Q & A: 2/2/05
A: The musical The Fix was written by Americans John Dempsey and Dana P. Rowe, and had its world premiere, produced by Cameron Mackintosh, at London's Donmar Warehouse in 1997. The cast of that production can be heard on the First Night Records recording.
In 1998, The Fix had its American premiere at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia. The cast included Stephen Bienskie, Linda Balgord, Jim Walton, Natalie Toro, and Sal Mistretta. It was well received, but the production did not transfer to New York. I'm not aware of subsequent U.S. productions, but there may have been some.
In 2000, the new Dempsey-Rowe musical The Witches of Eastwick, also produced by Mackintosh, opened in London. Like The Fix, Eastwick failed to make it to New York.
Q: I just read your piece on likely revivals and it occurred to me that you had not mentioned Funny Girl. It seems like that's been mentioned recently, what with the not-too-long-ago Papermill production and the benefit concert at the New Amsterdam. How likely do you think this could be? I suppose the right girl has to come along. Leslie Kritzer is probably not a big enough name. Darcie Roberts has done the role around the country, but she may be getting too old. I know Shoshana Bean is dying to do it. Post-Wicked, she may just be big enough to get it done, although I know she wants to focus on her recording career. If she held off on the riffing, she could be very good. Any thoughts?--Aaron Mark
A: I love Funny Girl, but, having attended both the Paper Mill and Actors' Fund benefit versions, I somehow doubt that the show would succeed in a Broadway revival with any of the currently available, perfectly capable young women. Like Bells Are Ringing, Funny Girl originally featured an indelible star turn that makes a Broadway revival extremely risky. And even when Barbra Streisand was the headliner, critics complained about the soap-operatics of the show's second act.
Q: I saw Gypsy with Ethel Merman on its post-Broadway tour and was wondering if she ever played it again. Also, was the Lincoln Center production of her Annie Get Your Gun ever televised?---Ralph Harris
A: Once Merman concluded her post-Broadway tour of Gypsy, she never appeared in that musical again. The only shows Merman made stage reappearances in were Annie Get Your Gun and Call Me Madam. She recreated Annie Get Your Gun in 1966 for Music Theatre of Lincoln Center, a production that toured after its Lincoln Center run then returned to New York for a limited engagement at the Broadway Theatre. She recreated Call Me Madam at a couple of major stock venues, including the St. Louis Muny.
Merman's highly successful '66 revival of Annie Get Your Gun was videotaped abridged to ninety minutes, including commercials and televised by NBC on March 19, 1967. Most unfortunately, this tape appears to be lost; in spite of serious attempts to locate a copy, none has turned up.
Q: Is there any chance that the amazing Deaf West production of Big River that is still touring will be filmed for PBS and posterity? I found the production when it came through Atlanta to be mesmerizing, uplifting, and the reason I chose this business as a career.--Paul Holly
A: Although I've heard nothing about it thus far, that production of Big River seems like just the sort of thing that PBS might pick up.
Q: I recently saw Mack and Mabel at Goodspeed, but I seem to remember reading in one of your columns about another musical about Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand that followed Mack and Mabel. Can you remind me?---Joey
A: As we all know, the combined talents of Jerry Herman, Michael Stewart, Gower Champion, David Merrick, Robert Preston, and Bernadette Peters in Mack and Mabel 1974 were unable to make a successful musical out of the story of Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand. Nevertheless, others chose to try the subject, with a smaller-scaled show called Keystone named after Sennett's film studio that featured music by Lance Mulcahy, lyrics by John McKellar and Dione McGregor, and a book by McGregor.
With John Sloman and Randy Graff in the leads, Keystone had its premiere at the GeVa Theatre in Rochester, New York, in 1980. The following year, it reopened in Princeton, New Jersey for what was rumored to be a pre-Broadway tryout.
Instead of Broadway, this Keystone musical wound up preserved on television, in a 1983 videotape that was shown on several cable stations and was once commercially available on VHS. Based on the Princeton production, the TV Keystone co-stars Wayne Bryan and Ann Morrison.
Q: Although I've never seen it listed in his credits, didn't Tommy Tune once star in a "Sleepy Hollow" musical off-Broadway?---Harvey G.
A: In the late '70s, New York's Town Hall offered a series called "Interludes," hour-long performer showcases that featured artists from the worlds of theatre and cabaret. At one of the 1977 Interludes, Tommy Tune appeared in a one-man musical version of Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It was called Ichabod, and featured music by Thomas Tierney and book and lyrics by Gene Taylor.
In 1948 at the St. James Theatre, a full-scale Broadway musical version of the same property, entitled Sleepy Hollow, lasted twelve performances. It featured Gil Lamb, Mary McCarty, and Jo Sullivan.
Q: How many ladies starred on Broadway in the musical Mame?---Harry
A: Officially, four: Angela Lansbury, Janis Paige, Jane Morgan, and Ann Miller. During the summer of 1967, when Lansbury vacationed, Celeste Holm joined the Broadway company to play Mame for a couple of weeks; Holm then went on to star in the national touring company. Standbys Charlotte Fairchild and Sheila Smith also got to play Mame in the original Broadway production at one time or another. Owing to Miller's illness, the final Broadway performances of the original Mame were played by Fairchild.
