March 2011 Archives

We've seen lots of men in drag on New York stages lately, from Priscilla Queen of the Desert to Where's Charley? to La Cage aux Folles to The Divine Sister. Nuns are also big in shows these days, as in Sister Act, High, and (again) The Divine Sister. The Metropolitan Opera has coincidentally followed both of these trends with its production of Rossini's Le Comte Ory, a comic opera that is rarely revived -- for good reason, as it turns out.

The plot of the piece concerns a handsome Count who is so determined to hook up with a beautiful Countess (not his wife) that he comes up with all sorts of schemes to be near her, first assuming the identity of a hermit and, when that doesn't work, that of a nun. Many comic operas have become hugely popular with no more amusing a conceit than this, but Ory is an also-ran because most of its music is only fair-to-middling in quality.

Of the three most famous composers of the bel canto school -- the other two were Donizetti and Bellini -- Rossini appears to have been the least gifted. Without a doubt, he could write brilliantly when inspiration struck, but many of his works contain pages and pages of what might be called note spinning, and he had a tiresome habit of using nearly identical climaxes and cadences to end all of his arias, duets, ensembles, etc. Also, the man was shameless in terms of recycling material from one opera to another. For example, a program note for the Met production of Ory mentions without a hint of disapproval that Rossini incorporated six (!!) numbers from Il Viaggio a Rheims -- written to celebrate the coronation of Charles X of France at Rheims Cathedral -- into the later work.

The Met deserves credit for giving the piece a more than worthy production. Director Bartlett Sher, working in collaboration with Michael Yeargan (sets), Catherine Zuber (costumes), and Brian MacDevitt (lighting), has come up with a pointedly meta-theatrical presentation, complete with a stage within the stage. This is a good idea as far as it goes, but it doesn't make the opera any funnier or more compelling. One of Ory's major flaws is that there's really no progression in the narrative: Act II is just a variation on Act I, with the Count trying different means to attain the same desired end.

Some of the Met's finest singers have been lavished upon this piece of fluff. Tenor Juan Diego Flórez and soprano Diana Damrau, who triumphed in Sher's production of Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia for the company in 2006, are reunited here as the Count and Countess. Both sing with all of the beauty, facility, and élan one expects from them, and their onstage chemistry helps keep the opera interesting. Mezzo Joyce DiDonato is charming in the trouser role of Isolier, the Count's page, who is also in love with the Countess. (Female-to-male drag!) Michele Pertusi offers a gem of a characterization as Ory's tutor, and Stéphane Degout and Susanna Resmak -- two singers previously unknown to me -- are perfect as Rambaud and Ragonde, respectively. Maurizo Benini conducts the score in such a way as to maximize its assets, but it seems clear that Ory was staged primarily as a vehicle for Florez, and I'd be surprised if it's ever revived without him in the title role.

One final comment: There's nothing wrong in the Met presenting an obscure, second- or third-rate opera as an interesting historical artifact and/or as a showcase for a star singer, but the company does itself no favors in pegging such a work is something greater. In the program note referenced above, Paul Thomason contends with extreme hyperbole that "every page [of Le Comte Ory] is a miracle" and that "Rossini never wrote anything wittier, more sophisticated, or more delightful." This makes it sound as if he's never heard Il barbiere di Siviglia, La cenerentola, or for that matter the William Tell overture, three masterpieces in the canon of a composer who was only occasionally touched by the hand of true artistic genius.

If all the various NYC theater companies that offer staged concert performances of old musicals had a contest to see which of them traffics in the rarest of the rare, I have a feeling that Musicals Tonight! would win hands-down. While this invaluable company occasionally offers revivals of fairly well-known commodities such as Paint Your Wagon, founder/artistic director Mel Miller and his colleagues more often present items that prompt audience responses on the order of "What? This I've gotta see!"

