Revivals: Late '70s

Some time back, I did a series of four pieces tracing the history of Broadway musical revivals, starting in the '60s with productions at City Center and Music Theatre of Lincoln Center, and moving on to the early '70s and the establishment of the "revisal" as a useful means of resuscitating long-dormant titles. These articles were entitled Revivals #1, Revivals #2, Revivals #3, and Revivals #4.

I thought I would now try to take that series to the present, beginning more or less where I left off, with Broadway musical revivals of the second half of the '70s. These tended to fall into two categories: stars returning in celebrated vehicles and classics deemed ready for full-scale Broadway remounting without stars.

Of the former variety, the biggest commercial success was the 1977 return of Yul Brynner in The King and I, at the Uris now Gershwin Theatre. While the show had been revived on a number of occasions at City Center and had been the first production of Music Theatre of Lincoln Center in 1964, Brynner had not played the musical King since preserving the role in the film version. His resumption started with a summer '76 stock tour that indicated Brynner's still-potent box-office appeal. Although his recent New York vehicle Home Sweet Homer had lasted just one night, Brynner in The King and I was still a big Broadway draw.

The revival was straightforward, but then audiences weren't expecting a rethinking. Constance Towers made a handsome Anna, while Martin Vidnovic father of Laura Benanti and June Angela were strong as the doomed lovers. Brynner's new King and I played almost two years on Broadway, the sort of run only a couple of Broadway musical revivals enjoyed prior to the 1990s.

So potent was Brynner's draw in this production that no one seemed to want to see it without him. This was demonstrated when he took a two-week vacation, and his understudy otherwise the production's Kralahome Michael Kermoyan took over. To compensate for the missing star power, Angela Lansbury was enlisted to play Anna for those two weeks. Lansbury was wonderful, especially in a sharp "Shall I Tell You What I Think of You," but she played to half-filled houses. Clearly, audiences wanted to see Brynner. Shortly before his death, Brynner made one more return to Broadway, in a 1985 King and I; if he was much of the time too weak to perform the number "A Puzzlement," he was still every inch the King.

Most musical revivals these days are mounted directly for Broadway. In the '70s, many revivals played limited Broadway runs as part of national tours, and this was particularly true of the star-recreation revival. Hello, Dolly! came back to Broadway twice. First, Pearl Bailey returned with it in 1975, and if she had fooled around a bit when she took over in the original production in 1967, she went considerably further this time around, even repeating the title number when audience response was particularly strong. When the original Dolly, Carol Channing, made her first Broadway return, in a four-month run in 1978, she remained faithful to the letter of the text, and gave an admirably caricature-free performance.

Even in the original 1964 production of Fiddler on the Roof, Zero Mostel had made the authors crazy with his ad-libbing and other antics. The problem had become exacerbated by the time Mostel brought the show back to the Winter Garden in 1976. Still, it was good to see him again in a role that he hadn't played all that long the first time around.

Man of La Mancha has now had four Broadway revivals. The first two were limited engagements, not many years after the closing of the original, both with the original leading man, Richard Kiley. The first, a hot ticket at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre in 1972, also boasted originals Joan Diener and Robert Rounseville, and allowed Albert Marre's staging to again be seen as it had been in its New York premiere at the proscenium-free ANTA Washington Square Theatre. Kiley's 1977 return was at the Palace.

Although Sammy Davis had never before starred in Stop the World-I Want to Get Off, the 1978 revival at the New York State Theatre almost qualifies as a star return, as Davis had, years earlier, recorded and become identified with several songs from the show. The new production was tacky and bizarre; it was somehow preserved as a little-seen theatrical film that went by the name Sammy Stops the World.

Turning to those late-'70s revivals that did not feature stars recreating old roles, one of them did have a star, Sandy Duncan, whose irresistible, street-kid interpretation of Peter Pan was quite different from that of Mary Martin's more elegant account in the musical's first production. Duncan's performance helped her revival to run over 500 performances. Credited director-choreographer Rob Iscove's staging was partly redone by Ron Field, who received billing when the revival toured.

Brief returns of Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar are barely worth mentioning. All of the remaining late-'70s Broadway revivals were of landmark titles, but probably the most significant was the 1976 Porgy and Bess, which came to the Uris Theatre via Houston Grand Opera and boasted an admirable restoration of the original material. Jack O'Brien's staging and Clamma Dale's Bess have yet to be touched in subsequent local versions.

The same year saw the twentieth-anniversary Broadway revival of My Fair Lady. This was still well before the time when major directors like Trevor Nunn thought it necessary to rethink and even rewrite classic works. So the staging of the '76 Fair Lady was based on the Moss Hart-Hanya Holm original, and the original sets and costumes were also attempted, although not equalled. Christine Andreas's Eliza was beautifullly sung. Ian Richardson's Higgins was grand, but he somehow lost the musical-actor Tony to the production's suitably hammy Doolittle, George Rose. This generally satisfying Fair Lady ran a year but failed to turn a profit.

Ever since Pearl Bailey and company had revitalized Hello, Dolly!, producers were on the lookout for other titles that might work with all-black companies. That was the notion behind the first Broadway revival following numerous City Center mountings of Guys and Dolls in 1976. With librettist Abe Burrows supervising Billy Wilson's staging, the production was moderately enjoyable. Ernestine Jackson's Sarah was outstanding, and some of the pop-infused musical arrangements worked well. But the show would have to wait until the '90s for a hit revival.

In the non-profit arena, there was the healhy run of the New York Shakespeare Festival's Threepenny Opera at Lincoln Center, the second Broadway production of the show. Of course, it was the very-long-running off-Broadway revival in the '50s that had put Threepenny on the map in this country. The NYSF version featured a well-cast Raul Julia along with Blair Brown and Ellen Greene, and a striking staging by Richard Foreman. But while it was widely publicized as being more authentic than Marc Blitzstein's off-Broadway adaptation, it was far less satisfying musically.

The other institutional revival that year was Circle in the Square's Pal Joey, which became notorious when both leads ---ballet's Edward Villella and film star Eleanor Parker--- left during previews, to be replaced by an underpowered Christopher Chadman and a crisp Joan Copeland. Dixie Carter did "Zip"; she would later move up to Vera in a West Coast revival that boasted Elaine Stritch recreating her '52 "Zip." Like the Where's Charley? revival before it, Joey was not well-suited to the space.

Two more classics returned at the end of the decade. First came an unsuccessful The Most Happy Fella, imported from Michigan Opera, with a warm central performance by Giorgio Tozzi. It was another solid Jack O'Brien staging, and was preserved in a PBS telecast.

The final Broadway musical revival of the decade opened shortly before the death of its composer, Richard Rodgers. The 1979 Oklahoma! retained Agnes de Mille's original choreography, and director William Hammerstein in no way sought to be innovative, with the exception of the end of the first act, which did not bring Laurey back from her dream, the curtain falling on her being carried off by Jud.

As the 2002 Broadway revival demonstrated, Oklahoma! is harder to revive than you might suspect, harder, for example, than remounting The King and I. Compared to the 2002 Broadway revival, the '79 Oklahoma! was more of a charmer. Its two Christines --Andreas and Ebersole-- were considerably superior to their '02 counterparts. For all of the deserved praise heaped on Shuler Hensley's recent Jud, Martin Vidnovic's interpretation was powerful in a different way, providing a sexual magnetism that both disturbed and attracted Andreas's Laurey.

This Oklahoma! explored the central relationships and conflicts in satisfying fashion while conveying an admirable sense of what the original must have been like. It lasted nine months at the Palace, but then long-running revivals were, at the time, the exception rather than the rule.