June 2012 Archives

Over the decades, Judy Garland has been channelled by any number of performers and impersonators, including some biological females. Several of these people have offered skillful and respectful portraits, such as Jim Bailey, Mary Birdsong, Isabel Keating in The Boy From Oz, and Judy Davis in Me and My Shadows, an excellent TV movie based on the book by Lorna Luft. Others, who shall remain nameless, have failed to capture the Garland magic and have instead presented gross caricatures of one of the most talented and beloved entertainers in history.

So, when one wants to honor Judy, it's usually a better (and safer!) idea to celebrate her legacy in song without trying to imitate her voice and mannerisms. This wiser path is the one that will be taken by the performers in Night of a Thousand Judys, the second annual edition of an event dreamed up and hosted by Justin Sayre as a special presentation of his acclaimed monthly variety show, The Meeting. Scheduled for Monday evening, June 18 at Playwrights Horizons, the show will star Andrea McArdle (who played the young Garland in the 1978 TV-movie Rainbow) and such other fabulous Broadway folks as Tonya Pinkins, Daniel Reichard, Nellie McKay, and Ashley Brown, plus media mavens Michael Musto (The Village Voice) and Frank DeCaro (Sirius XM Satellite Radio).

This prize package is a benefit for The Ali Forney Center, which provides housing and other services for homeless LGBT youth. (For more information and/or to purchase tickets, visit www.aliforneycenter.org. Here's what Justin Sayre had to tell me about last year's event and what to expect this year.

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BROADWAYSTARS: Night of a Thousand Judys. What a wonderful idea. Was it yours, Justin?

JUSTIN: Yes. At The Meeting, we celebrate a gay icon each month, and Judy Garland is a personal icon for me. So I thought it would be great to put together an evening around her, to get performers of all different styles to pay tribute to her as a benefit for The Ali Forney Center. They agreed that it was a great idea, so we did it last year, and it went very well. The show is going to be even bigger this year. This is our second Night of a Thousand Judys but our third benefit for the center, which is a great organization.

STARS: Tell me about last year's event.

JUSTIN: It was at Joe's Pub, and tickets sold so well that we decided to move to a bigger space this year. It was so much fun; we had Jackie Hoffman, Daisy Eagan, Lady Rizo, and Gay Marshall from the revival of Jacques Brel. And we had Summer and Eve, a great comedy band that's coming back this year.

STARS: As I understand it, none of the artists in Night of a Thousand Judys attempt to impersonate the lady.

JUSTIN: No, certainly not. We really encourage everyone to sing the songs in their own way. It's a celebration of Judy as a performer and an icon, so we like it when people bring new things to the table and put their own twists on songs from the Judy catalog. Last year, Lady Rizo did something really interesting with "Smile," and Summer and Eve did a fun arrangement of "Purple People Eater."

STARS: You have Michael Musto and Frank DeCaro on the roster this year. Will they be singing?

JUSTIN: No. The Meeting is a comedy/variety show; we always do skits and joke routines as well as songs. This year, we'll be doing a parody of the The Wizard of Oz with some really great people, including Michael and Frank and Jenn Harris.

STARS: I don't want to put you on the spot, but have you seen End of the Rainbow?

JUSTIN: Not yet.

STARS: As you may have heard, the show and the performance are very controversial. It seems that people either love it or hate it.

JUSTIN: You know, I have such respect and awe for Judy Garland that I always want to see her rather than someone playing her. But from everything I've heard, Tracie Bennett is putting forth a bravura performance, so I hope to get to the show soon.

STARS: Ben Rimalower is directing Night of a Thousand Judys again, and you have the terrific Lance Horne as your music director. Who else is involved?

JUSTIN: Our choreographer is Jason Wise. There won't be a lot of choreography, but we definitely wanted to have one or two show-biz "moments." Jason is a dear friend of mine who actually wrote a letter to The New York Times in response to their recent article about whether or not Judy is still relevant.

STARS: And what's your response to that question, Justin? I mean, I'm sure it's "Yes!", but maybe you can expand on that.

JUSTIN: I was asked about this when the Times article came out. I don't think it's about the songs so much, it's more about the kind of people we want to be. Judy Garland's performances were all about what she gave to the audience, the experience they shared together. The way the world is now, I think we're all a little bit disconnected, so it's important to remember the kind of performer Judy was and celebrate that level of connection with other people. If we can celebrate that and also raise some money for a beautiful charity like The Ali Forney Center, that's something I'm very proud to have my name connected with.

Frank Loesser's The Most Happy Fella is one of my all-time favorite musicals, but the show has never been tremendously popular with the general public, and I think that's mostly because of bad luck.