Now in its 13th year, Musicals Tonight! has brought back to the boards such chestnuts as Goldilocks, Fifty Million Frenchmen, By the Beautiful Sea, and Three Wishes for Jamie. The company's Spring 2011 season at the McGinn-Cazale Theatre (Broadway at 76th Street) has given us a typical clutch of rarities: I'd Rather Be Right, Theodore & Co., and the current offering: Up in Central Park. I recently spoke with Miller about these particular shows and the company in general. And since he's the expert on this stuff, I let him do all the talking:

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"We don't dig up shows just for the sake of digging them up. Sometimes, we've made mistakes, and we've dug up things that should have been left buried. You really can't know for sure until you see a show on its feet. I have the utmost confidence in my director Thomas Sabella-Mills, but you can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit -- and I won't say which shows I'm referring to.

"We have the world's best director, as far as I'm concerned. Not only does he put these babies on their feet, he has a wonderful way of distributing bits of business as equitably as possible. Everyone has a moment or two that showcases his or her talents and gets a little applause. Tom seeks out the skills that each performer has to offer and tries to showcase those skills within the context of our productions.

"Jim Stenborg is our primary music director and accompanist, and he's also a musicologist. Among other things, he's on staff at both [City Center] Encores! and the Goodspeed Opera. He often works just from lead sheets for some of the more obscure shows, and he's the one who's always going down to the Library Congress or elsewhere to do the research that's so important to us."

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I'd Rather Be Right
Book by George S. Kaufman
and Moss Hart;
Music by Richard Rodgers
Lyrics by Lorenz Hart

"The show opened on Broadway in 1937. It hasn't been seen in New York since then, but you really can't go wrong with Kaufman & Hart and Rodgers & Hart. Even though the score has only has one famous song, 'Have You Met Miss Jones?", we felt it was tuneful enough and clever enough to revive it. Then, after we got into it, we realized how much the political content of the show reverberates today."

Theodore & Co.
Music by Ivor Novello and Jerome Kern;
Lyrics by Adrian Ross and Clifford Grey

"This one lept out at me. There's a pedestrian walkway in London called Cecil Court; it runs between St. Martin's Lane and Tottenham Court Road. It has antiquarian book stores on both sides of the street, and one of the places has sheet music and scores of various kinds. I stuck my head in one day, and there was the piano/vocal score for a show I'd never heard of, Theodore & Co. It was 10 pounds, so I figured, 'What the hell!' I bought it, and the next day I went to the British Library and found the libretto. The show ran almost two years in London, but no one ever does it anymore. Musicals Tonight! is not-for-profit, but we're not suicidal, so I was wary of putting it up. But the audience response was wonderful."

Up in Central Park
Music by Sigmund Romberg
Lyrics by Dorothy Fields
Book by Herbert Fields and Dorothy Fields

"This is a similar kettle of fish to Theodore & Co. It's a half-century younger than that show, but it's still more than 65 years old. It's an operetta that was on Broadway in 1945, well past the golden years of operetta. It's about New York, it's about the Tweed ring. The score has some songs that people might have heard of, and there was a movie version with -- of all people -- Vincent Price as Boss Tweed."

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"One of our greatest joys at Musicals Tonight! is when a cast falls in love with a show. Our casts don't know what they're getting into, and for the little we pay them, I won't put a show on stage unless I believe in it. Sometimes I've discovered shows that I've reburied without producing them because, at the end of the day, I didn't feel they deserved to be seen again. I can't bring myself to put a cast and a director through a rehearsal process for a show if I don't honestly think it's worth their time.

"In the fall, we're going to do L'il Abner, and people will probably criticize us for doing something so mainstream. Sometimes I think, 'Heaven help me if I put up a show that has songs people have heard of. God will strike me dead!' But I think it's okay, because most of our shows are rarities that we think deserve to be dusted off one more time."

