Looking Back: '65-'66
That season began for me on a most unfortunate note. I had tickets to attend the Music Theatre of Lincoln Center's June 1965 revival of Kismet on the last day I would be in the city until August. Arriving at the theatre, I discovered that leading man Alfred Drake was out, his long-time Kismet cover Earle MacVeigh taking the part. This was very bad news, even if I still got to see the leading ladies, glamorous Anne Jeffreys and the wonderful soprano Lee Venora.
By the time I got back to the city in August, the Lincoln Center musical was Carousel, and John Raitt was very much present -and in superb form-- in his original role. I loved every minute of this moving Carousel, with a cast that included Susan Watson, Jerry Orbach, Benay Venuta, Reid Shelton, and Edward Everett Horton.
Because I had seen Harry Secombe in the British musical Pickwick in London, I did not attend David Merrick's short-lived Broadway importation of the show. So my first new musical of the season was the deliciously silly Drat! The Cat!, perhaps the best, and certainly the funniest, musical ever to run eight performances. Lesley Ann Warren demonstrated the potential to become one of Broadway's musical-comedy prima donnas, and Elliott Gould was every bit as good. The Milton Schafer-Ira Levin score was choice. Do track down the cast recording which is merely a live tape pressed onto an LP, or, failing that, the Varese Sarabande studio version.
I had also seen Joe Orton's Entertaining Mr. Sloane in London, so I didn't attend its fall Broadway production. And I snobbishly avoided the poorly reviewed but successful Alan King comedy vehicle The Impossible Years, even when the great Sam Levene succeeded King.
Because my friend Jeffrey Dunn and I happened to hit the Mark Hellinger box office for On a Clear Day You Can See Forever at just the right moment, we wound up attending the Sunday, October 17, opening night performance. We were forced to agree with the general critical consensus that Barbara Harris was an enchantress, the Lerner-Lane songs were superb, and the Lerner libretto was troubled. Harris would have taken a Tony in many a season, but fierce competition lay ahead.
Two London imports were enjoyable, the old-fashioned melodrama The Right Honourable Gentleman and Peter Shaffer's adventurous tale of Pizarro and the Incas, The Royal Hunt of the Sun. The latter was the sort of stage epic that would never get produced on Broadway these days. Veteran Jewish comic actor Menasha Skulnik was his usual adorable self in the unusual play-with-songs The Zulu and the Zayda. Harold Rome wrote the uncharacteristic songs; Columbia's long-out-of-print cast album tends to come last in Broadway show LP collections, even after Zenda, Zizi, and two Zorbas.
Julie Harris was hard to resist in her only Broadway musical, Skyscaper. But I think I saw it slightly too early in previews, as at least one production number that the critics would single out was not yet present. Skyscraper was barely mediocre, but the reviews turned out to be kind.
The next musical was the sleeper of the season, Man of La Mancha, with a marvelously stark staging by Albert Marre, a highly effective score composed by newcomer Mitch Leigh, and a memorable star turn by Richard Kiley. La Mancha impressed most observers as a singular show with its own particular grandeur and spirit. It continues to be less admired by critics each time it gets revived.
Another striking London import was a dramatization of Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun, called The Devils and co-starring the excellent Jason Robards and Anne Bancroft. Zoe Caldwell got attention filling in for the ailing Bancroft during the surprisingly brief run. Also from London and even better was the riveting Inadmissable Evidence, in which Nicol Williamson gave a harrowing performance as a solicitor in the midst of a breakdown. The role was so demanding that Williamson had a matinee alternate.
One of the season's glories was the Phoenix/APA Repertory Company revival of You Can't Take It With You, with Rosemary Harris giving her first wonderful performance of the season. Ellis Rabb's staging could not have been more enjoyable, and the production has yet to be equaled by several subsequent revivals of the Kaufman and Hart comedy classic. The play will surely be back on Broadway before very long.
I paid my final visit to the Ziegfeld Theatre on Sixth Avenue when I attended Anya, the key floperetta of the '60s. Based on the superior drama Anastasia, Anya was corny fun, as is the United Artists cast album made from it.
In a season full of delectable dames, none was droller or more glamorous than Lauren Bacall, playing a dental assistant who blooms into a Cactus Flower. Abe Burrows' adaptation of a French play was the comedy hit of the season, thriving even when Bacall was replaced by Betsy Palmer. Edward Albee had an instant flop with the bizarre, distasteful Malcolm, a play with a cast large enough to fill the stage of the Shubert Theatre.
December brought in two musical flops. I missed La Grosse Valise, a French import that marked Harold Rome's second odd musical property of the season he wrote the English lyrics. But I did see The Yearling, which had a lovely score but was one of the gloomiest musicals ever presented on Broadway.
