Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals

The Cradle Will Rock - A Staged Reading

Dear Reader: As you may know, I, your humble blogger, teach musical-theater history at The Boston Conservatory. As part of my course, I direct a series of staged readings of historically important but underperformed shows. This weekend, my graduate students are performing The Cradle Will Rock. What follows is an excerpt from the director's note in the show's program. See the poster to the right for performance details. --C.C.

When was the last time a musical made history? The point is no doubt arguable, as there have certainly been many shows over the years that have reflected history and perhaps even influenced the course of human events, as it were.

But to find a show that actually made the history books -- and not just the musical-theater history books -- you'd probably have to go back to 1937 and The Cradle Will Rock. Here's a show that was so angry, so strident, so pointed in its satiric intent that people in high places actually considered it dangerous.

That's right. A musical, dangerous.

The Cradle Will Rock was the only significant musical-theater piece to emerge from the Federal Theater Project (FTP). The FTP was part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program, which included the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a program designed to get Americans in a wide variety of industries back to work during the Great Depression.The FTP was specifically designed to fund theater works and other performing-arts presentations, and was responsible for providing early employment to such later artistic greats as Arthur Miller, Orson Welles, John Houseman, Martin Ritt, Elia Kazan, and Marc Blitzstein.

Welles and Houseman, who at the time were in charge of the Federal Theater Project, chose The Cradle Will Rock -- with book music and lyrics by Marc Blitzstein -- for its 1937 season, with Houseman producing and Welles directing. Blitzstein's show is a savage satire of big business, as well as those who were all too willing to sell out to the rich and powerful, and showed no mercy in painting a broad and unflattering portrait of industrialists, the press, the clergy, medical professionals, academics, artists, and the military.

When Blitzstein was working on The Cradle Will Rock, he played the song "Nickel Under the Foot" for friend and mentor Bertolt Brecht. The song is sung by Moll, the prostitute and symbolic heart of the show, and is a heartbreaking lament on the caustic effects of poverty: 

And if you're sweet, then you'll grow rotten,
Your pretty heart covered over with soot.

The song also decries the actions of the supposedly upstanding people who surround Moll, and the ruthlessness with which they pursue personal gain:

Go stand on someone's neck while you're takin'
Cut into somebody's throat as you put.
For every dream and scheme's depending on whether
All through the storm, you've kept it warm.
The nickel under your foot.

Upon hearing the song, Brecht urged Blitzstein to use it as the central conceit of the show: prostitution, only not in the literal but rather the figurative sense. The stunning irony at the heart of The Cradle Will Rock is that the prostitute Moll is one of the only characters who doesn't sell out, who hasn't compromised her values, her talent, her dignity.

The Welles production was apparently going to be rather lavish, which was very in keeping with Welles' more-is-more style of directing, but which irked Blitzstein, who feared that his message might get lost amid the hoopla.

What happened next depends on which side you choose to believe. The political dynamic at the time was not unlike the one we see in Washington today, with Democrats pushing for jobs-creating spending initiatives, and Republicans pushing just as hard for spending cuts. When word came from Washington that The Cradle Will Rock would have to shut down, the official line was that Congress had put a freeze on arts spending. But it's also quite possible that even darker forces were at work: specifically the very wealthy industrialists that Blitzstein was attempting to savage in his piece were placing pressure on the government to shut down a production that might prove very embarrassing for a lot of influential people.

When Houseman, Welles, Blitzstein and the cast showed up to work one day, the theater had been padlocked and armed guards were on duty, supposedly to prevent anyone from absconding with the props and sets, which were technically government property.

Undeterred, the production staff secured another theater and a piano, and marched the entire cast and their ticket-bearing audience 20 blocks north in New York City to put on the show in their new location.

Meanwhile, Actors' Equity, the labor union representing actors, issued a ruling barring anyone from the cast from appearing on stage in this production, possibly as a result of pressure from outside forces. (The irony here is that the show essentially deals with attempts to unionize steelworkers in fictional Steeltown, USA and the powerful forces that attempt to stop the union from forming.)

