Personal Favorites: The '70s
Musicals used to give "gypsy" run-throughs just before heading out of town for their official tryout. These were performances on a Broadway stage but without an orchestra, costumes, or full sets, performed before an invited audience of industry people. By chance, I was invited to attend the afternoon gypsy run-through of Company at the Alvin Theatre, just prior to the show's departure for its Boston shakedown. Elaine Stritch was clad in her trademark rehearsal attire, black tights and a white shirt, not unlike what she wore in At Liberty.
In early 1970, Stephen Sondheim was something of a peripheral figure in terms of the Broadway musical. True, he had written the lyrics for two of the best musicals of the '50s or of all time, West Side Story and Gypsy. And he'd had a hit with the full score for ...Forum. But that was followed in the mid-'60s by Anyone Can Whistle, Do I Hear a Waltz?, then nothing for five years. So I actually arrived at the Company run-through without particularly high expectations, excited mostly by the fact that Stritch, one of my favorite performers, was back in a Broadway musical.
I will never forget the excitement of that afternoon. Even without Boris Aronson's set the cast performed on a mock-up of the design and Jonathan Tunick's orchestrations, it was obvious that Company was a genuine, electric original, and was also terrifically entertaining. I recall being perturbed when the show opened in Boston to mixed reviews -how could they not see how brilliant it was?-and remained firm in my belief in the show when I saw it again during New York previews, and again, from the last row of the balcony, on opening night.
Sure enough, the New York reviews were mixed, with The Times' Clive Barnes a notable hold-out. But Company seemed to me the most exciting new musical since Cabaret. As soon as Boston dates were set for the next Sondheim/Prince musical, Follies, I made plans to attend that show's tryout. I was particularly attracted by the show's offbeat casting of has-been leading ladies like Alexis Smith, Dorothy Collins, and Yvonne De Carlo.
I recall reading Frank Rich's review in the Harvard newspaper just before attending a Friday night performance. And what I saw that evening was amazingly rich, not to mention scary. I gasped audibly when the stage was transformed for the Loveland sequence. I adored the cast, especially Collins. And I even liked De Carlo's lengthy showpiece, "Can That Boy Foxtrot," a sequence that would eventually be replaced by "I'm Still Here."
I returned to Boston for the world-premiere preview performance of the tryout of A Little Night Music. This would prove to be the most widely acclaimed of the early-'70s Sondheim trio, and if it was marginally less thrilling than the first two pieces, well, just about anything would be. Night Music was nonetheless delicious, Glynis Johns was divine, and, once again, I repeated the Company/Follies pattern, running to a New York preview, then attending the Broadway opening-night performance. Nothing in musical-theatre history since quite matches the excitement of those three shows in three years.
In the same season that produced Follies, there was the treasurable flop 70, Girls, 70. While I was aware of the show's conceptual problems, they barely mattered, for 70, Girls, 70 played extremely well and was utterly delightful. Beyond Sondheim, Kander and Ebb were my favorite show writers, and their 70, Girls, 70 score was up to their usual standard. And there was a sublime performance by leading lady Mildred Natwick that would have won greater acclaim had the show not closed after a month's run. I can attest that both times I caught 70, Girls, 70, audiences adored it.
Another personal favorite of the '70s was Over Here!, which attempted to do for the '40s what Grease had done for the '50s. Unlike Grease, however, Over Here! starred actual icons of the period, the Andrews Sisters, heading a company that included such newcomers as John Travolta, Treat Williams, Marilu Henner, and Ann Reinking.
Over Here! had a very amusing libretto that allowed Janie Sell, playing a German spy, to steal the show. The score by the Sherman Brothers Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was successful '40s pastiche and bright musical comedy in its own right. The staging by Tom Moore and Patricia Birch and the design by Douglas Schmidt all three Grease alumni were inspired. I felt that Over Here!, which was beaten for the Best Musical Tony by Raisin, never quite got its due as a first-class frolic.
