into the music and lyrics too deeply – which of course you don’t do unless you absolutely have to – you can’t get enough of it. Perhaps that’s the basis for what constitutes a guilty pleasure. This song is a song like that for me. My first exposure to Whistle Down the Wind was the 1998 concept album, an album of which I bought two copies – one for myself and one for the boy I was crushing on big time. Listening to the album takes me back to that time instantly and I guess some of my feelings around that crush are wrapped up my love for this amazing, spine-tingling soliloquy. Michael Ball’s stunning vocal delivery of the piece also helps. I might have to go and have a listen and wallow in my youth now.

8. “Martin Guerre” from Martin Guerre

Sometimes you like a song because it is just so much fun to belt out in the car. That’s the reason why this song is on this list. I just loved singing it so much around the turn of the century. I even auditioned with this song once. It’s a good sing. But it has to be with the original lyrics. Martin Guerre has gone from flawed to bad to worse in the slew of revisions to which Cameron Mackintosh has subjected it. Everyone involved – including composer and librettist, Claude-Michel Schönberg; librettist and co-lyricist, Alain Boublil; and co-lyricist, Stephen Clark – seems to have lost sight of the story they were trying to tell when they started out, as well as what they were trying to achieve by telling it.

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Monday Meditation: Online Musical Theatre Forums Got Over Me

Posted on April 1, 2013 by David Fick
The homepage of the once wonderful website, Musicals.Net

The homepage of the once wonderful website, Musicals.Net

When I first dialed up and connected in the 1990s, I was fascinated to discover online communities like rec.arts.theatre.musicals and Musicals.Net, virtual places inhabited by fans of musical theatre, who could interact with one another and discover more about musicals. Later on, I discovered places like Finishing the Chat, All That Chat and the message boards at BroadwayWorld. I became a regular poster, particularly on Musicals.Net and Finishing the Chat, where I used to contribute daily. Used to. Not anymore. The landscape of the Internet has changed. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest have provided ways of interacting with those people with whom I connected more conveniently; the knowledge base of the Internet in general has become more vast and more accessible; and the way that sites like these are run – sometimes in response to very challenging realities, like spambots – have all changed my perspective on interacting with people in forums such as those mentioned above.

Take Finishing the Chat, for example. This board used to be a thriving hub of activity for all things Sondheim, as well as for wider musical theatre and off-topic discussion. Nowadays it is a ghost town, not least of all because it became a closed gate community due to the prevalence of spambots. While trying to recruit new members, I discovered just how difficult it had become to join the board. It took a long time for some new applications to be approved, so that often, by the time the friend I had interested in joining was able to post, he or she had lost interest. And when a group of people is stuck in the same place over time, disagreements happen and there is fallout. Finishing the Chat taught me a lesson that these virtual friends more often than not turn out to be fair-weather friends. That said, there are some people with whom I’ve established lasting relationships from my days on the board, some of whom are very dear to me.

Then there’s Musicals.Net, a site that looked very different 15 or so years ago to the way it does today. Starting out as a thread based discussion board, the site was run by an owner who, at some point after switching the format to the now conventional message board format, lost interest in maintaining the site and gave over its administration to a group of moderators that systematically dismantled everything that was successful about Musicals.Net in the first place. They banned regular contributors over trivial disagreements, played favourites and were guilty of using double standards to make site-related decisions. The result was that the site became a desert. Their spin was that “people moved on” and that that’s shy the site changed the way it did. Amazingly, prior to the group of current moderators, the site’s membership base replenished itself and there was always someone new around, ready to discuss musicals with insights into the form. And of course, anyone who pointed this out or objected to an unfair ban or in any way questioned the legitimacy of the moderators actions – including myself, last year – was banned from the site. You see, the problem there was that the moderators accepted their power without accepting the responsibilities of their privileged positions, did not step down when they lost interest in moderating the boards so that they were run in the way that they were set up to be run and made the site about themselves rather than about the community they were meant to serve. Musicals.Net turned into Animal Farm. I contributed a great deal to that site in the decade in the almost 15 years that I belonged to it. I wish I could take back everything I ever put into it. The wasteland that it has become is heartbreaking.