Two nights after Christmas came the electrifying, destined-to-be-legendary Royal Shakespeare Company production of Peter Weiss's The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as Performed By the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. David Merrick's London import, conveniently redubbed Marat/Sade, was a richly imaginative drama set in a French insane asylum in the early 19th century. It boasted masterful performances by Ian Richardson and Peter Magee, and introduced to the world the riveting Glenda Jackson as Marat's killer, Charlotte Corday. Perhaps some daring company will revive Marat/Sade some day, but any new production will be in the shadow of the original. At least a semblance of that original made it to the screen.
Late January saw the arrival of Sweet Charity. I had tickets to the second or third Saturday matinee, and, after reading the mixed reviews the show received, I was surprised at how refreshingly innovative the Bob Fosse production turned out to be. Less of a surprise was the performance of Gwen Verdon, who was reliably grand. Sweet Charity was underrated in its day, and may in fact hold up better than the season's two biggest musical hits.
The mystery thriller is a dead genre on Broadway these days, but Wait Until Dark was a superior example, featuring Lee Remick as a blind woman menaced by thugs. David Merrick produced the touching Brian Friel drama Philadelphia, Here I Come!, which featured two actors playing the hero, one the public version, the other the private self. I was glad I caught Tennessee Williams' instant flop Slapstick Tragedy, two one-acts with a luminous performance by my favorite '60s actress, Margaret Leighton, and an uproarious, Tony-winning turn by a newcomer who was obviously here to stay, Zoe Caldwell.
Rosemary Harris's second sensational performance of the season was in The Lion in Winter. James Goldman's bracingly witty play about England's King Henry II and his wife Eleanor only managed a three-month run, but Harris's work deservedly took the Tony, and Robert Preston was just the man to keep up with her. More classy acting was on display in Chekhov's Ivanov, which boasted no less than John Gielgud opposite a touching Vivien Leigh.
1965-'66 saw the debut of the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center at the newly opened Vivian Beaumont Theatre. Under the direction of Herbert Blau and Jules Irving, the company chose a difficult debut slate, including Danton's Death, The Country Wife, and The Condemned of Altona, and reviews tended to agree that a young company had gotten in over its head. The best entry of the season was the final one, Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle.
Wait a Minim! was an indescribable, highly enjoyable South African musical revue; I had already seen it in London, so did not repeat on Broadway. I wish I hadn't given up my last chance to see Lilo in a Broadway musical when I skipped the three-performance disaster Pousse-Cafe, based on The Blue Angel. Theodore Bikel was the leading man, and, what with his appearance two years earlier in the three-performance disaster Cafe Crown, people were beginning to talk about how Bikel was going to all the wrong cafes.
Opinions were divided on It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman, with some finding it a clever comic-strip musical, and others myself included finding it lacking in heart. The Charles Strouse-Lee Adams score was surely enjoyable, and Harold Prince's production had an excellent cast, with especially grand work from Jack Cassidy and Linda Lavin. I have a feeling I would appreciate a show as good as Superman a lot more these days than I did at the time.
The season closed out with two musicals. The irresistible one, Mame, was an obvious smash, thanks to a skillful adaptation of a blue-chip property. Jerry Herman's score was delightful, but Mame would not have worked as well had anyone other than Angela Lansbury created the title role. Compared to the staging of Sweet Charity, Mame seemed downright old-fashioned. But everybody was having too good a time to care. Lansbury was the lady of the season, easily beating Verdon, Harris, and Harris for the Tony.
Opening three days before Mame was the unfortunate A Time for Singing, a moving show based on How Green Was My Valley. Critics dismissed it, but A Time for Singing overflowed with rich melody, and Gerald Freedman's fluid staging was a major asset.
Because I couldn't wait to see Mame I attended the Saturday matinee preview before the opening, I foolishly skipped City Center's revival of The Most Happy Fella, with Art Lund recreating his original Joey and Karen Morrow in Susan Johnson's role. The only City Center revival I caught that season was a charming Where's Charley?, with a reasonably good Daryl Hickman in the Ray Bolger role; that charming young soprano Susan Watson; and Metropolitan Opera diva Eleanor Steber as Donna Lucia D'Alvadorez, from Brazil, "where the nuts come from."
A week after Mame opened, the city got another huge musical treat when Ethel Merman returned in Annie Get Your Gun. This was another Music Theatre of Lincoln Center production, and, unlike Drake in Kismet, you can bet that Merman showed up for the performance I attended, not to mention every other performance. Her understudy, the gifted Eileen Rodgers, never got to go on, and seems to have given up after this experience.
Because I was too young to fully relish Merman when I saw her in Gypsy, this Annie marked the first time I completely appreciated the star's riotous presence, glorious delivery, and incomparable vocals. Annie Get Your Gun was pure pleasure, and I regret not returning to it when it reopened at the Broadway Theatre in the fall of '66.