CDs: A Real Slow Drag
We'll never know how the new Broadway production of Sweet Charity would have been received had it come to town as an ordinary, everyday revival. After all of the drama that ensued, in particular star Christina Applegate's broken foot and the Boston closing notice, I suspect that the reception won by the show and its star was kinder than it would otherwise have been. After all, it was hard not to root for underdog Applegate and her pluck and determination to make it to Broadway and succeed in the face of substantial obstacles.
Had all of the chaos never happened, I believe the lackluster nature of the production would have been more of a problem. As it turned out, the new Sweet Charity got mixed reviews and has been doing passable if moderate business. The production failed to win any awards, but it got nominated, if only, in some areas, by default.
What strength the revival possesses is largely due to the Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields score, which remains scintillating and which is now available anew on DRG's cast recording of the current production. While the show's tunestack has been tweaked, it has undergone less extensive revision for the revival than Neil Simon's book. Added to the score this time out is a pleasant Coleman-Fields trunk song called "A Good Impression," for Oscar to sing to Charity after their first date. The overture and "You Should See Yourself" have been shortened. "Charity's Theme" has been dropped, but there's a new, closing reprise of "I'm the Bravest Individual" as part of the new ending. "Rich Man's Frug" is incomplete, at least on the new recording. Unlike every production of the show since the first Broadway mounting, the song "Charity's Soliloquy" has been included. And unlike the 1986 Broadway revival, "I'm the Bravest Individual" and the title song are heard with their original 1966 melodies.
The new cast recording includes six bonus tracks, two of which are of particular interest. We get a new verse for the song "Where Am I Going?," with music and lyrics by Coleman, written for the revival but unused, and here recorded by Applegate. Then there are four 1963 demo performances, with Coleman singing and playing the piano and joined by other instrumentalists. Most interesting is the cut, gospel-flavored song "Gimme a Rain Check," which was replaced by "The Rhythm of Life." The final bonus track, Coleman and Fields singing "Big Spender," is taken from the 1972 Fields "Lyrics and Lyricists" evening at the 92nd Street Y.
As in the theatre, Applegate is sweetly vulnerable and winsomely appealing. But if the singing is accurate and reasonably assured, the voice is fairly small. Nor does Applegate possess the kind of distinctive, characterful sound that Charitys like Gwen Verdon or Juliet Prowse were able to supply. Applegate's sound here is closer to that of film Charity Shirley MacLaine. In general, Applegate comes across well enough, but she's a bit wan, something less than the sort of powerhouse performer who used to carry Charity.
Leading man Denis O'Hare does nicely with "Good Impression" and the title song, while Paul Schoeffler's "Too Many Tomorrows" is quite well sung. As Charity's dance hall cohorts, Janine LaManna and Kyra Da Costa are acceptable if a trifle bland. The new orchestrations by Don Sebesky in no way improve upon the Ralph Burns originals.
If DRG's new recording mostly measures up to the previous Broadway recording, the disappointing '86 revival set, it's far less exciting than the original Broadway and London cast recordings. While it offers an adequate account of the score, this new Charity lacks personality and flavor.
One final note: I'm not sure what to make of the sentence in Will Friedwald's liner notes that states, "Wisely, the producers of this Sweet Charity utilized the revised ending that Peter Stone provided for the film." While Stone did fashion a new ending for the film, surely the one featured in the current revival is brand new, and the work of Simon.
TREEMONISHA Deutsche Grammophon
Scott Joplin 1868-1917 was the king of American ragtime, responsible for such classic compositions as "Maple Leaf Rag." The heartbreak of his life and career was his opera Treemonisha, written about 1907. Although it features three big rag numbers "We're Goin' Around," "Aunt Dinah Has Blowed de Horn," "A Real Slow Drag", Treemonisha is otherwise a classically-based grand opera, all of the music accessibly melodic.
Joplin's libretto was a simple fable of good, represented by the people of an 1884 Arkansas plantation, and evil, represented by the voodoo conjurers Zodzetrick and Luddud, with their "bag o' luck" filled with "goofer dust." At the head of the community is eighteen-year-old heroine Treemonisha, who is abducted to but ultimately rescued from the conjurer's den. Treemonisha is the educated person who can break the spell of superstition represented by the conjurers. Returned to her people, Treemonisha stresses the need for a leader, and the people persuade her to take on the job. Treemonisha's central theme is education as the road to salvation for the black community.
Dying of syphillis, Joplin attempted repeatedly during the last ten years of his life to get Treemonisha produced, but the ragtime man's bid to crash the world of opera was everywhere rejected. Near the end of his days, Joplin arranged a presentation of the work in Harlem as a sort of backers audition. But Treemonisha was never fully performed during Joplin's life.
Marvin Hamlisch's arrangement of Joplin rags for the background score of the 1973 film hit The Sting sparked a resurgence of interest in Joplin's work. Treemonisha had been rediscovered in the early '70s and first performed in Atlanta in 1972. But with the success of The Sting, Treemonisha finally got its first major staging, presented by Houston Grand Opera, the company that would have an even bigger hit with its restored Porgy and Bess.
Directed by Frank Corsaro and orchestrated by conductor Gunter Schuller, Treemonisha had its Houston Grand Opera premiere in May 1975. The next step was more surprising: a formal New York premiere not at New York City Opera or the Met but instead on Broadway. After delays caused by a musicians' strike which closed all Broadway musicals including such recently opened attractions as A Chorus Line and Chicago, Treemonisha opened at the Uris now the Gershwin Theatre on October 31, 1975, and quickly transferred to the Palace Theatre, for a total run of sixty-four performances, brief for a musical, but not bad for an opera new to the town.
Deutsche Grammophon released a two-LP recording of the Broadway cast, and that recording is now back on a double-CD DG set. In the title role is the warm and elegant soprano Carmen Balthrop. The matinee-alternate Treemonisha, Kathleen Battle, went rather farther than Balthrop. Dreamgirls Tony winner Ben Harney sings Zodzetrick.
On disc, Treemonisha is a thin but charming work, a piquant mix of operetta, grand opera, and black folk melody. And the finale number, "A Real Slow Drag," is sublime enough to make up for any earlier shortcomings. Joplin's opera is a work to be experienced. Better than this CD reissue would be a DVD of the video of the Houston Grand Opera revival of the early '80s. Televised by PBS, the video features Balthrop, original leading man Curtis Rayam, and several other members of the'75 Houston/Broadway cast.