At first, Blitzstein was going to perform the entire show solo, accompanying himself on the piano; since he wasn't an Equity member, the ruling didn't affect him. But as Blitzstein began to sing through the show, something magical and inspiring started to happen: the actors, one by one, began to sing and perform their parts from the audience, thus both defying the Equity edict and adhering to the letter, if not the spirit, of the law. (After all, no union member was actually appearing "on stage.")

This compelling scenario was made into the well-meaning but lackluster movie "Cradle Will Rock," written and directed by Tim Robbins. The movie attempts to bring these dramatic events to life, but is marred by Robbins' overly strident screenplay. The movie has a sensational cast (including Hank Azaria, Jack Black, Ruben Blades, Victoria Clark, Joan Cusack, John Cusack, Cary Elwes, Paul Giamatti, Cherry Jones, Bill Murray, Vanessa Redgrave, Susan Sarandon, John Turturro, and Emily Watson), but all that talent was unfortunately wasted amid Robbins' ham-fisted direction. 

As for the show itself, the score reflects Blitzstein at his most inventive, with haunting dissonant melodies alongside jaunty anxious anthems. Blitzstein was a serious composer who studied with such notable composers as Nadia Boulanger and Arnold Schoenberg. Although many have compared Blitzstein's compositional style to that of Kurt Weill, Blitzstein was openly critical of Weill, as well as other composers whom he felt were compromising their ambition in order to court popularity.

The characters in The Cradle Will Rock might appear to be no more than straw men and women. And, to a large extent, that's true. Blitzstein wasn't interested in portraying fully fledged humans, but rather exaggerated cartoons decrying the venality and hypocrisy that he saw around him. The show does have its tender moments, particularly those involving Moll and the sad druggist she encounters upon her arrest. And the strident, insolent, angry anthem "Joe Worker" ranks among the most powerful and effective songs in musical-theater history.

Given the modern resonance the show has, what with all this talk about the 99%, efforts on the part of certain billionaires to control the media, to influence policy, to create even more privileges for the privileged, it's really quite surprising that the show hasn't received a major New York production in almost 30 years. (Anyone out there care to remedy the situation?)

Care to discover what all the fuss was about back in 1937? Why some people felt that this show was so provocative that it had to be stopped? I'm directing a staged reading of The Cradle Will Rock this weekend at the Boston Conservatory. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 pm in the Zack Box Theater. If you'd like to attend, email me for details.

Bloomer Girl - A Staged Reading

I hated history in high school. At the time, I thought this was simply because the subject didn't interest me, but I eventually came to understand that it was because my history teachers were somewhat perfunctory and uninspired in the way they presented the subject matter.

In college, I was "forced" to take a full year of world history, and wound up being rather pleasantly surprised by this rather delightful professor who related everything in the course to the art and music of the time periods in question. Want to know what Louis XIV was thinking? Take a look at some baroque architecture or listen to some Bach, he said. Interested in what the mindset was after the French Revolution? Check out a Delacroix painting or The Red and the Black.

As a result of that experience, I firmly believe in teaching history, and musical-theater history in particular, not merely as a series of dates and events, but in terms of the progression of ideas and the cultural, social, and political influences on those ideas. One of the most important themes in my musical-theater history course at the Boston Conservatory is the evolution in the portrayal of certain societal subgroups: African Americans, women, and members of the LGBT community. In researching the course syllabus, I was really struck by how many of the shows that I was hoping to cover reflected the changing attitudes toward -- and treatment of -- women, blacks, and gays, and how the shows presented in their way a sort of cultural history of each of those groups.

I was particularly struck when I came across Bloomer Girl, a show that I honestly hadn't really been familiar with prior to researching this course. But as soon as I started reading about the show, I knew I wanted to include it in the course. Bloomer Girl concerns itself with Amelia Bloomer, the inventor, naturally enough, of "bloomers," and her efforts to bring about women's suffrage in particular and women's rights in general. But the show also takes on the parallel struggle to abolish slavery and the workings of the Underground Railroad. Here was a show that addressed, dead on, two of the key themes that were emerging for my course, so two years ago when I initiated the series of staged readings that supplement my course, I knew that Bloomer Girl would be on my short list of shows that I wanted to present. But Bloomer Girl is more than just a history lesson: it's also a delightfully witty and tuneful reminder of musicals from a bygone era.

