"Then Steve Said to Hal…"

Ed Kleban’s famed musical comedy class met at Fridays at 4pm but Patricia Hoag-Simon and Scott Stoddart’s musical theater class meets on Mondays at 4:30 at Marymount Manhattan College. I was there last week, and not because I’ve enrolled in the program as a musical theater minor: Hoag-Simon and Stoddart are welcoming John Q. Theatergoer to their classes for the next two months to listen up as people who have been associated with Harold Prince and Stephen Sondheim come in and share their stories.

The series got the green light when Hoag-Simon, an associate professor of theater arts at the school, went to Mary Fleischer, chair of the division of fine and performing arts, and suggested a curriculum about the works of Prince and Sondheim. Fleischer said yes and Dr. Judson Shaver, the new president of the college and a fan of musicals, was delighted.

I showed up for the class that would focus on A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Though both instructors are vigorous and entertaining speakers, they took a bit of a backseat here to guests George and Ethel Martin; she was one of the courtesans during the original Broadway run and he was choreographer Jack Cole’s assistant as well as the production stage manager. What’s more, when Jerome Robbins came in to doctor the show, George assisted him — and many years later, when the famed director-choreographer wanted to reconstruct “Comedy Tonight” for Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, George was the man he called and entrusted to remember precisely what he had done. Not only that, both George and Ethel received co-choreographer credit for the film version of Forum.

Stoddart took the opportunity to deliver a lecture on the vagaries of vaudeville, burlesque, and farce — but, before he did, Hoag-Simon interviewed the Martins. George told us that Cole was a painstaking choregrapher. The way George said “It took him three hours to do 5-6-7-8,” it was clear that he wasn’t out to get a laugh but really meant it. “He had a reputation for being cruel but he was never cruel,” George continued, “except in his humor.” He sidetracked to say that when Cole was choreographing The Ziegfeld Follies of 1957, a show that would close out of town, he kept on placing a dancer closer and closer to the wings. The dancer protested, “If I move a little closer to off-stage, I won’t be on-stage,” to which Cole replied, “If I’m lucky.”

Ethel recalled that, when Robbins came in, he only did “Comedy Tonight” and the frenetic chase scene at the end. Both remembered how difficult Richard Lester was as director of the underwhelming movie, filmed on the leftover set of The Fall of the Roman Empire. “Lester was a Philadelphian who liked people to think he was British,” said Ethel. Added George, “He kept saying that there were only three great movie directors: Truffaut, Fellini, and him.” Both were lavish in their praise for original star Zero Mostel. “No one ever could replace Zero,” Ethel said with a definitive slap to her thigh. And yes, they both saw Nathan Lane in the role.

The kids in the class were paying attention and asking the occasional question but, truth to tell, many more questions emerged when Hoag-Simon happened to mention that George also was the stage manager for Company and Follies. Suddenly there were questions about “Happily Ever After,” “Multitudes of Amys,” and “Tick-Tock” from the former show and many requests for reminiscences of the latter. There was a gurgle of pleasure as George recalled that, when Sondheim first wrote “I’m Still Here” in Boston, he didn’t have the right names in place for “Windsor and Wally’s affair.” Alas, he couldn’t remember exactly what Sondheim had written, but it was one of George’s few memory lapses.

After the kids were through asking their questions, I raised my hand to get the subject back to Forum by asking a question that had suddenly occurred to me: “We’ve always heard that after a while, Zero Mostel played fast ‘n’ easy with the script, thus setting the tone for all subsequent Psuedoluses to improvise at will. Can
you recall the very first time you heard him deliver a line that made you say, ‘Hmmm, that’s not in the script?'” George thought for a second and replied, “It was the night that Jackie Kennedy came to see the show. There’s the scene where Pseudolus tells Hero, ‘You go to the harbor! I shall prepare the potion.’ Zero looked directly at Jackie in the audience and said, ‘And you go to the White House.'” (Who knew that Jackie Kennedy was the show’s Patient Zero?)

Hoag-Simon has worked hard to shape a musical theater program at Marymount within the scope of the 24 credits allotted to a minor. “That we are a liberal arts college is a huge plus for the musical theater kids,” she says. “They graduate as well educated human beings ready to take on the world. It has been wonderful to offer a course of this type to the general college population.” But she knows that those are simply not enough credits to train students in all areas of musical theater. She’s plagued by the fact that, due to space and financial concerns, the musical theater students aren’t receiving dance training.

“We desperately need space on the Upper East Side near the college so that we can expand the musical theater program to include a daily ballet, jazz, or tap class,” Hoag-Simon says. “There are no practice rooms with pianos for the singers, and that’s another space and money problem. It’s ironic that our series features so many guests who are accomplished in dance — Graciela Daniele and Chita Rivera among them — yet our students are not able to get the dance training or time in practice rooms that they need to be triple threats in musical theater. If someone would like a building or dance studio named after them,” she adds dryly, “they should call me up.”

In the meantime, all classes are being held on the eighth floor of the main building at 221 East 71st Street. Non-Marymounters are welcome, space permitting. All seminars are 4:30-6pm. Here’s the complete schedule:

3/1: Graciela Daniele and Steve Boockvor on Follies
3/8: Arthur Laurents
3/15: Chita Rivera
3/29: Donna McKechnie on Company
4/5: Lonny Price and Larry Fuller on Merrily We Roll Along

4/12: Merle Louise and Larry Fuller on Sweeney Todd


4/19: John Weidman, Patricia Birch, and Joanna Merlin on Pacific Overtures

Finally, Hoag-Simon and Stoddart have saved the best for last on 4/26: Harold Prince and Stephen Sondheim. Hoag-Simon admits she’s worried about that one because the
room only has 200 seats. All I can say is, she’d better save one for me!

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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@aol.com]