The thing about message boards like these, even though my journey has taken me elsewhere and my approach to them is more detached, is that they are not so much a dead issue for me as a non-issue. I still read the message boards at BroadwayWorld and load up the home page of Finishing the Chat to see what people are posting. Occasionally I will even post something too. But really, I’d rather post here, even if the responses don’t flow thick and fast. They certainly don’t on Finishing the Chat or Musicals.Net anyway, and BroadwayWorld is a bit of a free-for-all where one is as likely to stumble upon a decent discussion as not.

The difference is that posting here means that I’m in control now, both of the extent to which I post and of the ownership of my contributions. I no longer have to engage in trivial debates about where things should be posted, about how a person promoting a genuine lecture series on musical theatre is not a spambot or try to keep message boards alive because nobody posts in them. You see, the landscape of the Internet might have changed, but so have I. I want to write about musicals. Here, I can. And people who visit this site are welcome to discuss them with me, because I want to discuss musicals too. And since those are the very things I sought out in the first place, having this space to do so a very wonderful thing indeed.

This post is a response to “Sex Got Over Me” in Shirley MacLaine’s I’m Over All That and Other Confessions, one in a series of responses to MacLaine’s book on this site in the Monday Meditation column.

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Monday Montage: BRING IT ON: THE MUSICAL

Posted on April 1, 2013 by David Fick
BRING IT ON

To purchase the original Broadway Cast Recording of BRING IT ON, click on the image above.

Today’s Monday Montage focuses on the first new musical of the 2012-2013 season on Broadway, Bring it On. The show opened at the St James Theatre on 1 August 2012 and closed on 30 December after 171 performances. With a book by Jeff Whitty, the show featured music and lyrics by Amanda Green, Tom Kitt and Lin-Manuel Miranda and was based on the 2000 film of the same name, a comedy about the the competitive and cutthroat world of high school cheerleading. A national tour of the show preceded the Broadway production.

To view the Bring it On Monday Montage, simply follow this link to view photos, videos and merchandising from the show on Pinterest. Have fun!

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Musical Theatre Sunday School: The Best Recording of THE BOY FRIEND

Posted on March 31, 2013 by David Fick

With our readathon of Sandy Wilson’s The Boy Friend complete and an extra Sunday this month, I thought there would be no better time to compare and contrast different recordings of the show for Musical Theatre Sunday School. Before I seriously started looking into recordings of The Boy Friend, my impression was that there were only a handful of recordings. For that reason, I was rather surprised to see that CastAlbums lists fifteen recordings of the score in their database. This was quite delightful to see, as finding a solid recording of the show is easier said than done. Nonetheless, I am going to focus on the five recordings of the score that I find most satisfying, all of which are linked to stage productions of the show.

THE BOY FRIEND

To purchase the 1954 London Cast Recording of THE BOY FRIEND, click on the image above.

In some ways, the original 1954 London recording, featuring Anne Rogers and Anthony Hayes, is still the one to go for. While it is shorter than most other recordings, with “The You-Don’t-Want-To-Play-With-Me Blues” and “Safety In Numbers” as well as verses of some songs and some reprises absent, it reflects most accurately the tone of the piece. Rogers is a delightfully unaffected Polly and Hayes makes one swoon as much as she when he croons his verses of “A Room in Bloomsbury” and “I Could Be Happy with You”. One of the big pluses of this recording is Violetta’s more restrained take on Hortense. Many of the subsequent actresses who take on the part soar over the top, screeching their way through “Nicer in Nice”, their all to frequent squeals making the song rather unbearable. If there’s something on this recording that doesn’t quite land, it has to be Bobby and Maisie’s big duet, “Won’t You Charleston with Me?”. Although Denise Hirst is a personable Maisie, Larry Drew sounds like one of her chums rather than the forward American you’d expect him to be. It’s also quite difficult to find a Mme Dubonnet who is completely satisfying and, while Joan Sterndale Bennett’s interpretation of the numbers glistens with nostalgia, her warbling vibrato takes its toll on the ear all too soon. That said, this recording is disarming and will win you over with its charm.

Similar interpretations of the material can be found in the South African cast recordings of the material from 1957, which are presented as two medleys – “Selections from The Boy Friend 1” and “Selections from The Boy Friend 2” – on the CD pressing of Wilson’s The Buccaneer. Although these two medleys really offer only a whirlwind tour through the songs, the soloists are solid, particularly when it comes to supporting roles such as Mme Dubonnet and Lord Brockhurst.

THE BOY FRIEND

To purchase the 1954 Broadway Cast Recording of THE BOY FRIEND, click on the image above.

