Theater News

What’s Next Year’s High School Musical?

Attention, high school drama teachers! Filichia makes his (surprising) suggestions for next year’s musical.

High school students, now on summer vacation, certainly aren’t giving a thought to the next scholastic year; but you teachers who run their drama clubs may not be quite as carefree. You’re still wondering which musical you’ll do next year. Before you commit yourselves to one of the war-horses, allow me to suggest four titles you might have overlooked.

The first is Pacific Overtures (available through Music Theatre International). As the Arden Theatre Company of Philadelphia proved last month, you need not have an all-Asian cast to do Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s masterpiece. You can non-traditionally cast it, as expert director Terrence J. Nolen did with actors of all colors, shapes, sizes, and ages. Granted, Nolen — like Hal Prince before him — stayed with one sex and only used men, but there’s no real reason why you can’t just go ahead and cast women. Arden proved that anyone who thinks there is no other way of doing this unique show is wrong.

Unique? That’s putting it mildly. If there was ever a Broadway musical that was sui generis, this is it. For those who complain that the show has no emotion, I say there’s plenty shown by the mid-19th century Japanese who want no foreigners on their precious soil. (As a man in the lobby said during intermission at the ATC production, “And I thought Jews believed they were the chosen people.”) Every student should learn about another culture’s point-of-view, even one where hara-kiri is deemed superior to admitting your mistakes and getting on with your life. (On the other hand, maybe the 19th century Japanese did have a point about not wanting visitors, for look what happened to their “pretty ladies” once the foreigners arrived.)

I saw the original production during its Boston and Washington tryouts in 1975, and I wouldn’t have thought then that Pacific Overtures could work so superbly without Boris Aronson’s startling sets and Florence Klotz’s handsome costumes for both Easterners and Westerners. But, to quote the Old Man who was once someone in a tree, I was younger then. Arden taught me that the show beautifully lends itself to simplicity, whether it’s done on a proscenium or in a black box in the round. (Nolen opted for the latter.)

Or how about City of Angels, available from Tams-Witmark? It’s rarely done, even in the City of Angels, although it won a Tony for Best Musical. We all know one reason why: The story of Stine, a fiction writer in the ’40s whose book about private eye Stone will now become a movie, requires two series of sets — one in black-and-white to suggest the film noir that’s being made, and one in color to show what’s happening in real life. Ditto the costumes.

Well, I can’t help you with the costumes, but I should alert you to a production I saw at Villanova University a few months ago that at least ameliorated the set problem. First off, director Peter M. Donohue put the show up on a thrust stage, on which clever set designer Dick Durossette placed three circular playing areas painted to look like spools of film. Behind it, there was a movie screen on which was projected slides — some in color, some in black-and-white — each of which immediately told us where we were.

If you choose City of Angels, your kids will get to sing a score unlike any other. No one could have written the music for this show but Cy Coleman, for it required the jazzy feel of film noir and Coleman was a jazz veteran before he ventured into musical theater. From his vocal-scatted overture to his fabulous out-music (arguably the best ever, and music director Jim Ryan’s band of 13 really did it justice), this is an exciting score. Of course, lyricist David Zippel had something to do with that, too, especially in Miss Oolie’s “You Can Always Count on Me” — which, incidentally, could be potently delivered by that not-so-attractive girl who has talent and great pipes.

Joe Ledu and Gregg Pica in City of Angelsat Villanova University
(Photo: Paola Tagliamonte)
Joe Ledu and Gregg Pica in City of Angels
at Villanova University
(Photo: Paola Tagliamonte)

And what a witty book by Larry Gelbart! There’s the double-talkin’ studio exec who’s in dead earnest when he tells our screenwriter, “Flashbacks are a thing of the past.” Gelbart created a libretto that offers roles for two strong leading-men types, and that’s great if you have two boys who could carry a show. Up till now, you’ve cast one as your lead and disappointed the other, but here’s a way to come close to giving each a star part.