Two of my favorite performers, Jill Paice and John Scherer, have something in common. Although both have solid Broadway credits, they've gone beyond Broadway to play some of their finest roles -- whether just beyond (at City Center), further beyond (in Millburn, NJ or Pittsburgh, PA), or way beyond (in London's West End). Currently, Jill is Kitty Verdun in the City Center Encores! presentation of Where's Charley?, while John is Hysterium in the Paper Mill Playhouse revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. In separate interviews, I recently spoke with these two about where the actor's life has led them.

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BROADWAYSTARS: Jill, I was in Where's Charley? in high school, but it seems to me that revivals of it are pretty rare.

JILL PAICE: I think it's done quite often in schools and community theater but not on the professional level -- like Arsenic and Old Lace. Our Charley, Rob McClure, played the role in high school. It's a show that's written in a very particular style, which we're trying to learn.

STARS: There was a Broadway revival in 1974. I saw it, and I remember that the song "My Darling, My Darling" -- which you'll be singing with Sebastian Arcelus at Encores! -- went over really well. Were you familiar with this show before you were cast in it?

JILL: No, I wasn't. I knew the play, Charley's Aunt. When we began rehearsals, we learned that the musical is basically the play with songs stuck in. It's almost word for word. Now, we've really scaled it down, because a lot of it is gags and business and physicalization that we can't do because we'll be holding books in our hands.

STARS: Are you having fun with your role?

JILL: Yes. I don't know if it's because I'm the palest girl you'll ever meet, but I feel very English, so I'm comfortable with this sort of character. The two main women in this show remind me very much of Gwendolyn and Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest. Even the relationship is similar, although the women in Where's Charley? are not in competition the way Gwendolyn and Cecily seem to be. But there's a similar sort of "very best of friends getting into trouble together" thing happening. Sweet, innocent, lovely people.

STARS: I was wondering if you are British or if you're married to a Brit, because I know you did The Woman in White and the musical version of Gone With the Wind in London. Or was it just an Equity exchange situation?

JILL: I'm not British. It was an Equity exchange in both cases. My first London credit was The Woman in White, and I think the producers foresaw bringing the show to Broadway, so they wanted to do that exchange. To this day, I still don't know how I ended up in the room for the first audition, with Jim Carnahan putting us all on tape. I think back then it was even a VHS tape -- something really crude. I was very new to the city, and I don't know how I got that audition, but it definitely changed the course of my career.

STARS: I must ask you about Gone With the Wind. What an amazing opportunity.

JILL: That happened because when I was in London doing The Woman in White, I was in the workshop of Gone With the Wind -- and then, when they did the production, the role was still mine for some reason.

STARS: I guess it can be thought of as a nice payback in the sense that an English woman was chosen to play Scarlett in the movie, and the choice was controversial for that reason.

JILL: It's funny, but when I was cast, no one questioned that. There was more of a reaction when I was cast in The Woman in White, because it's a very English story. So there was a little bit of, "Why you?"

STARS: Was it a huge challenge to play Scarlett O'Hara?

JILL: It was an extraordinary experience. I had been obsessed with Gone With the Wind since I was in the fourth grade. I would be Scarlett for Halloween.

STARS: There are so many questions I could ask about that show. I assume they removed a lot of the plot in order to make way for the songs.

JILL: Oh, absolutely. They had to take out a tremendous amount of plot from the book to make the film, and there we were basing our show on the book. There are elements of the book that were in our show but not in the film; they chose to cut certain things, we cut some other things. It was a beautiful show, but it didn't take off with the critics.

STARS: Just before GWTW, you were in Curtains on Broadway.

JILL: Yes, with David Hyde Pierce, the Gentleman of Broadway. He's a wonderful human being and a fabulous leading man.

STARS: Where's Charley? is your first Encores! show. Everyone says it's a very intense process because of the limited rehearsal period.

JILL: When you do Encores!, you know it's going to be fast. Fortunately, I've done a lot of readings, so I'm kind of used to this pace. In fact, when I'm given more than two weeks to work on something, that's unusual for me. It's like, "Wow, I really get a chance to think about this, rather than flying by the seat of my pants." We have a great company, and I think this is a great show for Encores!

