Looking Back: '76-'77
The 1976-1977 Broadway season is perhaps best remembered for failing to produce a new hit musical until its very end. The season began in late spring with Neil Simon's amusing if less-than-tip-top California Suite, with skilled farceurs Tammy Grimes, George Grizzard, Barbara Barrie, and Jack Weston. Also in June of '76 was Circle in the Square's mediocre revival of Pal Joey. This was the one that starred filmdom's Eleanor Parker and ballet's Edward Villella until both fled during previews, allowing Joan Copeland to provide a strong performance in the role of Vera vacated by Parker. Dixie Carter did the specialty number "Zip."
The summer of '76 also brought in the first Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls, a show that had already returned a number of times at City Center, a company which had by this time ceased to offer its grand series of annual revivals. Taking its cue from the recent success of Pearl Bailey in Hello, Dolly!, Guys and Dolls returned with an all-black cast, backed by new arrangements and orchestrations. The result was moderately enjoyable --it's hard to ruin Guys and Dolls-- with the finest contribution coming from Ernestine Jackson's Sarah. The production lasted about eight months, but it wasn't until the '90s that the show would get a revival as successful as one of Broadway's greatest titles deserved.
Joseph Papp, whose A Chorus Line was still blazing at the Shubert Theatre, continued to transfer shows from the Public Theatre. In September, Ntozake Shange's striking series of poetic monologues, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, moved to the Booth Theatre and did well. I somehow failed to attend The Debbie Reynolds Show at the Minskoff, the star's follow-up to her recent New York success in Irene at the same theatre. Critics carped, causing Reynolds to open her remarks to the second-night audience by asking, "What are you doing here? Didn't you read the reviews?"
This was also a time when small-scale revivals of antique musicals from Connecticut's Goodspeed Opera House regularly transferred to Broadway. September brought in a 1917 curiosity about aviators called Going Up. It was fun to collect, but only able to survive for six weeks. In the cast was Walter Bobbie, destined to direct a Broadway revival of one of the season's holdover hits, Chicago.
Overhyped was the import from the regionals of A Texas Trilogy, three full-length plays by Preston Jones, performed in repertory and all set in Bradleyville, Texas. They were fairly interesting pieces, but their disappointing reception and demanding schedule saw to it that the trilogy vanished in three weeks.
A major event for musical-theatre fans was the fall opening of the Houston Grand Opera production of Porgy and Bess, directed by Jack O'Brien and restoring the complete score that had been altered in previous revivals. Perhaps it was the fact that I was seeing the Gershwin masterpiece for the first time on stage that made this Porgy seem far more exciting than any subsequent version I've caught. Three Porgys and three Besses alternated, with Clamma Dale making the biggest impression as the opening-night Bess. I can still see her stunning transformation under the influence of drugs at the end of "There's a Boat Dat's Leavin' Soon for New York." The production transferred from the Uris now the Gershwin to the Mark Hellinger during its four-month run. I returned to see it again at the Hellinger, again with Dale, and it was even better at the somewhat more intimate venue.
One of the better musicals of the season was The Robber Bridegroom, but it counted as a revival, the piece having been mounted for a brief Broadway run by the Acting Company with Patti LuPone and Kevin Kline the previous season. But Bridegroom leading man Barry Bostwick was eligible for a Tony for his performance, and won. The Robber Bridegroom was an intimate charmer, but perhaps too quaint for major success. It lasted five months.
I didn't catch Claire Bloom in the revival of The Innocents, based on The Turn of the Screw. So I missed the performance of child actress Sara as she then spelled it Jessica Parker as young Flora, one of governess Bloom's two charges. Parker's understudy was Shelly Bruce; both would inherit the title role in the season's biggest musical hit.
Harold Pinter was the director of the short-lived The Innocents, but he had more success with his own play, No Man's Land, which allowed John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson to return to Broadway and offer an impressive display of teamwork and craft. Another striking import from London was Comedians, with notable work by Jonathan Pryce as an idiosyncratic, somewhat dangerous young stand-up.
Although it revived disappointingly a season or so ago, the '76 version of Larry Gelbart's Sly Fox was good fun, thanks to star George C. Scott and other gifted players like Jack Gilford, Bob Dishy, and Hector Elizondo. I have no doubt that Robert Preston was equally helpful when he replaced Scott. Circle in the Square offered a respectable revival of Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana with Dorothy McGuire, Richard Chamberlain, and a broad Sylvia Miles in the role created by Bette Davis.
Lasting a week was the pleasant but unnecessary musical version of Twelfth Night, Music Is. The show had several appealing Richard Adler tunes, but not much point of view on its source material. Although Your Arms Too Short to Box With God was more concept revue than book show, the Biblical piece gave the season one moderately successful new musical.
I was glad to have the opportunity to see Zero Mostel in Fiddler on the Roof again, in his return in a touring revival at the Winter Garden. That's because I had seen Mostel only once in the original, then revisited the production with various Tevye replacements in New York and London. True, Mostel no longer seemed capable of the fully disciplined performance I had seen him give at the first Saturday matinee of the original production. But he was still a force to contend with, making one realize again how perfect he was for Tevye.