Given the personnel behind Bloomer Girl, it's really no surprise that the show would have such a strong social conscience. The show features a score by the glorious Harold Arlen, whom many people simply know as the composer of the glorious songs to the 1939 film, "The Wizard of Oz." But Arlen also created the scores to about a dozen Broadway shows, including quite a few shows with all-or-mostly-black casts, including St. Louis Woman, House of Flowers, and Jamaica. E.Y. "Yip" Harburg, Arlen's lyricist for Bloomer Girl, not to mention "The Wizard of Oz," had a similar history of contributing shows with inclusive content, including lyrics for the lighthearted sardonic revue Life Begins at 8:40 (which he also wrote with Arlen), book and lyrics for the scathingly funny social satire Finian's Rainbow (with Bloomer Girl librettist Fred Saidy), and book and lyrics to the outrageously bizarre but fascinating send-up of big business, Flahooley (also with Fred Saidy).

The original cast of Bloomer Girl (1944) featured Celeste Holm in the lead female role of Evalina. Holm was fresh off her star-making role as Ado Annie in Oklahoma, and Joan McCracken (the future ex-Mrs. Bob Fosse), who practically stole Bloomer Girl out from under Holm as the maid Daisy, was fresh out of Oklahoma as well. Also making the trip from Oklahoma to Cicero Falls, New York, was choreographer Agnes de Mille. The reviews and historical accounts of Bloomer Girl point to de Mille's choreography, in particular her legendary Civil War ballet, as being one of many highlights from the show, which ran an impressive 657 performances, or about 18 months.

Because we have only 4 days of rehearsal for these staged readings, my cast will, alas, not be performing the ballet, or any of the de Mille dances for that matter, but if you click on the link above, you can watch a video of the ballet, which comes from a 1956 television broadcast of Bloomer Girl, starring Barbara Cook and Keith Andes. Bloomer Girl has since all but vanished from view, save for a 2001 concert production by Encores, but the somewhat truncated cast recording serves to remind us of Arlen's eclectic score, Harburg's witty and evocative lyrics, and the dynamic performances of Holm, McCracken, and their able supporting cast.

(An interesting footnote: Bloomer Girl features a dramatically purposeful and symbolic performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin during the second act of the show. This was some six years before the Jerome Robbins ballet, "Small House of Uncle Thomas" in The King and I. As I always say to my students, there's really no such thing as an original idea. What matters is the quality of the execution.) 

Bloomer Girl performances at the Boston Conservatory are December 7th and December 8th at 8 pm in the Zack Box Theater. Admission is free. Seating is on a first come-first served basis. Email me for more details.

Review - Show Boat at the Goodspeed Opera House

How can a show be a masterpiece if it has no official version? That's the question I always pose to my students when we cover Show Boat. There's no question that the show is historically significant. With Show Boat, librettist and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, along with composer Jerome Kern, introduced credible drama, three-dimensional characters, ambitious musical sequences, dramatically purposeful dance, and a host of other innovations to the musical stage.

But Show Boat has changed significantly since its 1927 premiere, with every subsequent stage version and movie treatment. Songs and scenes have come and gone. Depending on the version you happen to catch, the entire second act might look completely different from that of any previous production you may have seen. 

And the tinkering continues to this day with the current production at the Goodspeed Opera House, which opened this past Wednesday. The good folks at the Goodspeed set for themselves two primary challenges with this production: to find a way to make this sweeping pageant of a show work in the diminutive Opera House space, and to streamline the show to make the whole event clock in at around two and a half hours. I'm very happy to report that the Goodspeed production succeeds splendidly in its first goal, but as for hitting the mark on the second, well, the production is certainly swift and efficient, but at the expense of the human drama that's crucial to the overall effectiveness of the piece.