STARS: Well, I can tell you that it went over like gangbusters when I saw it at Goodspeed a few years ago. So, who knows, maybe this production will transfer to Broadway.

JILL: Oh, that would be fabulous!

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BROADWAYSTARS: How's it going, John?

JOHN SCHERER: It's Monday night, we just finished rehearsal, and I'm exhausted. But I'm good.

STARS: Did you ever do Forum before?

JOHN: Yes, twice. I did it in Sacramento, and two years ago at Goodspeed. Same role. For me, it's more fun to do this show than to see it. I don't know why. But it is so much fun to do. It's hard to mess it up, because that book is so fantastic.

STARS: A lot of people say that, but I'm always the first to admit that I directed the world's only flop production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?

JOHN: Really? Well that's an accomplishment!

STARS: I agree that the book is brilliant, but Sondheim himself has said that he doesn't feel the score really works all that well, because it's so difficult to musicalize a farce. But you have a great cast at Paper Mill, and I think Mark Waldrop is a great choice as director.

JOHN: I think so, too. He's terrific. I've known him for years, but we've never worked together before.

STARS: But you have worked at Paper Mill before.

JOHN: Yes. The last time was about 10 years ago, in Cole Porter's You Never Know.

STARS: That's amazing. They don't do obscure shows like that at Paper Mill anymore.

JOHN: No -- and it's probably good that they don't. Did you see the show? It was kind of a stinker. I can see doing a show like that in an intimate theater like Goodspeed, but it totally got lost at Paper Mill.

STARS: You've done so many shows in so many different places. Do you enjoy that, or would you much rather work close to home when you have the chance?

JOHN: I'd always rather be closer to home, but I'm also not one of those people who wait around for something to happen. If there's a good part somewhere, I'm going to do it.

STARS: I just missed you in Boeing Boeing at the Cape Playhouse last summer.

JOHN: Oh, my god, we had so much fun. That show had two of my best friends in the world in it, Jen Cody and Hunter Foster. Cady Huffman and Heather Parcells were in it, and Jimmy Brennan directed. The thing about that play is it's not funny on the page; it's all about what you do with it. I was really nervous up until opening night, but the audience loved it.

STARS: I did get to see you in the old George Abbott/Philip Dunning melodrama Broadway in Pittsburgh. I guess that's the kind of show you'll only find in the regionals.

JOHN: Yes. I didn't know the play at all, but Ted Pappas called me up and asked me if I wanted to do it. It's an odd play but a really fun part, so I thought, "Why not?"

STARS: One of the most interesting things about Broadway is that it's a backstage melodrama, so you see all of the actors in full costume in the wings, going out to do these numbers and then coming back offstage afterward, but you never actually see any of the numbers.

JOHN: It's weird! Another weird thing is that the play starts out as a fast-talking comedy, and then somebody gets murdered on stage. I felt like the audience didn't know what was being asked of them. "Are we supposed to laugh, or are we supposed to take this seriously?"

STARS: That's one problem you certainly won't have with Forum.

JOHN: I think this is going to be a wonderful production. The design of it is beautiful, and the cast is great: Paul Vogt, Beth McVey, Stephen Buntrock. I think the audience is going to have a great time.

What a career! As a teenager, Shirley Jones was taken under the wing of Rodgers and Hammerstein, no less, and ended up starring in the film versions of their musicals Oklahoma! and Carousel when she was still barely legal. In 1960, she did a complete turnaround, playing a prostitute in Elmer Gantry and winning an Academy Award for her efforts. Her next plum movie role was Marian the Librarian in The Music Man, one of the best-ever stage-to-film transfers.