The original Broadway production opened in May 1956, less than two months after the opening of My Fair Lady -- with the result that not a whole lot of attention was paid to Happy Fella. (Yes, the show was referenced prominently in an episode of I Love Lucy, but even that didn't help it achieve more than a 20-month run.) Broadway revivals in 1979 and 1992 each had problems; the first suffered from the miscasting of Giorgio Tozzi as the happy vintner Tony Esposito, while the second was unsatisfying in that the "orchestra" was limited to two pianos. No film version of Loesser's operatic musical was ever made, although Luciano Pavarotti was rumored to be interested at one point in his career. (Instead, he made something called Yes, Giorgio, and we all know how that worked out for him.) In 1991, the New York City Opera offered a solid production starring Louis Quilico, Elizabeth Walsh, and Karen Ziemba, but when it was revived in 2006, Tony was played by a shockingly unprepared Paul Sorvino (who would have been great in the part if he had bothered to learn the damned music and lyrics.)

At any rate, a well-sung and well-acted production of The Most Happy Fella with a full orchestra can still pack a huge artistic and emotional wallop -- for example, the recent Dicapo Opera Theater staging, which is being revived June 14-July 8 in the wake of rave reviews. (Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times wrote, "Nothing compares with the joy of hearing this Loesser masterpiece in an intimate, acoustically natural setting. Take that, Broadway!") I spoke with Michael Capasso, general director of the company, about a production that is truly and honestly returning by popular demand. (For more information and to purchase tickets, visit www.dicapo.com.)

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BROADWAYSTARS: The Dicapo Opera Theater usually presents full-fledged operas and operettas, but it seems obvious that Happy Fella was a great choice for the company.

MICHAEL CAPASSO: Yes. We did the show in March as part of our season, four performances on subscription. I love musicals, and I want to more of them. I think we're going to do one a year from now on; we're planning Kismet for next year. Alfred Drake and people like that really had voices, and so many wonderful roles were written for them. These are musicals we can do with a big orchestra and legitimate voices -- and we can also find belters who can sing without a microphone.

STARS: How did you hit upon Happy Fella in particular?

CAPASSO: I've been very anxious to do this show all my life, and now we had the people to cast it properly. We went about it in such a way as to let the piece speak for itself, and we were able to secure an unbelievable review in the Times. Mr. Tommasini really understood what we were trying to do.

STARS: Please say a few words about the cast.

CAPASSO: We got really lucky, because the four principals -- Michael Corvino as Tony, Molly Mustonen as Rosabella, Lauren Hoffmeier as Cleo, and Brance Cornelius as Herman -- turned out to have incredible chemistry. You can't make that happen; you can try to look for it when you're casting, but you never know what's going to happen when four people who have never met before get together in rehearsal.

STARS: I've only seen one of your productions, Street Scene, but as I recall, your theater is wonderfully intimate.

CAPASSO: It's a 204-seat theater that's part of the Church of St. Jean Baptiste at 76th and Lexington. We've been there for 20 years. It does have an intimate feel, but the stage itself is quite large. The orchestra is usually in the pit, but for this show we have a 29-piece orchestra onstage, at the rear. The pit is covered, and we use it as downstage playing space.

STARS: Does having the orchestra onstage create any problems in terms of the singers being heard clearly without amplification?

CAPASSO: No, the theater has very good acoustics. The voices project beautifully. It just works. We got a wonderful review of our production in Opera News, and they raved about our Cleo and what a pleasure it was to hear someone belt without a microphone.

STARS: I've always loved Happy Fella, and I'm glad you do, too.

CAPASSO: I think it's Frank Loesser's great work. As brilliant as Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed are, with Happy Fella he really managed to capture something in terms of the outpouring of melody -- also in the contrast between Tony and Rosabella, who sing operatically, and the musical theater couple, Cleo and Herman. It's extraordinary. Loesser was really on a roll when he wrote this. And the orchestrations are beautiful.

STARS: Especially when played by a 29-piece orchestra.

CAPASSO: There's no substitute for that. It's not the same when you have 12 or 15 players and a bunch of synthesizers. For a more contemporary score that was written in part for electronic instruments, that's fine, but a piece like this was written to be heard with a full acoustic orchestra and to be sung without heavy amplification of the voices. As I said, we perform all of our shows with no microphones at all, and people are amazed. In fact, some people tell me they don't believe we have no mics.

STARS: Well, I very much look forward to seeing the show on opening night of the return engagement.

CAPASSO: It's going to be a lot of fun that night, because Mo Rocca will be singing the part of Pasquale in that one performance. He came to the show and loved it. Then he was going to perform in a benefit for us, but he got violently sick and he had to cancel. He felt really bad about it, and he asked me, "What can I do to make it up to you?" So I said, "Why don't we put you into Happy Fella?"