I would imagine that most people’s go-to recording of The Boy Friend is the Original Broadway Cast Recording, which preserved the Broadway debut of Julie Andrews for posterity. Andrews is an ideal Polly and the album sports more polish than the earlier London album, as well as an orchestra. It is also a more complete rendition of the score, with only “Nicer in Nice” and the Act I and II finales missing in their entirety. John Hewer is a solid Tony, even if he sounds a little less dreamy than Hayes. Of the supporting players, the most successful are Geoffrey Hibbert (Lord Brockhurst) and Dilys Lay (Dulcie), whose take on “It’s Never Too Late To Fall In Love” is delightful. One of the marked improvements on this album is Ruth Altman as Mme Dubonnet, particularly in her delivery of “Fancy Forgetting”. (“Poor Little Pierrette” suffers a little due to the harsh tone brought about by age, but there’s not much that can be done about that, is there?) Perhaps the least satisfying cut on the disc is Ann Wakefield’s “Safety in Numbers” which, after a lovely introduction, descends into a charmless shouting marathon that is painful to endure. Nonetheless, this recording continues to be popular almost 60 years on, and for good reason.

THE BOY FRIEND

To purchase the 1970 Broadway Cast Recording of THE BOY FRIEND, click on the image above.

The Boy Friend returned to Broadway in 1970, with Judy Carne as Polly and Ronald Young as Tony. Less satisfying than Rogers or Andrews in the role, Carne is an adequate Polly and Young is a typical Tony. Outshining them by far are the supporting players, notably Sandy Duncan as Maisie. Indeed, Duncan and Harvey Evans offer the most successful take on “Won’t You Charleston with Me?” on a recording of the show. If that weren’t enough, this recording also features the best Mme Dubonnet of the lot, Jeanne Beauvais. “Fancy Forgetting” and “Poor Little Pierette” are beautifully delivered and Beauvais manages the comedy in of “The You-Don’t-Want-To Play-With-Me Blues” without sacrificing her lovely tone. David Vaughan and Simon McQueen also deliver a very solid – if less effusive than their earlier Broadway counterparts – “It’s Never Too Late To Fall In Love”. While the chorus has the right sound for the most part, their delivery lacks energy, which means that you can do better elsewhere if you are looking for good recordings of the ensemble numbers. But I think you’d be hard pressed not to purchase at least the tracks featuring Duncan, Evans and Beauvais for ideal versions of those songs from the score.

THE BOY FRIEND

To purchase the 1984 London Cast Recording of THE BOY FRIEND, click on the image above.

The final recording I’m going to discuss today is the 1984 London Cast Recording of the show. You can hear the shift that had taken place in musical theatre between earlier productions of this show and this one. The approach to the material is somewhat less subtle and at times a little too tongue-in-cheek. Jane Wellman and Simon Green play Polly and Tony straight down the line, which makes them all the more appealing, and Rosemary Ashe is fun as Hortense. But you can hear Linda-Mae Brewer struggling with the period persona of Maisie and sometimes the character voices, like that of Peter Bayliss’s rather rum Lord Brockhurst, feel as fake as they are. Too much of what gets done here feels put on instead of lived in. This is in line with the perception of how to make The Boy Friend and other old shows work in our more cynical times, but the line is a fine one to tread and balance is not always achieved here, which is a pity.

The Boy Friend is not the kind of show where you are going to get away with owning just one recording if you want to be able to hear the score at its best. My recommendation, if you aren’t a hardcore fan or a collector who is going to buy multiple copies, is to find the artists you like, buy individual MP3s and compile your own recording. To that end, you’ll probably do best working from the 1954 and 1970 Broadway recordings – but I still think that the London original is indispensable, if only for the sense of authenticity it brings to the numbers.

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The Saturday List: Favourite Songs from 1980s Musicals

Posted on March 30, 2013 by David Fick

To purchase the Broadway Revival Cast Recording of LA CAGE AUX FOLLES, click on the image above.

