A Musical About the Unkindest Cut of All

I’m really looking forward to seeing Chee-Chee, the Rodgers and Hart musical that Mel Miller’s Musicals Tonight is currently presenting. After all, there’s never been a cast album or published script of this 31-performance flop, so we know little about the 1928 tuner set in long-ago China. But it does arguably have the strangest subject matter of any musical, given that it’s based on a book called The Son of the Grand
Eunuch.

How, you ask, can a eunuch have a son? I opened Charles Pettit’s novel and found that, before the operation, Li Pi Saio sired not one but two boys. Then I plowed ahead to see what made Rodgers, Hart, and bookwriter Herbert Fields say “Yes! This has gotta be our next show!” (I like to recognize the tune opportunities in novels that became musicals and enjoy guessing what the songwriters might have musicalized.)

It’s been said that the best musicals have big characters and big events — and Lord knows that the Grand Eunuch Li Pi Saio has experienced a big event. What’s more, he’s not just big in that he’s “as fat as a Buddha” but also in that he has the ear of the Great High One he serves. And how did you get to be you, Mr. Saio? Well, The Great High One has 81 concubines and needs someone to watch over them. Only a eunuch can be trusted, for while he can still have sexual relations, his condition makes him lose interest in the activity. As Li Pi Saio sneers, “Others retained what we have so disdainfully sacrificed in order to become honorable functionaries.” So he spends his days attending to the concubine whom The Great High One has chosen for the night. The clothes-and makeup transformation he puts her through would make a good number, as Jerry Herman proved 55 years later when Albin was tucked away and Zaza was here.

Being Grand Eunuch means that you’re “deprived of all other gratification” (Sherman Brothers fans, please note: Not “gratifaction”), but Li Pi Saio wanted the job because it comes with a nice place to live and all you can eat — and this guy has an excellent appetite. The not-as-grand eunuchs under him line up in procession and parade all the delicious foodstuffs before him. That sounds like a musical moment, doesn’t it? (The way Pettit describes Li Pi Saio’s reaction, I expected him to break out and sing “Food, Glorious Food.”)

After everyone’s fed, all the eunuchs are heard “drumming with pudgy hands upon their paunches and raising their falsetto voices in an affecting chorus.” (Do you think Rodgers and Hart wrote a march for these falsettos?) “Reflecting on his enormous advantage from his privileged situation,” Pettit writes, “Li Pi Saio marveled that any Chinaman could aspire to a position other than that of Grand Eunuch.” (This also sounds like a song cue to me.) Still, every now and then he takes a look at “his most treasured possessions, those which he had been compelled to sacrifice,” which he keeps not in a little tin box but in “an exquisite vessel of finest porcelain.” He must save them and be buried with them, you see, because a body has to be complete to be admitted to the next world. (Can you hear him singing, à la Sweeney Todd, “These are my friends …?”)

Li Pi Saio isn’t getting any younger, knows it’s time to retire, and assumes that his son Li Pi Tchou will be thrilled to hear that he’ll succeed him. But you know sons; they never do what their fathers want them to do. Li Pi Tchou is married to “the lovely Chti,” as Pettit will describe her each every time he mentions her. Indeed, lovely is the one thing she can do, for she hasn’t been called on to do much since “her little feet were broken in infancy.” (This calls to mind Chu Chem, a musical that — honest to God — deals with foot-binding. Needless to say, it was a failure when first produced in 1966 and when second produced in 1989).

Because Li Pi Tchou is so in love with the lovely Chti, he turns down his father’s offer. Li Pi Saio at first tries to be enticing (“Love has never yet filled an empty belly,” he says — a song title if I ever heard one) and then becomes insistent. The son could have a song of his own here, where he says he’s a man and that’s a bonus ’cause when he’s swinging his cojones, he’ll show ’em what testosterone is. Or maybe he could beseech his father by at least starting to sing the big hit from Kismet — the one that begins, “Take my hand.” His father insists, but Li Pi Tchou staunchly refuses, knowing that if he has the operation he’ll never be able to sing a song analogous to the one in L’il Abner: “Put ’em Back the Way They Was.” When Li Pi Tchou turns down Li Pi Saio, his daddy, in turn, turns him out with the lovely Chti (whom — I assume — Fields, Rodgers, and Hart renamed Chee-Chee.)

