Happiest Talk

I’m the happiest guy in the world because I’ve been reading The Happiest Corpse I’ve Ever Seen, Ethan Mordden’s new book on the last 25 years of musical theater.

Of course, we recently had another book on the same subject: Barry Singer’s Ever After. I thought that one was putrid, but if you look on Amazon.com, you’ll find that it did get a five-stars-out-of-five review from someone: Barry Singer. Yes, that’s right: The author raved about his own book after Scott Miller, one of our brightest musical theater writers, gave it two stars. (Those two stars show that Miller is one of our most generous citizens, too.)

So here’s a MUCH better examination of the last quarter-century, as would be expected by those who have read the five previous examinations of the various decades of musical theater by Mordden, the best of all of us who write about the subject. What’s surprising is that, given the dour title he chose (taken from the title song of Cabaret, of course) and his not-great ability to suffer fools, Mordden is amazingly kind here. Only Runaways truly feels his terrible swift sword. (He’s so hilarious in his excoriation of that 1978 failure that I was glad I didn’t read it while sipping a Starbucks, for I would have sprayed the room with frappuccino.)

Some of you might have already stopped reading this column in order to go and get your own copy of Mordden’s book — but, alas, The Happiest Corpse I’ve Ever Seen won’t be out until October. I endlessly petitioned Palgrave, his publisher, to send me an advance, uncorrected proof, and once it arrived, I put my life on hold to read it. While driving, I’d pull it out at red lights; I’d also open it up and read it during escalator and elevator rides. Of course you too want to know what’s in it, so I’ll tell you — albeit in a roundabout manner. You see, a reviewer is not allowed to quote from an uncorrected proof because the author could still make changes; thus, what the reviewer quotes could be obsolete by the time the book is in its final form. (I’m sure he’ll correct his endorsement of Hello, Again, which is printed as Hell Again.) So, in my overview, you’ll only see quotation marks when I’m citing a song or something someone else said. Otherwise, I’ll be paraphrasing what Mordden wrote, which means that his thoughts won’t be expressed nearly as well as only he can state them. Please forgive.

First, he includes more little-known facts than even Lucy Van Pelt could imagine — including the names of the song titles of William Finn’s yet-to-be-seen Royal Family musical and the real identity of Bobby in A Class Act. Mordden reminds us that Merlin had a character named Philomena the Unicorn, and that Teddy and Alice featured a ghost. (My buddy Richard Norton likes to say, “I never miss a Victoria Woodhull musical,” and I’m glad that Mordden doesn’t, either.) He mentions not only Winner Take All, a freeze-dried affair that Richard and I saw together at one of its four Boston performances in 1976, but also Vicki for President with Carol Channing. That latter show never happened, but it was announced — yet every person I mention it to has never heard of it. Leave it to Mordden to recall it. And leave it to him also to include some juicy stories, including the one where Stephen Sondheim had Ricky Ian Gordon over to his apartment: Seems the lad made a critical remark about Merrily We Roll Along and was then quickly evicted.

Mordden spends a good deal of time appreciating the under-appreciated. The performances he praises range from the controversial (Bernadette Peters in Gypsy) to the obscure (Alyson Reed in Marilyn) to the ignored (Debbie Reynolds in Woman of the Year). He goes to bat for Smile, Side Show, The Human Comedy, Rags, and, surprisingly enough, Raggedy Ann, though he’s less enthusiastic about Hairspray. He has good things to say about Miss Saigon, Nine, the Dutch Cyrano, Lynn Ahrens, Jeanine Tesori, and Disney for getting kids into the theater. And while he has a chapter on five musicals that he especially admires — Grand Hotel, Titanic, Michael John LaChiusa’s The Wild Party, Sweet Smell of Success, and Amour — he saves one of his greatest endorsements for Marie Christine.

Yet it wouldn’t be a Mordden book without criticisms. He points out a number of mistakes that creators of musicals made, and I found myself nodding in agreement as he chastised everything from the wigs in the 1776 revival to La Cage‘s insistence that its bigot would enjoy his moment in drag at the end of the show. He notes that Oh, Brother! — a lightweight gag-ridden show — shouldn’t have been set in the too-volatile Middle East; that the towers in Chess looked as if they were about to bang into each other; and that Alfred Lunt’s singing in Idiot’s Delight was particularly wonderful because audiences weren’t accustomed to hearing him sing, while Len Cariou’s singing in Dance a Little Closer, the updated musical version of the play, didn’t have the same impact because we’d already seen and heard him in Applause, A Little Night Music, and Sweeney Todd.

Mordden states that Colette, a show about a bohemian Parisian, shouldn’t have tried out in such less-than-cosmopolitan cities as Seattle and Denver. He chides Tim Rice for his inept rhyming and notes how one false rhyme in Cats is not Eliot’s mistake but, rather, the result of an Andrew Lloyd Webber alteration. He also gives an incisive piece of advice to lyricists: Don’t include even one bad, corny line in any of your songs, for if you do, critics will use it as an example and claim that it’s representative of your entire work.

There are plenty of other smart observations by Mordden. He suggests that Play On!, with interpolated Duke Ellington songs, might have done better if nearly two year’s worth of audiences hadn’t already heard many of the same songs in Sophisticated Ladies. He theorizes why Encores! triumphed when two previous organizations that did much the same thing did not. Expert historian that he is, he notes where Harrigan ‘n Hart factually erred and reminds us that Frank Loesser intended his two-piano arrangement of The Most Happy Fella for stock and amateur theaters productions of the show, most certainly not for a Broadway revival. Mordden’s there to augment the experiences of those who missed certain productions and only heard the albums; for example, he describes the moment in Falsettos where Marvin, in bed with his boyfriend during “What More Can I Say,” peeked under the covers to see Whizzer’s whiz-bang endowment. He questions Comden and Green’s decision to have 19th-century Nora in A Doll’s Life earn a fortune from making and marketing perfumes. He castigates Rent for its ad campaign — “the musical for people who hate musicals” — and Elaine Stritch for her belief that she should have had all the time she wanted to deliver her Tony acceptance speech. What’s more, he points out that it doesn’t take much to get Patti LuPone to fall on the floor.

Mordden has a great many inspired notions, too. He wants Encores! to do not just aged flops or hits but a season of three worthy musicals that New York never got to see: Grover’s Corners (Jones and Schmidt’s musical version of Our Town), Over and Over (Kander and Ebb’s adaptation of The Skin of Our Teeth), and Paper Moon (Larry Grossman and Ellen Fitzhugh’s musical based on the famous movie). And what a clever idea he has to revamp the Tony Awards broadcast: Winners should be allowed to thank only one person and then must tell an entertaining anecdote about their lives or the show.

What may be the best thing of all about Mordden’s books is that they get us to listen to cast albums that haven’t seen the inside of our CD trays in years. I can’t say when I’d last played Colette Collage, but The Happiest Corpse I’ve Ever Seen made me take it out and — because of Mordden’s nearly six-page essay on its predecessor, Colette — got me to appreciate it as I never had before. When a book can do that, it’s a real achievement.

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