Choosing ten favourite songs from 1980s musicals was considerably easier than choosing songs for similar lists from the 1960s and 1970s. There just weren’t as many great shows with great scores in the 1980s. Ranking the songs is another story. This kind of thing can be agonising when you’re talking favourites and not craftsmanship, when your subjectivity is battling against objectivity that knows better. I’m sure there will be some naysayers when it comes to the number one spot, for instance, but that’s all right. It is my list, after all, and not everyone can have the same favourites. Even when it comes to the full list, the fans of The Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Starlight Express and Aspects of Love will probably will blink when they see that songs from those shows don’t appear there. At least I can offer the Andrew Lloyd Webber fans some honourable mentions: “Think of Me”, “Skimbleshanks”, “Starlight Express” and “The First Man You Remember”. A couple of others: “One of the Boys” from Woman of the Year and a trio of songs from Baby – “The Story Goes On”, “I Chose Right” and “Two People in Love”, all of which have moments where the lyrics are perhaps just clunky enough to pull me out of the song. But it took a long time to choose “I Am What I Am” over “The Story Goes On”, let me tell you that. Anyway, here’s a shot at trying to list my ten favourites – as always, I’ve limited my choices to one per show.

10. “I Am What I Am” from La Cage aux Folles

I’m not a huge fan of La Cage aux Folles, but the last revival did manage to shift my perspective on the piece somewhat. (That doesn’t make me turn a blind eye to the chip Arthur Laurents had on his shoulder about this show and the revival that made a success of it without him, not does it make me appreciate Jerry Herman’s little snipe at Sunday in the Park with George in his Tony Awards speech.) Ultimately, I chose this song over the one from Baby because – in context – I have a stronger emotional response to it. In fact, when it’s done as written in the show (George Hearn in full drag) or with that subtext behind it (George Hearn in a tux at the Tony Awards), it is extremely moving, even if gets a bit blustery at some points.

9. “Rich and Happy” from Merrily We Roll Along

The Sondheads are probably going to try to string me up for picking this song over any of the others in Merrily We Roll Along. I could have picked the heartbreaking “Like It Was”, the frenetic “Franklin Shepard, Inc.”, the poppy “Good Thing Going”, one of the two versions of “Not a Day Goes By” or even the wry “Bobby and Jackie and Jack”. I love them all. Instead, I’m choosing a song that Stephen Sondheim found lacking in the context of the show, cut and replaced. Yes, I could have chosen “That Frank”. It uses some of the same musical themes. But it’s just not as thrilling, or as funny. And of course, part of the reason for choosing “Rich and Happy” is because its been cast to the side. Anyway, I think that Sondheim’s problems with the song (as outlined in Finishing the Hat) have more to do with the staging and performance of it in the original production than with the song itself. Check out this video footage from 1981 and see if you agree. When it comes down to brass tacks, Harold Prince and his original production of Merrily We Roll Along has a lot to answer for.

8. “One Day More” from Les Misérables

There was always going to be a song from Les Misérables on this list. For a while I thought it was going to be on my own, but it the end it had to be this thrilling piece from the end of Act I. Even the people I know who don’t like this show, like this number. It’s the perfect example of everything that’s right with Les Misérables. On the plus side, there are the thrilling orchestrations (depending on which version you’re listening to), the careful balance and coming together of all of the narrative threads introduced over Act I and some fantastic pageantry in the staging. On the other hand, there is the way that musical motifs are used totally randomly. There are many times in Les Misérables when you are simply left wondering why a particular character is given a particular musical theme. Why, for instance, do Enjolras and the revolutionaries sing the melody of the bridge of “I Dreamed a Dream”, albeit in a major key, in this song? It’s best just to push the question to the back of your mind and enjoy the marvelous counterpoint. The problem is that the question is always there, niggling.

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Musical Theatre Sunday School: THE BOY FRIEND Readathon Part 4

Posted on March 24, 2013 by David Fick

To purchase the libretto of THE BOY FRIEND by Sandy Wilson, click on the image above.

Our penultimate Musical Theatre Sunday School for the month concludes our little readathon of Sandy Wilson’s libretto of The Boy Friend, which we started at the beginning of March. Today’s reading focuses on Act III – pages 93 – 126 in the copy I own, which is the 1955 Andre Deutsch edition.

Sandy Wilson’s charming illustrations dot the action of the play once again in this act. I adore the one that is on the title page for Act III, which features the cast in costume at the ball, one of them looking decidedly like Charlie Chaplin. I wonder if the other figures in the illustration are also overt references to figures from the 1920s that are perhaps less instantly recognizable to someone like me, who grew up in the last two decades of the twentieth century. (If you are keen to play detective, the illustration is below left and you can leave your ideas of who the other figures might be in the comments box. Of course, they may just be fun generic figures in the style of the times.)