She's also super-famous as the widowed mom to a brood of pop star kids in the beloved '70s TV series The Partridge Family. That role hit very close to home for Jones, as she's the real-life mother of one pop star (Sean Cassidy) and step-mom of another (David Cassidy, her Partridge Family co-star). Both of those teen idols were the sons of her first husband, actor/singer Jack Cassidy, with whom she also gave birth to actor Patrick Cassidy.

Rather than relaxing in her golden years, Jones is still out there doing it. She released two recordings in 2010, one a Christmas album, the other a tribute to Richard Rodgers. In late April-early May, she'll introduce a screening of Carousel as part of the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood. And right now, she's preparing for her NYC nightclub debut at Feinstein's at Loews Regency, March 15-19. I recently spoke with the lady about her amazing achievements in film, television, and theater.

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BROADWAYSTARS: I've heard some cuts from your Richard Rodgers album. Great stuff, and very sultry.

SHIRLEY JONES: Thanks. It's easier for me to sing low now, and it's fun, because it isn't something I've done a lot of. It's what I'll be doing at Feinstein's, too. I can still sing high notes, and I can sing low, but going up and down the range isn't so easy anymore.

STARS: You mean, you have some difficulty in the passaggio.

SHIRLEY JONES: That's right. And it happens to sopranos more than any other type of voice.

STARS: Tell me about the program for your show at Feinstein's.

SJ: It's mostly a Rodgers and Hart evening, but I'll be doing songs from my movies, too. It will be a combination of story and song. I have stories to tell about each film...

STARS: I'm sure you do!

SJ: Yes, I could go on forever.

STARS: I've always wondered about Frank Sinatra quitting Carousel because he was told they'd have to film the movie twice, once for Cinemascope 55 and again for standard Cinemascope. How much did you work with him before he left?

SJ: Quite a lot. The preparation for a film musical starts way ahead, and Frank and I worked together for two or three months. We did all of the pre-recordings and the costume fittings. Then he got to the set in Boothbay Harbor [in Maine] and found out about the double filming. He said "I signed to do one movie, not two," and he got back in the car and went back to the airport.

STARS: The pre-recordings with him have never been released, but they must still exist.

SJ: They've got to. Everybody asks me about that. I even talked to Nancy Sinatra, and she doesn't know where they are.

STARS: I'll bet you'd love to have those.

SJ: Yes, I would. That's for sure. Over the years, I would see Frank at parties or wherever, and I'd ask him why he left the picture. He'd say, "Shirley, I don't want to talk about it!" But just a few months ago, I was doing an interview and the reporter said, "Don't you know the real reason why Sinatra dropped out of Carousel?" I said, "I guess not! I've never heard any other reason, but I assumed there must be something else." And the reporter said, "Ava Gardner was filming another movie on location, and she told him, 'Get your ass down here or I'm leaving you.'"

STARS: I've always guessed the real reason was that maybe he realized he was miscast.

SJ: Frank didn't feel that at all, trust me. He said, "This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for a singer to play this part." I do think it probably had something to do with Ava, because he always claimed she was the love of his life.

STARS: Well, whether or not it's true, that's a much more interesting story! The irony is that they didn't wind up having to film Carousel twice, because they figured out how to reduce the film image from 55 millimeter to standard Cinemascope. But Oklahoma! was definitely filmed twice, for Todd-AO and for Cinemascope, and both versions are now on DVD in one package. Do you have a preference for one over the other?

SJ: No, I never really thought about it. I just thought the movie was so beautifully done. In widescreen, you got to see more of everything. That was a real house down in Nogales, Arizona. And the corn was real. In that movie, everything was real.

STARS: Speaking of which: In the Cinemascope version, there's a butterfly or a moth that flies around in frame while Gordon MacRae is singing "The Surrey With the Fringe on Top" to you. In a way, it's a mild distraction, but in another way, it really adds to the scene.

SJ: Oh, I know! I remember that really well.

STARS: So, what was it like to be sung to by Gordon MacRae?

SJ: I loved him so. He had one of the most beautiful voices of all time.

