Peter Filichia - The Book of Broadway Musical Debates, Disputes, and Disagreements

Girl Crazy (1930). When Ethel Merman hit that high-C for sixteen bars in I Got Rhythm, did the first-nighters scream halfway through as they would today? At the end, did anyone go Whooo! Or did applauding in awe suffice?

Another Evening with Harry Stoones (1961). Barbra Streisands one and only off-Broadway show opened on October 21, 1961, and closed onyesOctober 21, 1961.

Diana Sands, the original Beneatha in A Raisin in the Sun, was in it, too; so was ever-so-delightfully silly comedian Dom DeLuise.

With those three on board, could it really have been that bad? Well never know.

Yet heres the real question: Had we been there, would we have said Gee, that young woman whose first name was misspelled in the program is really something?

(Probably.)

1776 (1970). Stuart Ostrow produced the Tony-winning musical on Broadway but decided not to bring a company to London. So Alexander H. Cohen, the Broadway producer who had little luck or wisdom with musicals, did the honors.

Ostrow must have inferred that The West End wouldnt welcome a show with such lines as The king is a tyrant and such lyrics as We say to hell with Great Britain!

1776 closed after 168 performances, less than a tenth of the Broadway run. Cohen, not Ostrow, suffered the slings and arrows while losing an outrageous fortune.

South Pacific (1984). No, not a business-as-usual production with Mary Martin or someone like her. Director Anne Bogart offered quite the rethinking at New York University.

More than three dozen actors played war-scarred World War II veterans whod be introduced to the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Their caretakers hoped that its optimism, be it cockeyed or grounded, would help them return to a happier civilian life.

A doctor simply watched and said not a word. The nurses and interns were played by the five musicians. (Did John Doyle see this production on a trip to New York?)

Sounds crazy, no? Don Shewey in The Village Voice would later write that this South Pacific was hilarious and sexy. What made it chilling was the way it captured todays yuppie conformism to a tee.

As Jerry Hermans big uptown hit was then asking Who knows? Who knows? Who knows?

Authors Choice: The Cradle Will Rock (1937). Take me back to Manhattan on June 17, 1937, to the Maxine Elliots Theatre at 109 West 39th Street. Let me join six hundred audience members who are arriving to see the opening of bookwriter-composer-lyricist Marc Blitzsteins The Cradle Will Rock.

What we find is that the Works Progress Administration Federal Theatre Project has been shut down and shot down by the Feds. Theyve literally padlocked the theaters doors.

Apparently some of their powers-that-be have seen a rehearsal or a run-through. Theyve found the show too anti-government, anti-capitalistic, anti-religion, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The Feds have forbidden the show to open.

The government agents also frowned on the implication that the steel industry wasnt fair to its employees. Only three weeks earlier, eighty thousand steel workers had gone on strike and would be out for four months more. Although the forges werent burning, this show could fan the flames.

Under these dire circumstances, most producers and directors would say The padlocks are on our wrists as well as the doors. Thats not the style of two future legends: John Houseman, Cradles producer, and Orson Welles, its director. Theyll just find another theater, thats all.

But even if they do, how can the show go on? The fifty-nine-member cast consists of those who are in actuality government employees, and thus arent allowed to perform on stage. Actors Equity president Frank Gilmore agrees.

Houseman and Welles circumvent that dictate with an ingenious loophole. If the actors are merely seated in the audience and stand when each is scheduled to speak or sing, they wont perform on stage. Abe Feder, now in the fourth year of what would be a nearly half-century Broadway career in lighting design, will shine a spotlight on each individual when he or she starts a line or dialogue or a song.

Now Gilmore points out that any cast members who arent Equity members may not perform in a commercial enterprise in a commercial house. unless they join his union. Thatll be fifty-nine dollars for the first years dues, please.

In todays money, thats $1,185. And the Great Depression still isnt over.

Press agent Helen Deutsch has money, and shell pony up. (Luckily, in the years to come, Deutsch will make that back and more for writing a short story on which the 1961 hit musical Carnival is based.)

What of the musicians? The twenty-six-piece orchestra consists of government employees, too. They too would have to be paid rates commensurate to Broadway. Deutschs pockets arent that deep, so Blitzstein will accompany the performers on a piano. But what if the theater they find doesnt have one?

So while Houseman searches for a house, Jean Rosenthalthe future acclaimed lighting designer but at the time a production manageris sent to find a piano. She eventually does and even resourcefully hails a truck whose bribed driver gets the upright into his trailer.

Now they must ride around the block and stop whenever she spots a pay phone. Rosenthal hopes to discover where to deliver the instrument, but where shell stop, nobody knows.

Finally, after more than an hour, Rosenthal learns The Venice Theatre on Seventh Avenue and West 58th Street has been engaged. The house will be hastily put into service at the cost of one hundred dollars ($1,896 in todays dollars). The real surprise is that the reporters who were covering this story put up most of the money.

Oh, to be one of the one hundred or so game theatergoers who form a veritable parade as they walk twenty blocks uptown to see this new work. Passersby ask what theyre doing, are told, and join the march. Their numbers swell to about twenty-five hundred by the time everyone reaches the Venice. Theres not an empty seat and plenty of standees.

Blitzstein begins playing and singing. Imagine the pressure on Olive Stanton, who has the shows first words. Will she stand and sing them? Actresses with lesser fortitude wouldnt have had the courage to rise on cue, for theyd be fearful that the law would arrest them and arrest their careers as well.

Stanton stood, sang, and set the tone for all to follow suit, each standing when the time came to perform. The result was a unique night in musical theater history.