Out they go, lost in the wilderness; here, the wife could sing a song like “Brand New World” from Rags, given that Pettit writes: “In China, a virtuous woman never leaves her home, so it was for the lovely Chti a great novelty to behold an outside world which by rights she should have never seen. She listened to the long sighs of the wind wailing.” Li Pi Tchou is equally excited and soon exclaims, “What a truly admirable country is China! What activity among those living in the plains!” There’s a song for you, one that Rodgers surely could write and could conclude with “C-H-I-N-A! China! Yeeow!” But the couple runs into a Tartar who decides to kill Li Pi Tchou, until the lovely Chti gets his life spared by calling the Tartar “the greatest, handsomest, and strongest.” I expected him to say Miles Gloriosus’ line from Funny Thing, “As magnificent as that?” But what the flattered Tartar actually says is, “That is true.” And while he decides to spare Li Pi Tchou’s life, he does insist on giving him “100 lashes on his feet,” which would translate to 25 measures of 4/4 music.

The Tartar gives the lovely Chti something quite different: A night with him and a gold ring. Li Pi Tchou wants her to throw it away but she argues that to do so wouldn’t change anything, so he reluctantly agrees. Then the couple is attacked by highwaymen who beat Li Pi Tchou and reward Chti with a bracelet for doin’ what comes naturally. Thank God a monk comes along and brings both of them to the monastery. The head monk says that Li Pi Tchou can stay, albeit as a kitchen worker who can tend the pigs in his spare time, but that the monastery is no place for women. However, when he gets a better look at the lovely Chti, he decides that there is nothin’ like a dame and says that Chti can stay as a cook.

What’s more baby, she can cook — though not in the kitchen. Soon she’s wearing a new necklace. (Unlike Mama in Hallelujah, Baby! who sings, “I Don’t Know Where She Got It,” I daresay we do know where the lovely Chti got her necklace, even if she claims that there’s nothin’ dirty goin’ on.) Soon the lovely Chti chides, “Was it not for you and you alone that I sacrificed everything? Is it my fault if your animal instincts have led you to reject the wise counsel of your venerable father?” Why Pettit continues to call her “the lovely Chti” is beyond me. But Li Pi Tchou, believe it or not, still believes in love — about which he would, of course, sing.

The head monk, meanwhile, decides that “we require a rare and magnificent spectacle designed to attract the curious, to kindle imaginations, and to stir the souls of the populace.” While this might prompt a song worthy of Barnum, ol’ Phineas never did mean the cremation that the head monk has planned. And guess whom he has in mind to be roasted? (Could it be that Lorenz Hart originally wrote his opening for The Boys from Syracuse — “Hurrah! Hurroo! There’ll be an execution!” — for Chee-Chee?)

Well, Li Pi Tchou appears to be headin’ to the Fields of Ambrosia, as the monks sing something like “What a day, what a day, for an auto da fe.” Li Pi Tchou begs “the lovely Chti” to intercede, and while she says she will, she isn’t above noting that “It was hardly worthwhile to make such a point of maintaining your virility. Your venerable father would have loaded me with presents and every indulgence, and you would have done likewise.” Then word filters back to the monastery that Li Pi Tchou’s younger brother died during the operation — so we’ve got an opening for a eunuch. Li Pi Tchou quickly says he’s available for the post, which could cause the monks to sing, “The Prince is Giving a Ball” (which would have to be followed by an immediate reprise).

The doctor who botched the younger brother’s operation — wonder if he left him with an angry inch? — has been executed, so Li Pi Tchou needn’t worry about that. The monks put Li Pi Tchou and “the lovely” Chti in a Chinese version of a surrey with a fringe on top but, en route home, she worries that she’ll lose her jewels. (He, of course, has already decided that he’ll lose his.) Chti tries to make up by saying, “I am extremely happy to be assured of aging decorously amid general esteem.” That sure doesn’t make Li Pi Tchou sing “In Praise of Women.”

Li Pi Saio won’t sing it, either; when he sees Chti’s baubles, bangles, and beads, he demands to know how she got them. Li Pi Tchou feels he must tell his father the truth, and Li Pi Saio immediately decides that “the lovely” Chti will be executed. Li Pi Tchou says: “But for her, I should be decapitated. But for her, I should have been impaled. But for her, I should have been roasted.” Li Pi Saio rebuts: “But for her, you would have followed my wise counsel. But for her, you would have never been flogged.” And if that parallel structure doesn’t suggest a song to you, you ain’t a Broadway baby.

Not only does Li Pi Saio have “the lovely” Chti beheaded, but he also enacts more revenge than Dr. Abner Sedgwick could have craved in It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman! The next 36 pages are made up of nothing but his retaliation on the Tartar, the highwaymen, and the monks. How does the book end? Well, let’s just say that a bandaged Li Pi Tchou could sing “What Did I Have I Don’t Have Now?” followed by the chorus singing “Ever After.” And I swear it — it’s there on page 254 — Li Pi Saio actually tells his son, “All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” There’s a song cue as sweet as a candide apple.

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