Sandy Wilson's illustration for the title page of Act III of THE BOYFRIEND

Sandy Wilson’s illustration for the title page of Act III of THE BOYFRIEND

The third act is, by necessity, a little more plotty than the first two. By necessity, because all of the narrative threads need to be resolved by the final curtain. That means more book and fewer musical numbers. In fact, there are nine pages of dialogue before we get to the first number. Even with all of the time spent on reuniting Polly with Tony, Percival finally capitulating to Mme Dubonnet’s desires to rekindle their lost romance and all of the other girls receiving proposals and stalling until the final lines of the show to say yes, there’s still one narrative strand that is neither developed nor concluded satisfactorily. While the plot of The Boy Friend may be inconsequential, it never falls into the illogical pitfalls of genuine 1920s musicals until this point.

The moment of which I am speaking involves the delightful duet, “It’s Never Too Late to Fall in Love”. The subplot of which this number is the climax starts with the introduction of Lord Brockhurst in Act II. You’ll remember that he had a thing for all the young ladies of France, much to the distaste of his wife. In the third act, Wilson develops this by engineering a situation where he ends up with Dulcie, a situation which can’t really be developed any further because Lord has to be reunited with Lady as does Dulcie with her beau, Pierre. The problem is that Wilson doesn’t have the stage time in Act III to set up the scene that introduces the song well enough. In fact, Dulcie’s temporary disenchantment with Pierre is introduced in a short piece of onstage pantomime:

ENTER BOYS and GIRLS, followed by LORD B. Laughter and gaiety in the course of which DULCIE slaps PIERRE’S face. EXEUNT OMNES, leaving DULCIE disgruntled. LORD B. sees DULCIE and approaches her.

There’s a scene missing there, as well as one in which Dulcie’s apparent conflict with Pierre is resolved. Lord Brockhurst is neatly pulled out of the situation by an irate Lady Brockhurst, but the next time we see Dulcie, she’s accepting Pierre’s proposal. This time, there isn’t even a stage direction to get us from A to B. It’s the single flaw of an otherwise completely delightful book.

Other than the 1920s slang infused “It’s Never Too Late to Fall in Love”, the only other new songs in this act are “The Riviera” and “Poor Little Pierrette”. There’s also a dance showpiece, “The Carnival Tango”. The first is the kind of piece that was common in 1920s musicals, one that pays tribute to a new dance craze, like “The Varsity Drag” from Good News (1927). It’s my least favourite number in the show, but it does what it needs to do. “Poor Little Pierrette” is a diegetic number sung by Mme Dubonnet to Polly. Although the introduction of the number flows neatly out of the dialogue and into song, I’m not crazy about the piece being diegetic. It makes the setup of the number seem more contrived that it would, were it just a story Mme Dobonnet was telling that then slipped into song almost without the audience noticing. “The Carnival Tango” makes use of another musical comedy tradition, the exotic or ethnic number. Performed by a pair of speciality dancers, Pépé and Lolita, the number doesn’t achieve much plot-wise, serving only as a part of Wilson’s tribute to the traditions of his beloved 1920s shows.

Overall, Act III isn’t as tight a piece of work as the first two acts. There’s a little too much focus on gaining enough momentum to get to the end of the show and too little placed on the our journey there. Fortunately, the style of the piece probably pretty much neutralises those problems for the audience, who have gone with the flow of things for almost 60 years.

That’s all for today, folks. I’ll have to think of something smart for next week’s Sunday School – perhaps I’ll do something about various recordings of The Boyfriend. In the meantime, why don’t you share your thoughts about Act III of the show using the comment box below. (Of course, even if you come upon this column long after today, I hope you will share your opinions. I’m always up for some good discussion.) See you next week!

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The Saturday List: Favourite Songs from 1970s Musicals

Posted on March 23, 2013 by David Fick

To purchase the Original Cast Recording of GREASE, click on the image above.