Perhaps, though, you don’t have even one overly butch kid, let alone two. Okay, but do you have a super-talented and interested kid who comes early, stays late, and just lives for the drama club? Given that he doesn’t ooze masculinity, you’ve never even considered him for Billy Bigelow, Danny Zuko, Che, Sid Sorokin, or Jean Valjean or Javert Les Miz (recently released for high school producitons). “He’s the type of kid,” says my buddy Michael Barret Jones, “who always gets cast as Charlie Cowell in The Music Man.”

But this kid deserves a lead because he can sing really well, act terrifically, and move like the wind. You also know that, after a few days, hell be off-book, fully aware of every inch of his blocking, and ready to give a performance. But in what part? There’s the rub. You could give him Paul in A Chorus Line, of course. But as good as that role is, it’s not a lead. We’re talking about finally giving him a starring role even though he’s no Joe Hardy or Emile de Becque.

Here’s the answer: Sapiens in By Jupiter, by Rodgers & Hart. The show opened on June 2, 1942 and lasted 54 weeks. That may be paltry by today’s standards but, at the time, 427 performances were enough to make it Broadway’s 16th longest running musical. And it would have run longer if star Ray Bolger hadn’t gone off to entertain our boys overseas. Sapiens is a house-husband in ancient Greece, in a society where the guys stay home, sew the buttons on, and bake the cherry pies while their Amazon wives go out and fight the enemy. So you don’t need a masculine presence to play Sapiens. Your kid can go up there and unabashedly have a great and liberating time doin’ what comes naturally to him.

By the way, the score is very good. “Wait Till You See Her” is the most famous ballad but “Nobody’s Heart (Belongs to Me)” is a close second. There are also toe-tappers such as “Jupiter Forbid” and “Ev’rything I Got (Belongs to You).” The only problem is finding a cast album. RCA made one of the 1967 Off-Broadway revival but it’s long out-of-print and was only ever available on LP, cassette, and (honest!) 8-track tape. Getting the album might prove a headache, but isn’t this kid who’s been so loyal to you worth the time and the trouble? Get in touch with Rodgers & Hammerstein and give the show a look.

Speaking of R&H: If you’ve done The Sound of Music one time too often, what about the show that co-won the Best Musical Tony with it in 1960? That’s Fiorello!, available through MTI. If I’m surprised that a Tony-winner like City of Angels can be ignored, what of this show, which also won the Pulitzer Prize? Is it because Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia is only remembered in New York? Maybe people just don’t know what a “Fiorello” is. Perhaps it would have been better if the show had used his last name instead of his first? Or would people then assume it was a musical version of Airport?

The book by Jerome Weidman (John’s father) and George Abbott has educational value in displaying the seamy side of politics. What’s more, it shows us two very different New Yorks, the staid pre-World War I era in Act I and the Roaring ’20s in Act II. For those Italian-Americans who hate it when others think of them only in terms of the Sopranos, here’s a genuine hero in Fiorello (and some nice soprano solos for Thea, the political activist who’d become his wife).

Sure, you’ll need a charismatic guy to play Fiorello; but, while there are a dozen other male roles, none of them is terribly taxing. On the other hand, there are several nifty roles for girls — including that of Mitzi Travers, the star of that fictional Broadway hit Yoo-Hoo, Yah-Hoo. In the production of Fiorello! that I recently saw at the Arlington Friends of the Drama (a community theater in my Massachusetts home town), director Frank Roberts could have used a dazzling chorine to play Mitzi, which is what usually happens. But he had a talented, heavy-set woman on hand and he had the vision to use her. No problem; after all, Ethel Merman was often (though not always) ample-figured and she sure got to play the lead in lots of musicals.

By the way, I hope every director out there has the eye that Roberts had. During a protest march in which Fiorello was addressing the malcontents, a picketer carried a sign reading “Support Local #25.” Fiorello sang, “Now a strike isn’t played like tic-tac-toe” as he pointed to that number sign before the 25 and tapped in rhythm three of its boxes as if he were, in fact, playing tic-tac-toe. Now, that’s getting the most out of a number!

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