It's difficult to imagine that the Goodspeed has never done Show Boat before. The setting is perfect: the theater is perched on a scenic riverfront, and the building itself is a charming slice of Americana. Take a look at the photo to the right: doesn't it just look like the boat pictured above might pull up at the dock at any moment? Also, the Goodspeed auditorium looks as though it could be the actual hall from the titular show boat.

And this last point becomes one of the key elements in making Show Boat work in this compact house. The scenic design by Michael Schweikardt is both attractive and ingenious. In addition to designing a stunning set piece for the actual on-stage boat -- which places the audience on the ship rather than staring at the side of the boat, as many productions do -- Schweikardt takes full advantage of the Goodspeed auditorium, with its brass railings and horseshoe-shaped balcony, to create the illusion that the audience is actually in the hall of the show boat itself. It's simple but ingenious. I never got the sense that the show needed a bigger playing space. Not once. That's effective design. Director Rob Ruggiero shrewdly places performers throughout the hall throughout the show, and has cast members make many of their entrances and exits through the house to emphasize the atmospheric design of the show.

But whereas the design and direction make an asset out of the performance space, this script and score for this particular version of the show were somewhat less successful. The production staff have made what the press materials call "adjustments, edits, and changes," with the full knowledge and approval of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization. The result is streamlined and brisk, but emotionally a bit cold. Part of this might be the breakneck pacing. Even the song tempos seem accelerated, particularly in "Make Believe" and "Why Do I Love You?" I got the impression that Ruggiero was at the back of the house with a stopwatch, watching every song and scene with an eye toward efficiency.

But the real problem seemed to be that the staff have removed too much material that develops the central relationship, between Magnolia Hawks and Gaylord Ravenal. The role of Gaylord seems particularly pared down. As a result, the show hits all the important plot points, but doesn't give us time to stop and care about these people. Casting may be partly to blame here. Ben Davis as Ravenal has a terrific voice, but he doesn't have the physical countenance to give the role the larger-than-life quality it needs. Davis was never less than professional, but he wasn't dashing or charming, or full of the kind of dangerous appeal that Gaylord really needs to have to make the audience believe that Magnolia would fall for him at first sight. As Magnolia, Sarah Uriarte Berry started off a bit overly childish, but developed greater balance as the show progressed. She fared far better in act two, the events of which seem more suitable to a performer of Berry's experience.

[SPOILER ALERT: I reveal the final tag of the show in the last paragraph]

The rest of the cast was almost universally strong. Lenny Wolpe was flat-out adorable as Captain Andy Hawks, with a delightful sense of mischief and playfulness that made him the heart and soul of the show. Karen Murphy made for one of the most imposing, but ultimately charming, Parthys I've ever seen. David Aron Damane as Joe gave a positively stirring rendition of "Old Man River." The only significant hole in the supporting cast was Lesli Margherita as Julie, whose "Can't Help Loving That Man" was marred by histrionic, Elphaba-esque vocal affectations. And her "Bill" was somewhat bizarre. I'm not sure what she was going for here, but she came off a bit more wild-eyed than the role would seem to demand. (A special shout-out to three of my favorite students, making their professional acting debut in this production: Elizabeth Ann Berg, Robert Lance Mooney, and Adam Fenton Goddu. Remember, guys and dolls: Show...Boat = Two...Words. Embrace the space!)

One change that the production staff made to the show that worked extremely well here came at the very end of the show. Depending on the version of Show Boat you may have seen previously, the show probably ended with Magnolia and Ravenal seeing each other for the first time in 20 years. Often, the final tag of the show has Magnolia and Ravenal fondly watching their now-adult daughter Kim from afar as the music swells and the curtain falls. But here, Ravenal approaches Kim, who recognizes her father, and rushes to his embrace. For me, it was the most emotionally stirring moment in a show that ideally would have provided a whole lot more.

Rodgers & Hammerstein's Allegro - A Staged Reading

Each semester for the past two school years, I've used the students in my musical-theater history class as academic guinea pigs, as it were, and put on a staged reading of a historically important but relatively obscure musical. Past shows in this series have been George M. Cohan's Little Johnny Jones, Irving Berlin's As Thousands Cheer, and Very Good Eddie, one of the seminal "Princess" musicals.

