Encores! Presents Little Me

If there is a heaven for theater-lovers, it must be something like a perpetual run of Encores! productions.  Fortunately, there is a bit of heaven-on-earth, as anyone capable of heading to New York can regularly visit City Center to view the Encores! series of musical revivals.  Encores! is dedicated to restaging little-seen shows with top-notch casts and the finest orchestra performing on Broadway.  The creative minds behind the series are Artistic Director Jack Viertel and Music Director Rob Berman, who have done a superb job of mounting these shows since 1994. 

A few years ago City Center was renovated to something approaching its former glory – creating the perfect space to realize every dream you ever had of seeing a Broadway musical.

The first show for the season is a winner – Little Me, with a book by Neil Simon (born 1927), music by Cy Coleman (1929-2004) and lyrics by Carolyn Leigh (1926-1983).  It is based on the novel Little Me: The Intimate Memoirs of the Great Star of Stage, Screen and Television by Patrick Dennis (1921-1976).  Readers of this blog will well-remember Dennis as the author of the book and play Mame, a touchstone of personal development for many of our readers.

The original production of the show opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in 1962, and ran for 257 performances.  The musical was tailored to the talents of television comic Sid Caesar (born 1922), who starred in the television variety program Your Show of Shows, which was written, in part, by young Neil Simon. 

The Dennis novel is a camp classic – Belle Pointrine is a scheming chanteuse who uses and abuses men on her way to money, stardom and social standing.  When Simon set about adapting the material, he envisioned a vehicle for Caesar where he could play Belle’s multiple husbands and lovers.  In addition, he could send up America’s love for celebrities, and the entire genre of Horatio Alger success stories. 

Subsequent revivals of Little Me have changed Simon’s book, but Encores preserves the original in all its delirious glory.  Simon envisions the story as older Belle (played wonderfully by Judy Kaye) telling the story to Dennis himself (played by David Garrison).  The bulk of the play is an extended flashback with younger Belle (the luminous Rachel York) and the various men in her life, all played with gusto and brio by Christian Borle.

Drawing on his experience writing television variety shows, Simon scraps the ideal of a straightforward musical comedy and, instead, creates an extended revue.  This can only work if the material is in the hands of a gifted clown and shtick-meister, and, fortunately, this revival has that in spades with Christian Borle.  We here at The Jade Sphinx enjoyed him greatly as the embryonic Capt. Hook in Peter and the Starcatcher, but nothing prepared us for the unbridled comic invention and energetic tomfoolery on display here.  By turns reminiscent of such farceurs as disparate as Tim Curry, Buster Keaton and Dick Van Dyke, Borle is a powerhouse of comic invention.  His performance is a nonsensical tour-de-force.

Fortunately, he is matched by the beautiful and deeply funny Rachel York.  She gives lie to the common canard that women cease to be sexy when they are funny.  Her singing is terrific and her dancing and slapstick extremely accomplished.

Also worthy of note is the handsome Tony Yazbeck, who sings the show’s only memorable song, I’ve Got Your Number.  Yazbeck shows up only intermittently in the proceedings, but he leaves a strong impression.  More, please.  In addition, Harriet Harris delivers solid comic support, as do Lewis J. Stadlen and Lee Wilkof as brother impresarios.

The dancing is topnotch, with a group of talented and attractive dancers to move the story along and provide able support to the overall zaniness.

In the Encores extended history of wonderful productions, few have matched the sheer fun and manic invention of Little Me.  This is theatrical alchemy of a high order, and the gee-wizardry on display at City Center is a marvel to behold.  The crowd was delighted with this inventive bauble, and it was several hours before your correspondent could stop smiling.

Little Me plays today through Sunday – beg, borrow or steal a ticket.  It is not to be missed.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Envy lucky Gothamites who can regularly visit New York’s City Center to view the Encores! series of musical revivals.  Encores! is dedicated to restaging little-seen shows with top-notch casts and the finest orchestra performing on Broadway.  The creative minds behind the series are Artistic Director Jack Viertel and Music Director Rob Berman, who have done a superb job of mounting these shows since 1994.  Added sauce is the fact that City Center has recently been renovated to something like its former glory.  In short, the best way to describe Encores! is that it is a distillation of every dream you ever had of seeing a Broadway musical, and really delivering on that promise.  It is rare that I have a more enjoyable night at the theater.

As Viertel said last night in his brief pre-curtain remarks, the proof a good musical is that it works as an aphrodisiac.  Surely few shows better fit that bill than 1949’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Leo Robin, and adapted for the stage by Anita Loos from her own novel with an able assist from Joseph Fields. 

Briefly, showgirls Dorothy Shaw (Rachel York) and Lorelei Lee (Megan Hilty) set sail on the Ile de France, leaving behind Lee’s fiancée, button-king Gus Esmond, Jr. (Clarke Thorell).  Also on board are aging Lothario Sir Francis Beekman (Simon Jones), his wife, Lady Phyllis (Sandra Shipley) and Philadelphia millionairess Mrs. Ella Spofford (Deborah Rush) and her son, Henry (Aaron Lazar).  Needless to say, there will be shipboard shenanigans, terrific songs and fleet-footed dancing, and comedy both high and low.

The original Broadway cast included Carol Channing as Lorelei Lee (and you probably remember Marilyn Monroe in film version), and while no one in the cast has that kind of star power, Hilty delivers a lusty, busty and deftly comedic performance.  She labors perhaps too much under the ghost of Monroe – the original performance by Channing indicates that there is more than one way to play the part – but it is possible that audiences now would accept nothing less than Monroe-lite.  For all the imitation, though, Hilty does manage to incorporate her own comic sensibilities to the role.

York, as Shaw, has less incandescent wattage than Hilty, but she does manage to do something different with the part.  No mere Jane Russell knockoff, Shaw imbues her part with that hard-bitten cynicism associated with flappers.  Shaw also has the best dance number in the show, bar none, I Love What I’m Doing, danced with a bevy of shirtless Olympians.  These dancers, who cavort throughout the show in a variety of guises, carry much of the action on their muscular shoulders.

Kudos, too, to the indefatigable, peerless clown Simon Jones.  His number, It’s Delightful Down in Chile, performed with Hilty, is a comic treat.  Other songs include I’m Just a Little Girl from Little Rock (complete with three encores), the paean to Americana Homesick, and You Say You Care.

The orchestration of Styne’s score was another highlight of the evening, and the chorus provided a tuneful accompaniment to the action.

As would be the case with any revival of the show, much of it boils down to the performance of the signature number, Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.  This ditty is perhaps one of the greatest bits of comic poetry to be found in the Great American Songbook: 

A kiss on the hand may be quite continental

But diamonds are a girl's best friend

A kiss may be grand... but it won't pay the rental on your humble flat

Or help you at the automat

Men grow cold as girls grow old

And we all lose our charms in the end

But square cut or pear shape these rocks don't lose their shape

Diamonds are a girl's best friend

Hilty delivers the number with oomph to spare, and I promise that you will leave the theater humming the number to yourself.

If there is any complaint with Gentlemen, it has nothing to do with the Encores! superlative revival.  Rather, it is that one of the grace notes of classic Broadway musicals is a sweetness too often missing from contemporary life.  This sweetness goes far in bringing satisfaction and even, if I may, a touch of the sublime.  Gentlemen has wit and brass, but there is a touch of cynicism at its core that somehow makes it, for your correspondent, less than perfect.

Gentleman only runs from May 9^th to the 13^th.  Tickets are available at: http://www.nycitycenter.org/tickets/productionnew.aspx?performancenumber=5973.  You owe it to yourself to go.