STARS: Did you have any trouble lip-synching to your own tracks while filming? I imagine it's rather difficult

SJ: No, it came naturally. But I would think anyone would have trouble synching to another voice. That can't be easy.

STARS: You made your Broadway debut in the chorus of South Pacific, but you weren't in the original cast, were you?

SJ: No, I joined the company for the last six months of the run. Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza were no longer in it, but it was an incredible experience. I was 18 years old! Then I did Me and Juliet in Chicago. And then I went right into the movie of Oklahoma!

STARS: You've played many R&H roles in stock, yes?

SJ: I've done all of them, except Nellie in South Pacific. I did The King and I and The Sound of Music several times.

STARS: I remember reading that you were mentioned as possible casting for the movie of The Sound of Music. How far did you get with that?

SJ: Not very. I didn't audition or test or anything. I think Julie was the one they really wanted.

STARS: Can you talk a little bit about Maggie Flynn, the musical that you and your husband Jack Cassidy did on Broadway in 1968?

SJ: I was really disappointed that it wasn't a hit, because it was a wonderful show. It came at the wrong time; it was very old-fashioned, and at that time they were starting to do things like Hair. Jack was incredible in it. He sang so beautifully.

STARS: You didn't return to Broadway until 2004, when you did 42nd Street with your son Patrick.

SJ: That's right. I had great trepidation about going back to do a Broadway show at age 70, but Patrick talked me into it. He said, "Come on, mom, we'll have a great time!" After the first few performances, I thought, "Wow, now I remember what it's like to be in a show."

STARS: You and Jack made a couple of studio albums that are now on CD, and that recording of Brigadoon, which I love.

SJ: Thank you, I love it too. The music is so beautiful. I never got to do that part on stage, but I loved recording it with Jack. He was such a wonderful performer, and he taught me a lot about singing. Every party we would go to, he'd get up and sing. We had an act that played Las Vegas twice and toured the country. It was called "The Marriage Band." We had singers and dancers and sets -- the whole thing.

STARS: How did you two meet?

SJ: I was under contract to Rodgers and Hammerstein. I was the one and only, first and last performer to be under contract to them. After the film of Oklahoma!, they sent a stage production of the show to Europe on sort of a goodwill tour. The original director, Rouben Mamoulian, directed it. And that's how I met Jack. He was my leading man.

STARS: By the way, did you ever do The Music Man on stage?

SJ: Yes -- as Mrs. Paroo! Patrick and I have done it several places, with him as Harold Hill and me as Mrs. Paroo. In fact, we've done a few shows with him playing the male lead and me playing the old lady.

STARS: You don't live in New York, so you may not be aware that there's a new TV station here called "Antenna" and The Partridge Family is one of its staples. As I recall, the P.R. for the show claimed that you sang along with David [Cassidy] and the session singers who recorded the Partridge Family songs, but I was always skeptical about that. Are you really singing on "I Think I Love You" and all those other recordings?

SJ: Yes! I didn't do much, as you know. I was a background singer. In all that time, I only had two solos.

STARS: I remember that, in the first few episodes of the series, they didn't use David's real voice.

SJ: That's right, they had no idea what they had. They'd hired David because they thought he was the right type and he could play the guitar.

STARS: Both David and Sean Cassidy achieved an enormous amount of fame back in the day.

SJ: Yes. David, I'm told, was the number one rock star in the world at one point -- bigger than the Beatles. I tried to get Sean not to do it; I wanted him to go to college. But he said, 'If David can do it, so can I!"

STARS: Well, I'm looking forward to hearing lots more stories and beautiful songs in your show at Feinstein's. What are some of your favorites that you'll be singing?

SJ: I love "Where or When" and "Blue Moon." I have some great new charts by Ron Abel, who's played Feinstein's many times. You know, I've never really done the so-called nightclub circuit; most of the time I'm in big halls with symphony orchestras. This is a first, and I love the idea. It's going to be great fun.