DVDs: Early '80s Revues
Recently turning up in Broadway-area stores are the DVDs in U.S./NTSC format, and seemingly imported from China of Sophisticated Ladies and Tintypes, distributed by Broadway Television Network, the company that taped and released on DVD Smoky Joe's Cafe, Jekyll & Hyde, and Putting It Together but nothing since.
Sophisticated Ladies and Tintypes were Broadway musical revues from the early '80s; the first was a hit, the second a flop, but they competed against each other for the 1981 Best Musical Tony prize, which went to 42nd Street.
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington 1899-1974 was a celebrated jazz pianist, bandleader, arranger, and composer of songs, suites, and musical-theatre works. Among his most popular songs are "Solitude," "Satin Doll," "I'm Beginning to See the Light," "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," and "It Don't Mean a Thing."
In terms of stage musicals, Ellington's shows either failed to make it to Broadway Jump for Joy, My People, Queenie Pie or got to Broadway and flopped Beggar's Holiday, Pousse-Cafe. But seven years after his death, Ellington became a Broadway hit with Sophisticated Ladies, which opened to mostly strong reviews at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on March 1, 1981 and remained there for two years.
Sophisticated Ladies almost died on the road, though, experiencing a difficult tryout in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., during which the show's conceiver-director-choreographer, Donald McKayle, was replaced by San Francisco Ballet's Michael Smuin, with Henry LeTang also coming in to work on the tap choreography. Eliminated during the tryout was all connective dialogue; by the time the show opened in New York, it played more or less like a Cotton Club revue, with no attempt made at a plot or narative thread between its songs and dances.
A major factor in the show's success was its star pair, tap master Gregory Hines and Judith Jamison, direct from Alvin Ailey's dance company. Also contributing strongly was costume designer Willa Kim and Tony Walton, the latter supplying an elaborate design featuring illuminated staircases and a lot of neon. The Duke's son, Mercer Ellington, conducted an onstage band of twenty-one musicians, many of whom had played for the Duke.
Like a number of other black or mostly black Broadway revues featuring pre-existing music Ain't Misbehavin', Eubie!, Black and Blue, Smokey Joe's Cafe, Sophisticated Ladies got preserved on video. It was in the form of a live-from-Broadway, pay-per-view event on November 5, 1982. As I recall, Hines and Jamison were to have appeared on the telecast, but negotiations seem to have broken down. As a result, Hines's place is taken on the telecast by his understudy, Hinton Battle, who won the first of three Tonys for his performance in another role in Sophisticated Ladies. Coming in from the touring company of Sophisticated Ladies to take Jamison's place was Paula Kelly, seen in the London and film versions of Sweet Charity. From the original cast of Sophisticated Ladies, the telecast preserves the work of Terri Klausner the original alternate Evita, Phyllis Hyman, and Gregg Burge. With Battle moving up to Hines' role, Burge moves up to Battle's while also retaining some of his original numbers.
For all of its singing, Sophisticated Ladies was above all a dance show. For that reason, it loses a great deal on its double-disc RCA Victor Broadway cast album, so this televised version is at least preferable to the recording. Burge is a dazzling hoofer, Kelly a striking one. Hyman is a stylish vocalist, and Klausner sizzles in "Hit Me With a Hot Note."
A fine tapper, Battle who returns to Broadway this summer in Dracula does well, but he's not the star Hines was. Hines is indeed missed, for, without him, Sophisticated Ladies is deprived of its most unique aspect. Curiously enough, Hines was also announced and scheduled to do a pay-per-view telecast of his 1992 Broadway vehicle, Jelly's Last Jam, but it got called off. Hines did get preserved in the video of Eubie!
Ellington's moody songs aren't really dramatic enough for a full evening of theatre. In 1997, Ellington's songs were back on Broadway, in the short-lived Play On! And if Sophisticated Ladies is good of its kind, it's not my sort of show. One would much rather have had a tape of the original Dreamgirls or Nine, both of which were playing very nearby on the night of this telecast.
Introduced in the 1850s, tintypes were an early form of American photography. An intimate, thematic musical revue called Tintypes began life at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. Its New York debut at Theater of St. Peter's Church in April, 1980 was well received, but the show proved too fragile for Broadway when it reopened at the Golden Theatre six months later and ran for 137 performances. The production went on to the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, where DRG's cast recording was made.
The 1982 TV production of Tintypes is a studio taping with no audience, but it features the complete, five-member original Broadway cast, including future director Jerry Zaks who sings nicely, Trey Wilson, Mary Catherine Wright, Carolyn Mignini, and the powerful Lynne Thigpen. In 1992, Zaks would hire Mignini to play Sarah Brown in his Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls, then let her go during previews, replacing her with Josie de Guzman.
Conceived by its choreographer, Mary Kyte, its director, Gary Pearle, and musical arranger Mel Marvin, Tintypes is a panoramic collage of American life and music from the late 1800s up to the roaring '20s. Like Ragtime but featuring pre-existing music, it depicted a changing America at the turn of the century, a time of industrialization, immigration, invention, ragtime, and vaudeville. All five actors played multiple roles, but each had one central character. They were music-hall star Anna Held Mignini; Emma Goldman Wright, a character also in Ragtime and Assassins; a Russian-Jewish immigrant Zaks; Teddy Roosevelt Wilson; and a black domestic Thigpen.
The high point of Tintypes is Thigpen, playing Held's maid, in an intense rendition of Bert Williams' "Nobody." In general, this is quaint, charming, and a fine introduction to American music from 1890 to 1917. It's also somewhat precious and dull.
Both these DVDs may leave you wondering why we often get preservations of shows we weren't dying to see again. Still, such DVD releases should be supported in the hope that more exciting items will follow.
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