This semester, I wanted to put on a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, and I knew that show had to be Allegro (1947). The gentlemen certainly had their share of hits, but they did produce a few not-so-hits along the way, including Pipe Dream and Me & Juliet. These shows are not without their charms, but they can hardly be considered revolutionary. Allegro was.

For the uninitiated, Allegro was R&H's third stage show, after Oklahoma and Carousel, and came out shortly after their only musical written directly for the movies, "State Fair," which won them an Oscar for best song ("It Might as Well Be Spring"). And Allegro is one of the most important musicals that most people have never even heard of.

Allegro is nothing if not ambitious. The show represented a serious attempt on Oscar Hammerstein's part to craft an original story, rather than an adaptation, and reflected numerous innovations in the musical-theater form. Allegro was the first of what we now consider the "concept" musicals, shows that explore a particular idea rather than tell a specific A-to-Z story. (Other concept musicals include Love Life, Cabaret, Chicago, Company, and The Scottsboro Boys.) The concept for Allegro was originally a cradle-to-grave story of a certain earnest everyman, and how modern life presents challenges to his integrity. The birth-to-death idea proved untenable, so Allegro wound up being the cradle-to-midlife-crisis story of one Joseph Taylor, Jr.

Because the story had a rather ambitious temporal arc, Hammerstein made significant use of an omniscient Greek chorus, which comments on the action to both the actors and the audience. The show's physical production concept - an open playing area with a cyclorama for projections, and small set pieces that moved in and out of the playing area - represented a break from the literal realism of musicals at the time. Allegro also heralded the rise of the director/choreographer, in this case, Agnes de Mille. When we think of director/choreographers, we typically think of the men: Bob Fosse, Michael Bennett, Jerome Robbins, etc. But Agnes de Mille took on this dual role before any of those guys did. 

So, Allegro is unquestionably a significant show. But is it any good?

Despite the biggest advance sale of any musical up to that time, Allegro sharply divided audience members and critics when it premiered in 1947. While some thought it sublime and appreciated the sheer ambition and scope of the show, others found it pretentious, preachy, and boring. Until my experience of actually directing the show, I fell into the latter camp. In his libretto, Hammerstein expresses the dangers of social climbing and rampant materialism, and on the printed page, and on its two extant recordings, the show comes off as cold, humorless, and didactic. But the show really comes alive on stage, thanks in no small part to Oscar Hammerstein's warm and three-dimensional characterizations and Richard Rodgers' thrilling and tuneful score.

Another potential problem with the show is that the central love story seems at first to be cynical and empty. That was by design, but it can make for an unsatisfying experience. Joe grows up to wed his childhood sweetheart, Jenny. Act 1 ends with their wedding, in which everyone onstage seems to question whether this is really a good idea. It's the sort of thing Stephen Sondheim could have pulled off with alacrity, but Hammerstein seems have had a hard time making it compelling. (Sondheim actually served as a production assistant during Allegro's tryout period, and points to Allegro as providing inspiration for much of his later work.) One of the things I've tried to do with this production is make Jenny a believable and sympathetic person, someone who simply has her own ideas about what she wants from life, and not a heartless, calculating monster.

One of most important influences that the shows of Rodgers and Hammerstein had on musical-theater history was the integration of dance into the dramatic fabric of the shows they produced. This began with Oklahoma, which contains numerous examples of dramatically purposeful dance, including "Kansas City," "Many a New Day," "The Farmer and the Cowman," and of course the famous dream ballet, AKA "Laurey Makes up Her Mind." Following this, we had Carousel, which includes a stunning opening pantomime set to some of Rodgers' most compelling and evocative music, the "Carousel Waltz," as well as an alternately raucous and heartfelt ballet that shows the central character, Billy Bigelow, the full extent of the damage he's done to the life of his daughter. And perhaps most thrilling of all is the glorious "Small House of Uncle Thomas" in The King & I, one of the best examples of dance that serves a central and thematic narrative purpose.