Simon Gray's perceptive character study Otherwise Engaged was another London import, built around a fine performance by Tom Courtenay. I second-acted the show the following summer to see his replacement, Dick Cavett. David Mamet's American Buffalo had its impressive Broadway premiere, starring Robert Duvall. I listened to the critics and skipped Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra with Rex Harrison and Elizabeth Ashley twelve performances.
Betty Comden and Adolph Green played a return engagement of their still-enjoyable Party show. Then Lily Tomlin had a sold-out triumph in her Appearing Nitely solo comic evening. A brave attempt at an Encores!-style series of musical revivals-in-concert opened with a highly enjoyable account of She Loves Me with a cast including Madeline Kahn campier than the role of Amalia requires, but quite distinctive, Barry Bostwick superb, Rita Moreno, Laurence Guittard, and George Rose. The series continued with an admirable attempt at Kurt Weill's Knickerbocker Holiday starring Richard Kiley. But business was slow the runs of two and three weeks were longer than necessary, so the series' third concert, The Golden Apple, was cancelled, thus ending "Broadway in Concert at Town Hall."
Then came the season's most awarded new play, the Pulitzer Prize and Tony winning The Shadow Box, introducing us to some residents of cottages on the grounds of a hospital. Michael Cristofer's play didn't hold up when it was revived on Broadway at Circle in the Square, but it played well in the spring of '77. Al Pacino was typically striking in David Rabe's The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, previously seen at the Public Theatre. And as part of the New York Shakespeare Festival's Lincoln Center series, there was the season's most rewarding revival, Andrei Serban's staging of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, with stunning work by Irene Worth, supported by the likes of Meryl Streep and Raul Julia.
Tacky was the word for Paul Zindel's Ladies at the Alamo, the saga of the female powers behind a Texas regional theatre, featuring the formidable Eileen Heckart, Estelle Parsons, and Rosemary Murphy. Film star Liv Ullmann was the draw in the disappointing revival of O'Neill's Anna Christie, a play that would be electrifyingly revived on Broadway in the '90s. Anna Christie producer Alexander H. Cohen would rehire Ullmann two seasons later for the unsuccessful Richard Rodgers musical I Remember Mama.
Near the end of the season, three successful musical productions arrived in a single week. I wasn't partial to Cy Coleman's I Love My Wife, but the critics quite liked the marital musical comedy. At the preview I attended, the wife of director Gene Saks, Bea Arthur, cheered the show on from a box seat.
More specialized was the imported Side by Side by Sondheim. This devout Sondheim fan needed no intimate British revue to demonstrate the potency of the composer-lyricist's output. But apparently others did, as Side by Side was credited with cementing the reputation of Sondheim's songs apart from their stage contexts. Still, I enjoyed the show for its cast; it was fun to have London's Millicent Martin, Julia McKenzie, and David Kernan in town, even if it was odd that British performers had been enlisted to bring Sondheim to Broadway. I also very much enjoyed the strong replacement cast of Hermione Gingold, Larry Kert, Nancy Dussault, and Georgia Brown.
Finally, there was the big hit musical everyone had been waiting for, Annie. Although it opened to splendid reviews, I've found myself defending this show in recent years, its reputation having somewhat declined owing to an unnecessary sequel and an ineffectual Broadway revival. Then too, Annie is, like The Sound of Music, often underrated, filled as it is with children, a dog, and an insistent anthem. In fact, Annie was one of the last first-rate examples of the traditional Broadway musical that had been the staple of Broadway in the '50s and '60s. And if some were put off by all those little girls, the adults in the audience were rewarded with Dorothy Loudon's raucous but sophisticated comedy as Miss Hannigan. Annie worked in all departments, from David Mitchell's lovely scenery to Phil Lang's pleasingly old-fashioned orchestrations. Although others were fine in the lead, Andrea McArdle's spunky Annie was never quite equaled.
And let's not forget that there was one more new musical that season, the Broadway premiere of the 1929 Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill musical Happy End, in a production transferred from Brooklyn's Chelsea Theatre. The score, including "Bilbao Song" and "Surabaya Johnny," held up well, the book less so. For Broadway, the winning leading lady was Meryl Streep, who was rather quickly replaced by Janie Sell.
The very end of the season saw the arrival of a play that would go on to a lengthy run, the quirky, neurotic, and appealing Gemini by Albert Innaurato. And there were two more big musical events. Yul Brynner returned in his first of two Broadway revivals of The King and I. Directed by Yuriko no doubt with the assistance of Brynner, the staging was unremarkable. But that hardly mattered, as the production was big, the show held up superbly, and the cast including Constance Towers' handsome Anna was uniformly good.
Closing the season was the sort of special, one-night-only event that fans still boast of having attended. This was the benefit concert Together on Broadway, offering the joint appearance of Mary Martin and Ethel Merman. If the latter was in stronger shape than the former, everyone enjoyed the richly nostalgic evening.