STARS: Was it difficult to arrange for the whole cast to come back, most importantly the leads?

CAPASSO: No, they all couldn't wait to come back. I will say there are a couple of companies that are really mad at me right now; as a matter of fact, our Rosabella was supposed to go somewhere and do Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls. But when we decided to do a reprise of Happy Fella, everyone wanted to be part of it again, and they moved heaven and earth to make themselves available.

Located at the tip of Cape Cod, Provincetown is considered by many to be the birthplace of the modern American theater, having served as an artistic home for such playwrights as Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Susan Glaspell.

This year's edition of Provincetown's annual Tennessee Williams Festival, slated for September 20-23 in various venues around town, sounds particularly intriguing in that its title and unifying theme is Tennessee Williams and Music. As noted by the festival's co-founder and curator David Kaplan, "Williams' musical tastes were wide and varied, influenced by the jukebox, the radio, New Orleans jazz, the sounds of the Mississippi Delta where he grew up, and the foreign countries he visited repeatedly: Mexico and Italy. Williams invited music onstage, often ironically, as an important element of a vibrant theater, revealing character and conflict." The program of events will include productions from Italy, South Africa, Alabama, Boston, and New York. In addition, the festival is collaborating with artist/musician Bill Evaul, who's creating a series of 10 original woodcuts that will capture the musical essence of the individual shows. For complete information, visit twptown.org.

I attended a benefit for the festival during a visit to the Cape last week, and it struck me that the title of the event, "Wine, Williams, and Song," applies handily to the whole gamut of live performances slated for P-Town this season, in that (1) many of the shows will be held in venues that serve vino (and other beverages); (2) works by Williams will be a major part of the mix, thanks to the festival; and (2) music will be everywhere, in a myriad of styles and forms. In fact, P-Town has already seen and heard an early-season presentation of an honest-to-goodness opera: Menotti's The Medium, with drag performer Varla Jean Merman in a very impressive performance of the title role.

The Provincetown Theater is currently presenting Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (June 7-September 2) in its Bradford Street performance space. In August, that venue will host the Counter Productions staging of Next to Normal -- and in a neat little coincidence, Alice Ripley, who won a Tony Award for her performance in the Broadway production of that beautiful, heartbreaking musical, will appear in concert in P-Town over the Labor Day weekend.

Every year, Provincetown offers shows by a starry clutch of headliners, usually on or around the big holiday weekends in July and August. But this year's group is particularly starry. The biggest news is probably a rare live performance by Whoopi Goldberg, who'll perform two shows at Town Hall on August 5 in the excellent company of Bruce Vilanch.

Other than that, the best place to find headliners here this summer is The Art House. Patti LuPone will open the Broadway in Provincetown series there with three concerts on July 4 & 5. Other notables set for Art House gigs are Ana Gasteyer (July 26-27), who reportedly rocked P-Town with her New Years' Eve show; Marilyn Maye (August 7 & 8), whose debut here last summer was a smashing success; the hilarious Margaret Cho (August 11-18); the one and only Betty Buckley (August 11 & 12); the divine Charles Busch (August 18 & 19); and Megan Mullally (August 23 & 24), a.k.a. Karen from Will and Grace. Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the a-MAH-zing Seth Rudetsky will be in residence here from July 3 through September 1 with That '70s Deconstructing Show.

Drag performers of every conceivable stripe and sensibility have been a major presence in Provincetown for years, and 2012 offers several highlights in that area. David Drake, best known for The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, will be introducing a new character called "Tawny Heatherton" in a show titled Tawny, Tell Me True! at the Crown and Anchor, and will also appear with local drag star Ryan Landry in the Provincetown Theater Production of Charles Busch's The Divine Sister (July 12-September 8).

Other drag artistes to be found doing their thing at the Crown and Anchor this summer include Dina Martina, a.k.a. Miss Richfield 1981, in a "glamour extravaganza revue" titled Illusions; Pam Ann, the "fabulous air-hostess to the stars" (July 1); and Miss Coco Peru (July 4-8). Also keep an eye out for Randy Roberts at the Pied Bar, beginning June 22; and the aforementioned Varla Jean Merman in a new show, Topping Myself.

On top of all of the above, visitors to P-Town can expect to find such familiar and beloved presences as comedians Kate Clinton, Paula Poundstone, and Judy Gold, not to mention jazz/musical theater singer Lea DeLaria and the long-running revue Naked Boys Singing, which never fails to draw crowds during its summer-long stint. And if by chance you find there's not enough to keep you entertained within Provincetown itself during your visit, you can check out what's happening at the venerable Cape Playhouse in Dennis, the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre (W.H.A.T.) and the Harbor Stage Company (both in Wellfleet), and the Payomet Performing Arts Center in North Truro.