Perhaps not surprisingly, since Agnes de Mille was at the helm, Allegro originally had quite a bit of dance, including four separate ballets. Because I only have 5 rehearsals for these staged readings, it's really not possible for me to choreograph any complicated numbers, so I had to cut most, if not all, of the dance. But I think it's really interesting to note that the show's story still works without the dance, which probably means that, with all due respect to Agnes de Mille and her collaborators, the dance for Allegro isn't really all that central to the message of the show. Additive, yes, but not requisite.

Allegro has performances this Monday, April 11th and Tuesday, April 12th, both at 8 PM at The Boston Conservatory's Zack Box Theater. Admission is free, and seating is unreserved, general admission. If you're in the Boston area and would like to attend, shoot me a message. Remember that these are bare-bones productions, produced on less than a shoestring, and designed to showcase the work itself. Come experience some terrific young performers, and the glory of some of Rodgers and Hammerstein's best but least-known work.

The Most Underrated Musical - Spring 2011

Ah, spring break. Time for me to catch up on some long-overdue blogging.

Towards the start of each semester, the students in my musical-theater history course at the Boston Conservatory embark upon two writing projects: the Most Overrated Musical and the Most Underrated Musical. See below for the results to the former. Herein lie the results to the latter.

Major caveat: my students are unquestionably influenced in their choice of shows by my impassioned in-class rhetoric, as well as my previous posts and lists on the subject on this very blog. So this is a decidedly skewed sampling, one that doesn't even begin to approach scientific validity. Nonetheless, I like to post the results to give my readers a glimpse into what the theater queens of tomorrow are thinking with regard to overall show quality.

Here are the shows that received more than one "vote" each:

8 Wicked
4 The Wedding Singer
3 She Loves Me
2 Grey Gardens
2 Ragtime
2 Sunday in the Park With George
2 Titanic

And here are the shows that received one vote a piece:

Annie, Beauty and the Beast, Brigadoon, Bye Bye Birdie, Footloose, The Last Five Years, Legally Blonde, Les Miserables, The Light in the Piazza, The Most Happy Fella, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Secret Garden, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Tick Tick Boom, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Wicked?! How could anyone call Wicked underrated? It's one of the biggest hit shows in the history of ever!" Well, I offer my students a number of essential categories into which an "underrated" show might fall: an undiscovered or forgotten gem (She Loves Me, 110 in the Shade), a financially unsuccessful show that may have deserved a longer run (The Wedding Singer, A Catered Affair) or an overblown spectacle that doesn't get the credit it deserves (Wicked, Les Miserables). The idea isn't for students to make a watertight, unassailable case for the show in question. It's to get them thinking more analytically about the artistic value of the shows that they see and perform in.

I've always been a big fan of Wicked. I happen to think that it has a whole lot more going for it than simply a spectacular production and flying green witches. It also reflects a lot of the topics, tactics, and techniques that I cover in my musical-theater history course, including believable and compelling character arcs (Elphaba, Glinda, Fiyero, and Nessa Rose), ambitious extended musical sequences ("No One Mourns the Wicked," "Dancing Through Life"), dramatically motivated reprises ("I'm Not That Girl"), political allegory ("Popular," "Wonderful"), as well as leitmotifs ("...unlimited...," "...I'm limited..."). To me, Wicked is very similar to Cabaret or Chicago in the sense that you can enjoy the show purely for its entertainment value, or you could listen more closely and maybe learn something.

I'm also totally on board with The Wedding Singer. It was one of the first shows I ever reviewed on this blog, and at the time I thought it was fairly mediocre. But in the years since the show bowed (and bowed out) on Broadway, the cast recording has made me a genuine fan. There's some really smart writing in the book and the lyrics, the songs are tuneful, and the orchestrations instantly transport me back to my distant youth in the 1980s. It also employs contrafactum ("Letter From Linda," "Letter From Grandma"), extended musical sequences ("Not That Kind of Thing," "Saturday Night in the City"), and leitmotifs ("...tell the night to save its moonlight..."). Plus, the show has its heart in the right place, and it seems to be catching on in regional and high school theaters. I know I'd much rather see The Wedding Singer proliferate than, say, Fame or Footloose. High schools need more than just Grease and Bye Bye Birdie in their repertoire.