Q: I seem to recall a Liza Minnelli TV special that was done in three parts, one of which was a Kander and Ebb musical. Does this ring a bell?---Ronnie Stevens
A: That would be Sam Found Out-A Triple Play, a TV vehicle for Minnelli telecast by ABC on May 31, 1988. Produced by Fred Ebb and Alexander H. Cohen, the one-hour program consists of three one-acts, all with the same title and the same first four lines of dialogue "What's wrong?," "Why should anything be wrong?," "What's wrong?," "Sam found out."
Directed by Piers Haggard, the program opens with a glamorous, red-spangled Liza singing a Kander and Ebb musical introduction and setting up the concept for this ambitious but decidedly odd experiment. Then it's on to the first playlet, written by Lanford Wilson, in which Minnelli plays a coke-addicted prostitute fresh out of rehab who confronts her former pimp Ryan O'Neal about the murder of another hooker from his stable.
The second piece is a collaboration between no less than Terrence McNally Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Visit, Minnelli's The Rink, all with Kander and Ebb and Wendy Wasserstein. In this one, Sam is Louis Gossett who years later would be dismissed from the revival of Kander and Ebb's Chicago, a klutzy student in the tap-dance class of instructor Minnelli. Minnelli would play a similar role in the film Stepping Out three years later. Among the pupils is Marilyn Cooper, Tony winner for Kander and Ebb's Woman of the Year.
Gossett is not only in love with his teacher, but he turns out to be the crown prince, soon to be king, of a small African country. Minnelli thinks he's a con man, but she eventually realizes that he's the real thing, and becomes his queen.
The music and lyrics of Kander and Ebb return for the final segment, a tongue-in-cheek musical entirely by the songwriters and co-starring John Rubinstein, who would soon star in the world premiere of Kander and Ebb's Kiss of the Spider Woman. In this mostly sung story, Sam is a dog, deeply troubled by the impending marriage of his owner, Norma Minnelli, to Johnny Rubinstein. Groom-to-be Johnny and canine Sam loathe one another, which puts the couple's marriage plans in jeopardy. Johnny suggests giving the dog away, then getting a new one after the wedding.
Johnny and Norma both express their feelings about Sam in song. Realizing how much Sam means to her, Norma and Johnny part. While walking home to her beloved dog, Minnelli gets her big Kander and Ebb number, "I'll Think About That Tomorrow," ending with her being happily reunited with a dog that has turned out to be more important to her than a husband.
Musical direction and vocal arrangements for this brief, forgotten Kander and Ebb musical were by Marvin Hamlisch.
Q: Can you tell me who appeared in the London production of Ain't Misbehavin'? Did the original Broadway cast go over?---Melissa Ryan
A: Two members of the original Broadway cast -Andre De Shields and Charlaine Woodard--- went to London to appear in Ain't Misbehavin' at Her Majesty's Theatre where The Phantom of the Opera now plays. The other performers were Evan Bell, Annie Joe Edwards, and Jozella Reed.
Q: Have you ever heard anything from the score of Jerry Herman's Madame Aphrodite? I've always been curious about it.---Graham Thomas
A: Madame Aphrodite is a curious entry in Herman's canon, particularly as it opened off-Broadway about two months after Herman had made it to Broadway with Milk and Honey.
Madame Aphrodite, which had Nancy Andrews Little Me, Plain and Fancy, Juno, Christine playing a medium, opened at the Orpheum Theatre on December 29, 1961, and closed after thirteen performances.
I have heard two demo recordings from the score, and the songs are charming, especially "Only Love," "The Girls Who Sit and Wait," and "Take a Good Look Around." The melody of the Madame Aphrodite song "Beautiful" was recycled for "A Little More Mascara" in La Cage aux Folles. Madame Aphrodite also featured a song called "You I Like," and while it doesn't appear on the demos, there's a song with the same title in Herman's The Grand Tour.
Q: You once wrote about another stage musical that, like Mamma Mia!, used songs by ABBA. Can you remind me what this was?---JD
A: Alain Boublil, the lyricist-librettist who already had to his credit the French musicals Les Miserables and La Revolution Francaise, represented ABBA in France. In the early '80s, Alain Boublil and Daniel Boublil no relation received permission to create a television fairytale musical, using the songs of ABBA and called Abbacadabra, which resulted in a successful LP. For this musical, the two Boublils wrote original lyrics to the ABBA tunes.
For the Christmas season of 1983, Cameron Mackintosh, who would present Les Miz in London two years later, produced an English-language stage version of Abbacadabra at London's off-West End Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. For this version, the story was credited to the two Boublils, but the book was by David Wood and the lyrics by Don Black, with additional lyrics by Mike Batt and Bjorn Ulvaeus.
The cast included Elaine Paige, Michael Praed, Finola Hughes, and Jenna Russell. The show was well-received, but no full cast album was made, although Paige did release a single of a couple of songs.
Q: Was the London Jule Styne musical Bar Mitzvah Boy ever done in this country?---Roger Greene
A: With a book by Jack Rosenthal based on his television play, music by Styne, lyrics by Don Black, and direction by Martin Charnin, Bar Mitzvah Boy had its world premiere at London's Her Majesty's Theatre in the fall of 1978.
In 1987, Bar Mitzvah Boy was retitled Song for a Saturday and presented by the American Jewish Theatre at New York City's 92nd Street Y. It was directed by Robert Kalfin, and the American adaptation of the book was by Martin Gottfried.
By the time the production opened, the title had been changed back to Bar Mitzvah Boy. The cast included Michael Callan West Side Story, Larry Keith, Mary Gutzi, Mary Stout, Michael Cone, Eleanor Reissa, and Peter Smith. Not especially well received, the production played a limited engagement of about six weeks.