Revueing the Situation

All students at Broadway University have learned this semester (and in others) that I don’t much like revues because they simply don’t have the emotional content found in book musicals. I’m bored when people sing one song after another with no plot context, no matter how wonderful the performers might be. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and I salute Jay Binder and Jack Viertel for showing that there are ways of making a revue extra special with their Encores! Bash this past Monday night. I hope that every student at B.U. was in attendance and learned the important lessons they taught. But for those of you who played hooky, please keep in mind Binder and Viertel’s valuable points the next time you’re doing a revue (if you must) at your professional or community theater:

1. Cast a mixture of old-timers and up-and-comers. Granted, you’re not going to be able to snag a half-dozen Tony winners, as this show did (Christine Ebersole, Harvey Fierstein, Debbie Gravitte, Dick Latessa, Leslie Uggams, and Karen Ziemba), but you do have your old pros who have won your own awards. (It’s a rare community theater that doesn’t offer a Toby, Jamie, or Nellie.) Mix and match them with performers who are just beginning to make a name for themselves, such as Anne Hathaway and Sara Gettelfinger, and others who haven’t cracked the top tier but are about to, such as Victoria Clark. She lit up a piazza in Chicago earlier this year, and did just as well when she played to Mr. Orchestra, Mrs. Mezzanine, and Lord and Lady Balcony at City Center.
2. Get people who have worked together before. Would Noah Racey and Nancy Lemenager been as show-stoppingly good at singing and dancing “You’re a Builder Upper” had they not been paired last season in Never Gonna Dance? For that matter, there was Dick Latessa giving Harvey Fierstein the same moonstruck look of love he gave Edna Turnblad in Hairspray before, during, and after “You’re Timeless to Me.” Which brings us to our next point:
3. Don’t be afraid to cast non-traditionally. Many have questioned the wisdom of signing Fierstein to play Tevye, but here he was at City Center in a Hermione Gingold part: The savant in “I Remember It Well” who corrects every error that her old beau (here, Latessa) makes. Fierstein showed far less patience than Gingold, to great comic effect, for when Latessa kept getting the details wrong, Fierstein rolled his eyes heavenward and slowly shook his head in astonishment and pity. And you can just imagine what he did with the phrase “so young and gay.”
4. Start each act with a thrilling overture. Here, the wise choice to open the show was Styne’s Funny Girl overture — for my money (and I know no one else’s) the finest overture in Broadway history and a nice change from the expected Gypsy (which is everyone else’s favorite). The second act began with the My Fair Lady overture, which is no slouch either.
5. Look for a new slant on a theme. Oh, you could choose one composer and/or lyricist to honor, but how many times has that been done? This year’s Encores! Bash stressed centenaries, celebrating the 100th birthdays of five eminent songsmiths: composers Frederick Loewe (born in 1904), Harold Arlen, Marc Blitzstein, and Jule Styne, and lyricist Dorothy Fields (all born in 1905). This way, we got a mélange from several Broadway food groups.
6. Take chances. Including Blitzstein was a bold move, for the iconoclastic composer-lyricist was never a Broadway favorite. (His Juno lasted 16 performances, which is 16 more than Reuben, Reuben played on Broadway.) But his selections turned out to be among the audience favorites.
7. If you’re going to celebrate a particular composer, find an obscure piece of material that no one knows. Who knew that Blitzstein’s “A Modest Maid” would turn out to be a genuinely hilarious song? Those who didn’t hear it or don’t know it may find that hard to believe; a hilarious song from the man most famous for agitprop? Yup! The number, which was originally heard in The Littlest Revue but didn’t make the cast album, is sung by a woman who says that she prefers lechery to butchery and some other “-eries” as well. It’s an opera bouffe parody, and Christine Ebersole’s splendid performance of it reminded me how lucky I was on that summer night in 1978 to have seen her go on as Lily Garland in On the Twentieth Century.
8. If you’re going to use projections on your back wall, don’t limit the scope of the sheet music, program and album covers. For example, before a song from The Cradle Will Rock, we were shown the program cover not from a famous production of that show but one from The Flatbush Players. This served to demonstrate that the show had caught the attention of a community group, which many of us may not have expected.
9. If you put the cast members in formal dress, make sure you direct them to play the characters and not the costumes. For example, Victoria Clark sang the prostitute’s song from The Cradle Will Rock, and though she was dressed to the tens, she was able to convey the desperation of someone who had no idea where her next cup of coffee was coming from.

   

10. If you’re going to use someone whom your audience knows for performing in a certain style, allow her to show a completely different side of her musical personality. While we have all become accustomed to Rebecca Luker singing Broadway arias in The Secret Garden, The Sound of Music, and The Music Man, here we heard her doing be-bop in “Buds Won’t Bud,” an Arlen song from Hooray for What?.
11. If you’re playing a desperate character, you don’t have to stop playing her as soon as you finish the song. After Clark concluded the haunting “Nickel Under Your Foot,” she took the long walk to the stage right wing, then quickly turned to the audience and gave the crowd a hard-boiled look — just as her character might have done. Then she resumed walking but stopped again to give us an even harder-boiled look. She wasn’t going to let us forget that her character meant business.
12. It’s okay to include a non-show song but only if it’s really extraordinary. “Emily” from The Airborne Symphony, a 1946 cantata by Blitzstein, certainly fit that definition. Michael Arden and Burke Moses shared sections of a plaintive ballad in which a soldier is writing home to his beloved. You can only hope that your audience will listen with the intensity that the City Center audience gave these guys and this song.
13. If you’re going to include a number from Bells Are Ringing, whose logo includes Judy Holliday’s face, use a projection of a piece of sheet music that was published later — one that doesn’t show her image. You don’t want the poor actress singing one of Holliday’s songs to have to compete so vividly with her memory. That said, Anne Hathaway was delicious doing “It’s a Perfect Relationship” on the same stage where she came to our attention a couple of years ago in Carnival. No wonder William Shakespeare married her!
14. If you’re going to do a well-known and well-worn song, give us a little something extra. Many people feel that “If Ever I Would Leave You” is done to death, but Brent Barrett got to sing (admirably) the verse that we seldom if ever hear, and that made us prick up our ears.

15. Finally, end each act with a number that originally ended an act. This makes for a stunning conclusion. The first act of the Encores! Bash ended as Funny Girl’s did, with “Don’t Rain on My Parade” (here galvanically rendered by Debbie Gravitte). The entire show concluded with the song that ends the first act of Gypsy: “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” as sung by Christine Ebersole, demonstrating who should be first on the list for the next Gypsy revival.

If you do all of the above, or most of the above, then you’ll be a man, my son (or a woman, my daughter), then you may take me to the fair revue that you’ve assembled. If you do not, then I am telling you I am not going.

********************

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