So, whaddya think, dear reader? Any of my students choices surprise? Appall? Anything missing that you'd add to the list?

As Thousands Cheer and the 1930s Revue

Yes, folks, it's that time of the semester again: staged-reading madness!

Regular readers will likely recall that, as part of my musical-theater history course at the Boston Conservatory, my students take part in a staged reading of a historically significant but relatively unknown or even forgotten musical. The idea is to expose them to shows that they otherwise might not have a chance to perform in, or even see. I usually like to say that if I tell people the name of the show I'm directing, and that person has actually heard of it, then I have failed.

Now, this isn't entirely true, but it conveys the essence of my goal. The inaugural show in this series, in the fall of 2009, was the George M. Cohan musical Little Johnny Jones (1905). Last semester we did Very Good Eddie (1915), one of the influential "Princess musicals," with scores by Jerome Kern. Not exactly top-of-mind theater fare, but nonetheless historically significant in the development of the musical-theater form.

This semester, I wanted to do a topical revue, a very common genre in the 1920s and 1930s, although the form has since virtually disappeared. These shows essentially grew out of the lavish Broadway revues that sprang up between the two world wars, the most famous being those of Florenz Ziegfeld. Other entrants in this genre included Earl Carroll’s Vanities, George White’s Scandals, and the Shubert brothers’ Passing Show series. The revues of the '20s were mostly escapist fare, although they did contain the occasional nod to topicality and social relevance.

The 1930s were a time when the Broadway revue would reach both its maturity and ultimate decline. The standard formula featured marquee-value stars, tuneful scores, and copious dance. Add in plenty of vaudevillian-style humor and some stunning visuals – in the form of lavish sets and costumes, and a brace of pulchritudinous showgirls – and the stage was set for a grand night at the theater. The least interesting revues of the ’30s were little more than variety shows. But the most compelling were an art form in themselves, reflecting a cohesion that brought all the elements together into a unique experience, often one with a lot more on its mind than mere entertainment.

In the transition from the '20s to the '30s, the tone of shows on Broadway changed a great deal, and the revue form followed suit. With the advent of the Depression, left-leaning creators co-opted the musical art form to decry, lament, and otherwise comment on the seeming collapse of capitalism. Among the more satiric revue offerings were Pins and Needles, Life Begins at 8:40, and As Thousands Cheer, the last of which the students of my musical-theater history class will be presenting this Saturday and Sunday at the Boston Conservatory.

Fresh from the success of their well-received Face the Music (which features an unscrupulous producer who wants to deliberately produce a flop show - sound familiar?), composer/lyricist Irving Berlin and librettist Moss Hart turned their satiric eye to the events of the day. They chose as their framing device the daily newspaper. Each of the scenes and songs in the show was preceded by a newspaper headline, with sketches that poked fun at wide variety of subjects, from the marital woes of Barbara Hutton ("Barbara Hutton to Marry Prince Mdvani") and Joan Crawford ("Joan Crawford and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Announce Divorce"), to Gandhi and Aimee Semple McPherson ("Gandhi Goes on New Hunger Strike"), to an embittered President and Mrs. Hoover leaving the White House ("Franklin Delano Roosevelt Inaugurated Tomorrow"). The score featured what would become some of Berlin's most popular songs, including "Easter Parade" (The Rotogravure Section) and "Heat Wave" ("Heat Wave Hits New York City").

But the most memorable, and heartbreaking moment in the show comes in the second act. An African-American woman sings what initially seems to be yet another "He Done Me Wrong" torch song, but at the end of the song the headline reveals the stark truth: "Unknown Negro Lynched by Angry Mob in Mississippi." The song is the simple but stunning "Supper Time," and we have the great fortune of having BoCo junior Lori Tishfield to perform it. (Mark that name my friends. Some day soon you will see it in lights.) As Thousands Cheer was the first Broadway show to give an African-American star, in this case the legendary Ethel Waters, equal billing with whites.