The Saturday List this week features some of my favourite songs from 1970s musicals. And let me tell you: while I thought that last week’s list about 1960s was tough, this one was even more difficult to compile! As with the list for the 1960s musicals, I’ve only allowed myself to select one song from any given musical for the list to allow a more even spread – otherwise, it might be completely possible that this list could be composed of songs from Company, Follies, A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd! But first, how about some honourable mentions, in no particular order: there’s “I Got Love” from Purlie (inseparable from a tour de force introduction into the show tunes catalogue by Melba Moore), the brilliant “Over at the Frankenstein Place” and “Dammit Janet” from The Rocky Horror Show; “All That Jazz” and “Cell Block Tango” from Chicago, “Corner of the Sky” from Pippin, Home from “The Wiz”, “Buenos Aires” and “Rainbow High” from Evita, “Could We Start Again Please?” and “Gethsemane” from Jesus Christ Superstar, “I Still Believe in Love” and “Fallin'” from They’re Playing Our Song and “All Good Gifts” from Godspell. And now for the my ten favourite songs of the decade.

10. “Those Magic Changes” from Grease

Others might cite songs like “Summer Nights” or “Greased Lightnin'” when it comes to naming a song from Grease for a list like this. Personally, I am so tired of hearing those songs at every wedding or dance I attend in the ubiquitous “Grease Megamix”, that there is no way they were going to make this list. My choice is “Those Magic Changes”, a beautiful and bittersweet little song about romance, nostalgia and music itself. Just thinking about the song stirs memories of old crushes, past relationships, my days at university and the Carpenters. It’s the kind of song that makes you smile even about the sad things that have happened in your past.

9. “NYC” from Annie

Like many folks my age, I experienced Annie on film before I saw it on stage. In fact, my first experience of the stage version of Annie was when I was in it, in 1997, which is when I eventually made the effort to get the cast album. Imagine how cheated I felt having realised that I had been subjected to “Let’s Go to the Movies” for all those years, when “NYC” was waiting in the score for me to discover it all along. I love “NYC”. For me, it captures what I think New York might have been like during the 1930s. And it’s a far better song than “Let’s Go to the Movies”. I was very gratified to see it restored in the TV film in 1999, with the original Annie belting out the Star-to-Be solo. Fabulous.

8. “Look What Happened to Mabel” from Mack and Mabel

Mack and Mabel is famous for being a show with a fabulous score and an unworkable book. I’m not going into a long discussion about the book now, but the score is fabulous and this song is one of my favourites. I first saw it on The Royal Variety Performance in a medley promoting the 1995 London production starring Howard McGillin as Mack and Caroline O’Connor as Mabel. Jumping Saint Jude, it’s a catchy number. I know now that I’ve been thinking about it, I’ll be singing it all day long.

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Musical Theatre Sunday School: THE BOY FRIEND Readathon Part 3

Posted on March 17, 2013 by David Fick

To purchase the libretto of THE BOY FRIEND by Sandy Wilson, click on the image above.

Today’s Musical Theatre Sunday School continues with the readathon of The Boy Friend by Sandy Wilson, which we started two weeks ago. We’ve covered the preface, author’s note and first act so far and today’s reading focuses on Act II – which takes up pages 53 – 91 in the 1955 Andre Deutsch edition.

The act moves like lightening though the events of the act. Act 2 all takes place at the seaside and revolved around Polly and Tony’s meeting, which is surrounded by the numerous antics of the girls, boys and Hortense. The romance between Mme Dubonnet and Percival also continues to bloom – or rather, not to bloom as the case may be. And we are introduced to Lord and Lady Brockhurst, the former of which has an eye for young ladies and the latter of which suffers no fools, including her husband. It turns out that they are Tony’s parents and, by the end of the act, they are the cause of Tony and Polly’s separation, leaving us wondering whether they will ever be reunited before the final curtain. (Of course, we know they will – but how?)

All of the salient plot points are once again delightfully illustrated by Sandy Wilson. My favourite in this act is a sketch of Hortense proclaiming why it is so much “Nicer in Nice” on page 71. The songs that appear alongside that one in this act are: “Sur Le Plage”, “A Room in Bloomsbury”, “The You-Don’t-Want-to-Play-With-Me Blues”, “Safety in Numbers” and two reprises of “I Could Be Happy With You”. The best of these is the completely winning “A Room in Bloomsbury”, which is a throwback to Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s “A Tiny Flat Near Soho Square” from their 1926 musical, Lido Lady. (It’s also worth mentioning, at this point, since I didn’t last week, that “I Could Be Happy With You” is a reference to “I Want to Be Happy” from the 1925 musical, No, No, Nanette. Wilson certainly knew his stuff when it came to the 1920s!)

