CDs: Songs from a Golden Age

I subscribe to the theory that Barbara Cook can do no wrong, and that was certainly the case with Barbara Cook's Broadway, which Lincoln Center Theater sponsored during the spring at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre. Because of the scattered performance schedule, Cook's show was deemed ineligible for Tony consideration, but the concert did move the New York Drama Critics' Circle to give Cook a special award.

DRG's live recording of Barbara Cook's Broadway will be made available in June, when Cook returns to Lincoln Center, this time at the Mitzi E. Newhouse, to play another month of performances of the show. It had been announced that the recording would be a two-CD set, documenting the complete, ninety-minute program. But the advance copy I received reduces things to a single, seventy-seven-minute disc. All of the songs, straight through to the encore of "The Party's Over," are present on the disc. Present too is the opening bit of special material that Cook will have to drop for the return engagement, "I Wonder What the King Is Doing Tonight," which referred to her playing the Beaumont, where Christopher Plummer was performing King Lear on the other nights.

The concert has been successfully streamlined for disc, so one doesn't feel that anything significant is missing. Some of the applause and chat have been trimmed. Most of Cook's words about the golden age of musical theatre have been included, as have the stories about Gary Cooper, Elaine Stritch, and the original lyric of "The Very Next Man." The Funny Girl and Candide anecdotes have been omitted, and expectedly dropped is the "Glitter and Be Gay" routine, which was not only visual but also depended on the use of a Columbia Records track.

Accompanied only by the piano of arranger Wally Harper and the bass of Richard Sarpola, Cook elevates to the level of art song a wide array of musical-theatre numbers, ranging from the familiar to the rarely sung. Perhaps the most treasurable tracks are a radiant "Mister Snow," a no-nonsense "Very Next Man," and a heart-stopping "This Nearly Was Mine."

But that's to overlook the ruminative "Among My Yesterdays"; the forthright "Wonderful Guy"; a rueful "Gentlemen Is a Dope"; a celebratory "He Loves Me"; and an anguished "His Face."

There's a good deal more, of course, but there's really no need to cite each selection, as all are treasurable. As in the theatre, Barbara Cook's Broadway is a complete pleasure.

ACE OF CLUBS Bayview

In terms of musical theatre, composer-lyricist-playwright-director-actor Noel Coward was best known for revues and operettas. After the failures of two of his West End operettas, Operette 1937 and Pacific 1860 1946, the latter starring Mary Martin, Coward switched away from his customary romantic style to try something contemporary.

The result was Ace of Clubs, a comparatively small-scale musical set in present-day London, with most of the action taking place in or around a Soho nightclub that gave the show its title. Stage and film actress Pat Kirkwood, who would go on to play Ruth Sherwood in the London Wonderful Town, starred as Pinkie Leroy, a cabaret singer in love with a sailor, played by Coward's real-life lover, Graham Payn. The plot revolves around a stolen necklace that accidentally comes into Pinkie's possession.

As it involved a nightclub and comic thugs, Ace of Clubs is sometimes thought of as a British forerunner of Guys and Dolls, although it also bore traces of the earlier Pal Joey. Among the girls at the Ace of Clubs were actresses June Whitfield the grandmother on "Absolutely Fabulous", Vivien Merchant later Harold Pinter's wife and leading lady of his The Homecoming, and Jeannie Carson, who would soon star in the London Love from Judy and later on Broadway in Finian's Rainbow and The Sound of Music.

Because of Coward's recent failures, Ace of Clubs was turned down by several managements. Its tryout in Manchester was greeted favorably, but London critics were mixed. Ace of Clubs opened at the Cambridge Theatre in July, 1950 and lasted 211 performances. The show proved to be too contemporary for admirers of Coward's previous musicals but not quite strong enough to compete with the modern-style American musicals that were regularly imported to London.

Coward later recorded several of the songs and featured them in his club acts, with "I Like America" serving him particularly well. For the cast album, thirteen songs from Ace of Clubs were recorded on six 78 sides. But with the exception of a comic showstopper for three gangsters, "Three Juvenile Delinquents," which gets a full side, the songs are performed, in abbreviated fashion, in four medleys, each featuring three songs.

Quite a few of the songs were performance pieces at the club. Kirkwood has specialty numbers about Empress Josephine five years later, Broadway's Silk Stockings would feature a number on the same subject, and a suggestive ditty sung by a lady cat to her male admirer, "Chase Me, Charlie." The BBC objected to the latter song's lyric, insisting that the words "bound to give in" be replaced by "waiting for you."

Payn sings the score's best song, "Sail Away," which, a decade later, would become the title song of Coward's penultimate stage musical. Playing the owner of the Ace of Clubs was Sylvia Cecil, who took care of the score's operetta quotient in "Evening in Summer" and the wistful "Nothing Can Last Forever."

On the cast album, the flip side of "Juvenile Delinquents" features Coward himself, offering a longer version of "Josephine" than the one Kirkwood got to preserve. As bonuses, Bayview's CD adds Coward's recordings of three other songs from the show, along with the show's musical director, Mantovani, leading a two-part orchestral medley from the score.

The cast recordings are brief; even with the additional Coward and Mantovani tracks, the running time is forty-one minutes. But if Ace of Clubs isn't major Coward, it's an intriguing departure for the Master, and very evocative of its time.

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