The original 1933 production also featured Marilyn Miller, in her final stage appearance before her premature death, as well as Clifton Webb and Helen Broderick. The show ran at Irving Berlin's Music Box Theatre for some 400 performances, which was pretty impressive for a show that opened in the heart of the Depression. The show has had only one significant revival, in 1998 at New York's Drama Department. That production was directed by Christopher Ashley and featured musical staging by Kathleen Marshall. The cast included Kevin Chamberlin, Judy Kuhn, Howard McGillin, Paula Newsome, Mary Beth Peil and B. D. Wong, and it produced the show's only original cast recording. (Cast recordings didn't really catch on until the 1940s with Oklahoma, although both Pins and Needles and The Cradle Will Rock were recorded prior to that.)

So, hey, if you're in the 'hood, and want to see a show that you otherwise might not have a chance to catch, why not head down to the Boston Conservatory. The show is this Saturday at 9PM and Sunday at 7PM, both in the Zack Box Theater at 8 The Fenway. We'd love to see you there.

Review - Freckleface Strawberry the Musical Off Broadway

Recent visitors to Off Broadway's New World Stages could be forgiven for concluding that they had stumbled upon a sort of specialty children's theater. The shows currently playing at this venue include such kiddie fare as The Gazillion Bubble Show, John Tartaglia's Imaginocean, and the new children's musical Freckleface Strawberry. (More and this last show later.)

The casual observer might be excused for thinking that Avenue Q was aimed at children as well, but anyone who's seen this show can certainly attest to the contrary. And, of course, the NWS complex also serves as landlord to the Naked Boys Singing, and I must confess that, as I was descending into the underground bunker that is the New World Stages, I had to wonder how many parents have had to answer embarrassing questions from precocious tots about that little piece of theatrical salaciousness.

But anyway, back to the show at hand, which is based on the popular children's book FreckleFace Strawberry by the fabulously talented actress Julianne Moore. The show recently opened to very positive reviews, but I must confess that I am not among the show's seemingly legion fans. I usually try to see as many musicals as possible, both on Broadway and off, but I frankly might have given Freckleface a miss if it hadn't been for the presence of two of my former students in the cast, the very lovely and talented Hayley Podschun and Kimiko Glenn. I'm happy to report that both Ms. Podschun and Ms. Glenn are in fine and entertaining form, but I really wish the show were more worthy of their considerable talents.

Freckeface Strawberry was written by Gary Kupper (music/lyrics/book) and Rose Caiola (book), neither of whom I have encountered before, nor did I recognize any of their credits in the show's Playbill. All I can think is that they must be friends of Ms. Moore (Ms. Caiola is also a co-producer), because they clearly didn't get the gig based on the quality of their music or words. The direction by Buddy Crutchfield and choreography by Gail Pennington Crutchfield, who I assume are married to each other, are certainly serviceable and energetic, although they rarely rise above the commonplace.

The main problem with the show is that it doesn't really have a sense of forward motion, nor any dramatic cohesiveness. For instance, early in the show, before we've even had a chance to discover who this Freckleface Strawberry is as a character, we get an "I want" song from the character Emily, called "I Like Danny." A more seasoned writing team would have used this spot to tell us more about the title character, as opposed to a secondary player who then proceeds to fade into the ensemble for the rest of the show. Toward the end of the show, we get a song called "Basketball," which is every bit as generic as its title, and represents pointless padding for the boys in the cast. This dramatic fragmentation might be somewhat forgivable if the songs themselves represented anything of lyrical or musical distinction, which alas they do not.

I suppose it might seem churlish to carp about dramatic integrity in a children's show. But shouldn't children's shows be held to the same artistic standards as adult shows? Perhaps even higher standards? Isn't it, instead, rather condescending to assume that kids' shows don't need to be cohesive or make structural sense? All I know is I wasn't the only one squirming in my seat at this particular 11 AM showing of Freckleface Strawberry. About 2/3 of the way through the 70-minute show, the kids started getting really restless. And when it comes to kids' shows, that's where the rubber hits the road: if the pint-size butts are fidgeting in the seats, then the show itself isn't working.