While there is still much in which one can delight in the second act songs, they are perhaps less satisfying on the whole than those from Act I. I think the thing that is frustrating about them is Wilson’s tendency to split up a single lyric line over several musical phrases and that the rhyme schemes are constructed as tightly so as to hold the thoughts together, as they are in the first act. Indeed, because Wilson is showing off a bit more with some deft rhymes, like those in “Nicer in Nice”, attention is called to the broken phrases. But given that these songs are intended to be a pastiche of a particular style of lyric writing, that which was very much en vogue in the 1920s, I tend to think it matters less than if they were simply a set of lyrics for a musical play with no such reference point.

The delightful characters continue to play with the stock character constructions of the 1920s musicals. The three primary romances all get into typical second act conundrums: it appears that Tony is only after Polly’s money, though thanks to a healthy dose of dramatic irony we all know this isn’t true; Percy refuses to bow to Mme Dubonnet’s attempts to kindle their romance; and Maisie keeps the boys, especially Bobby, guessing about who she will dance with at the carnival. It is classic three act structuring, perfectly executed. The coincidental and highly convenient arrival of the Brockhursts on the scene is a typical 1920s-style plot development, and their offering comic obstacles to the comic couples and a serious obstacle to the romantic couple is textbook stuff, yet another testament to Wilson’s knowledge and love of the period. His genuine affection for those 1920s shows (as well as his skill) is revealed by the way he takes the hackneyed techniques and motifs and that were the standard building blocks of those musicals and distills each to its essence, thereby showing each off at its best. Some of the genuine 1920s shows tended to become rather convoluted in the way they packed in all of the bits and pieces that were expected of them, but The Boy Friend is marvelously free of such clutter.

So, what did you think of Act II? Share your thoughts about this act the comment box below. In the meantime, I’ll start reading the final act, which we’ll discuss next week. See you then!

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The Saturday List: Favourite Songs from 1960s Musicals

Posted on March 16, 2013 by David Fick

To purchase the Original Broadway Cast Recording of STOP THE WORLD - I WANT TO GET OFF, click on the image above.

Today’s list features some of my favourite songs from musicals of the 1960s. A tough decade to whittle down to just 10 songs, but here goes. For the sake of a more even spread, I’ve only allowed myself to select one song from any given musical for the list proper. And of course along with these there have to be many honourable mentions, including “They Were You” from The Fantasticks, “Married” from Cabaret, “The Brotherhood of Man” from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, “The Rhythm of Life” from Sweet Charity, “Elegance” from Hello, Dolly! and “Put on a Happy Face” from Bye Bye Birdie. And even then we’ve only struck the tip of the iceberg. Well, here we go!

10. “What Kind of Fool Am I?” from Stop the World – I Want to Get Off

Stop the World – I Want to Get Off is one of those musicals that seems to have been, in its time, a little musical that could. While it sports a couple of other songs that could make it onto this list (“Gonna Build a Mountain” and “Once in a Lifetime”), my choice is “What Kind of Fool Am I?” This song gets to the heart of what this musical is all about, a concern that was becoming an increasingly overt theme in musicals of the 1960s and would characterise many musicals of the 1970s and 1980s – the need to connect truly with other people. Yes, in this case the context is romantic, but that need to connect with someone and the idea that the only person in the way of that connection is oneself struck a chord with audiences who got caught up in the adventures of Littlechap, one that still resonates truly and profoundly today.

9. “The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha

Most people love Man of La Mancha. I’m not one of those people. Don’t get me wrong: I admire it and don’t think it awful by any means. It simply hasn’t yet moved me in the profound way that it seems to have moved others. That said, I love this song. It may be cheesy, especially out of context, but it works.

8. “It’s a Fine Life” from Oliver!

What I love about this song is that while it starts off as what appears to be a jolly salute to life, by the time it ends, there’s a lump in my throat. Particularly in the hands of the original Nancy, Georgia Brown, who has a rawness that is lacking in many contemporary, more polished actresses who take on the role. (Shani Wallis also does a great job in the film, benefitting immensely from the altered setup for the number.) “It’s a Fine Life” probably isn’t the most technically proficient song – Lionel Bart is no meticulous perfectionist when it comes to crafting rhymes, for example – but this list isn’t about technical proficiency. This song captures the bittersweet nature of life so tenderly by the time it gets to its final verse, with an ironic glossing over black eyes that is typically Dickensian in its social commentary and, for just a moment, Brechtian in its approach, that its tender rawness wins one over completely.