I'm making the perhaps bold move in this entry of citing Chicago while omitting A Chorus Line. A Chorus Line was everyone's show, its tale of Broadway gypsies managing to speak to and move just about everybody. But not everyone loved Chicago the way I did in 1975. Reviews were quite mixed, and some found the evening downright unpleasant.
I, on the other hand, thought Chicago was a riot, with another perfect Kander and Ebb score, a tremendous Bob Fosse staging, and a dream combo of leading ladies, Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera. While the current Broadway Chicago, the most successful musical revival in history, works superbly with a wide variety of performers, it must be said that it's not as wonderful as the original, and that none of its Roxies and Velmas will ever equal Verdon and Rivera. Original Velma Rivera, was, in fact, one of the revival's Roxies, in Toronto, Las Vegas, and London.
I have to put 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on this list, for while the Alan Jay Lerner-Leonard Bernstein presidential musical would prove to be one of Broadway's all-time biggest disasters, I felt it had tremendous promise when I saw its Philadelphia tryout. I hadn't yet realized that its conceptual problems were so severe as to be unfixable, at least in a pressured out-of-town situation. And I may not have wanted to acknowledge that the show was unfixable simply because I found the score so beautiful. It's perhaps the best score ever to emerge from an instant Broadway flop, even if its only commercial recording under the title A White House Cantata fails to do it justice.
It's common these days for critics to view Annie with a certain amount of disdain. After all, it prominently features children and animals, and its big anthem, "Tomorrow," has grown stale through decades of repetition. But I must place Annie on my list of personal favorites, because I recall my reaction to it the first time I saw it, from standing room, at its first New York preview, following its acclaimed tryout in Washington, D.C. When, shortly after the curtain rose, Andrea McArdle sang the wistful "Maybe," then, a few scenes later, "Tomorrow," I was entranced, finding the show a surprising throwback to the sort of musical comedies I had grown up on. With the uproarious comedy of Dorothy Loudon's Miss Hannigan added to the mix, Annie seemed to me the sort of blissfully old-fashioned musical I had despaired of ever seeing again. I would return to the show around Christmas for several consecutive years, always enjoying its too-easily-disparaged charms.
I wasn't completely sold on On the Twentieth Century the first time I saw it. But when I returned with understudy Judy Kaye having taken over for star Madeline Kahn, I fully appreciated On the Twentieth Century as the delightful mock-operetta it was. Robin Wagner contributed one of the most glamorous set designs ever, and the Cy Coleman-Betty Comden-Adolph Green score couldn't have been more apt.
Then, of course, came Sweeney Todd. I attended the first preview at the Uris now the Gershwin Theatre, the show's world premiere, as this wildly complex musical was so well written and conceived that it was able to dispense with a tryout in favor of local previews. Eugene Lee's iron-foundry set design pretty much precluded a road tryout.
By the end of a first act that concluded with the stunning "A Little Priest," I realized I was seeing a work of tremendous stature. So I was dismayed when others seemed to disagree; it's often forgotten that Sweeney Todd was controversial during its preview period, with some believing it to be an unworkable show.
I saw two more previews, remaining firm in my belief that Sweeney Todd was brilliant. I felt vindicated by the opening-night raves, and returned to the show several times during its run, notably to see the final performance with Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou and, two days later, the first performance of their replacements, Dorothy Loudon and George Hearn.
The final '70s show that knocked me out was --like Company, Follies, Night Music, Sweeney Todd, and On the Twentieth Century-- a Hal Prince production. Indeed, Evita represented one of Prince's greatest triumphs, for one could easily imagine the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice pop opera, which was initially just a double-disc recording, going astray in lesser hands. It may, in fact, be difficult for me to enjoy Evita when it is inevitably revived in a different staging. Its current national tour once again reproduces the Prince original.
And like Dolly! and Mame, Evita was a gold mine for diva collectors; I must have seen a dozen ladies take on the title role, and while few could equal Elaine Paige or Patti LuPone, I never tired of attending Evita.