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Musical Theatre Sunday School: THE BOY FRIEND Readathon Part 2

Posted on March 10, 2013 by David Fick

To purchase the libretto of THE BOY FRIEND by Sandy Wilson, click on the image above.

This weekend’s Musical Theatre Sunday School continues with the readathon of the libretto of The Boy Friend by Sandy Wilson, which we started last week. Today’s reading focuses on Act I – pages 23 – 52 in the copy I own, which is the 1955 Andre Deutsch edition.

Once again, one of the most striking things about this edition are Sandy Wilson’s fantastic little illustrations, which pop up from time to time in the text. My favourite of the Act I illustrations is the drawing illustrating “Fancy Forgetting”, with Mme Dubonnet and Percy Brown clinking a glass of champagne.

As for the text itself, the first act of The Boy Friend is bright and breezy and simply wonderful. It is amazing just how straightforward it is and you can see why Wilson doesn’t want the piece played as a burlesque of 1920s musicals. That approach would simply make a sweet, unaffected romantic comedy into something mannered and unlikable.

The plot is a simple one. Polly Browne is at a finishing school and, unlike her friends, is unable to have a boy friend, having been practically forbidden by her father to do so because he is worried that she will be pursued by a gold digger. So when she meets Tony, who appears to be a delivery boy from a local costumer, she pretends to be a secretary and makes a date with him for the upcoming Carnival Ball. Meanwhile, the other girls also get their ducks in a row for the dance, particularly Maisie Merryweather, who has a serious suitor, Bobby, who wants to dance every dance with her. Polly’s father also comes to call and it is revealed that he once had a romantic fling with the school’s headmistress, Mme Dubonnet.

All of this exposition flies by in the blink of an eye, with a handful of diverting musical numbers to boot. Act I includes the following songs: “Perfect Young Ladies”, “The Boyfriend”, “Won’t You Charleston With Me?”, “Fancy Forgetting” and “I Could Be Happy With You”. Each is wonderful and just beautifully crafted, with real rhymes and instantly memorable tunes. There are some great stylistic period moments too, including the sudden arrival of the boys in the title song for no other reason than to build the number, and they way that the syncopated rhythms of the 1920s music break up the lyrics rather unconventionally in, for example, “Won’t You Charleston With Me?” That kind of breaking up of a single thought over several lines of music can be disastrous in lyric writing, but thanks to the use of rhyme schemes that really hold stanzas together, Wilson manages to make it work for the songs instead of against them.

The characters are delightful little constructions. True to the style that is being evoked, the characters aren’t fully rounded; in fact, they are pretty much the same stock characters you might find in a 1920s musical, and no less captivating for it. There is the central young couple, Polly and Tony; a comic secondary couple, Maisie and Bobby; an older couple, Mme Dubonnet and Percival; and a clever servant, Hortense. In short, a set of characters that harks back to the days of operetta and melodrama. I guess that is why it feels so easy to identify with these characters and get involved in all their little romantic intrigues.

The language piece uses to bring its characters to life is delightful, full of 1920s references and slang. I loved the references to things like “dorothy bags” and phrases like “I’m rather on my beam ends” had me grinning from ear to ear. Wilson’s love for the period really shines through in moments like that and it makes it easy to imagine this piece coming to life in the theatre of one’s mind.

It is clear from the start that The Boy Friend is not working with complex themes or big social truths. I’m reminded of Wilson’s comment in his Author’s Note that this was not a reply to Oklahoma!, which is so often criticised for being as simple as The Boy Friend is. But looking at The Boy Friend, it is clear that no one could take the show and plough for hidden depths as, for example, Trevor Nunn did with Oklahoma! in his landmark revival of the show. All Nunn did was highlight the themes around which Oklahoma! was built in the first place. The Boy Friend simply wouldn’t support that kind of reinvestigation. It is precisely what it appears to be, a light entertainment that recalls the delights of a bygone era. Hopefully we haven’t all become too cynical to appreciate that.

That’s all for today, folks. Next week, we’ll look at Act II, but hopefully you’ll share your thoughts about this act the comment box below before then. (Of course, even if you come upon this column long after today, I hope you will share your opinions. I’m always up for some good discussion.) See you next week!

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