Encores! Presents The Most Happy Fella

Once again Encores! at City Center demonstrates that New York is heaven for all musical theater buffs.  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.

The first show of the season was the delightful Little Me, which was nearly incandescent in its brilliance.  Could Encores! we wondered, maintain this high level of quality?

Well, with The Most Happy Fella, they have succeeded beyond wildest expectations.  Fella is everything a Broadway musical should be: tuneful, funny, dramatically sound and, ultimately, moving.  If Little Me was a diverting romp, Fella is a show that will stay with the viewer for years to come.  I cannot recommend it enough.

The original Broadway production of The Most Happy Fella premiered in 1956, with book, music, and lyrics by Frank Loesser (1910-1969).  It was quite unusual for the time, in that the show did not conform to the standard Broadway musical template – it was more dramatic than comedic, most of the dialogue was sung, and the show dealt with subject matter usually seen in operas rather than musicals.  The story revolved around an older man romancing younger woman, and was based on the play They Knew What They Wanted by Sidney Howard (1891-1939). Despite its lack of convention, the original production was a hit, running for 14 months.  (One interesting side-note, the original show was funded by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz; in fact, her television counterpart went to the show in an episode of I Love Lucy.  Cross marketing is nothing new!)

The Most Happy Fella has narrative conventions somewhat similar to Cyrano.  In San Francisco of 1927, Italian grape farmer Tony Esposito romances a beautiful, younger waitress Rosabella by letter.  When it comes time to send a photo, he instead provides a photo of the younger and more handsome Joe, the farm foreman.  Of course, Rosabella comes to the town and learns that she has been deceived.  Before she can leave, however, Tony is injured in a trucking accident and Rosabella remains to marry the injured man.

Of course, their road to happiness has many complications, including Rosabella’s intermezzo with Joe, interference from Tony’s spinster sister, and community expectations.  But rather than have these conventions resolve in a standard musical-comedy manner, the show has a great deal of dramatic heft.  The setbacks experienced by the characters are very real, and each slight hurts like a physical blow.

The cast, as is usually the case with Encores!, is a Master’s Class in musical theater. Oddly enough, the two leads, Laura Benanti (born 1979) as Rosabella, and Shuler Hensley (born 1967) as Tony, are simply serviceable.  But Cheyenne Jackson (born 1975) as Joe, is luminous.  Gifted with a beautiful voice, good looks and charisma that is palpable, it is a mystery why this fine actor/singer is not a bigger star.  Though his part is smaller, he makes an indelible impression.  It seems as if nothing in the theater is beyond his protean talent.

However, the evening really belongs to Heidi Blickenstaff (born 1971), who plays Cleo, Rosabella’s best friend.  She is a powerhouse, and she galvanizes the show.  Her number Big D (about coming from Dallas) is a showstopper that infuses the second act with verve, adrenalin, and old-fashioned show biz razzmatazz.  Sharing the number with the fetching Jay Armstrong Johnson, as her simpleminded beau, Blickenstaff takes what is already a wonderful show and brings it to a whole other level.  It’s the kind of barnstorming not seen since the days of Ethel Merman or Judy Holliday, and the experience is electrical.  Blickenstaff and Johnson reunite for another number, I Like Everybody, and, once again, the result is magic.  I have now resolved to see anything featuring the dynamic, charismatic Blickenstaff.

Musicals ultimately come down to the quality of their songs, but a show where most of the dialogue is sung presents problems in the production of standards.  But while there may be no timeless tunes on hand, there are many terrific songs.  Joey, Joey, Joey, performed by Jackson, is wonderfully ethereal.  And Standing on the Corner, with Johnson, Ryan Bauer-Walsh and Arlo Hill, is a terrific comedic treat, as is when Zachary James, Bradley Dean and Brian Cali team up for the musical numbers Abbondanza and Benvenuta. 

Loesser was going after something more with Fella; it is an extremely aspirational show, and even when it doesn’t work completely, it is admirably ambitious and nothing less than entertaining.  It harkens back to a time when musicals were more than an existing songbook with a loosely constructed book to hold it all together.  The production is also ambitious for Encores!, with perhaps their largest cast ever and most elaborate settings.  Once again, they prove that musical theater is one of the fine arts.

The production is directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw (born 1962) and it is something special, even for a series and production team that are never less than magnificent.  As with all Encores! productions, the run of the show is extremely limited, and Most Happy Fella ends April 6^th.  You do not want to be one of those unhappy fellas who missed it.

Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett

Readers of this blog know of my boundless admiration for the artistry of both Ian McKellen (born 1939) and Patrick Stewart (born 1940), two of the finest actors of their generation.  So, it was with some qualms that I learned that these two great knights of the theater were coming to Broadway in a double act, but not in, say Othello or Becket … or even in The Sunshine Boys or The Odd Couple … but in two modernist plays, Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

We found No Man’s Land to be intriguing, despite our deep and abiding trouble with this maddeningly oblique and mannered play.  So how do McKellen and Stewart fare with what is consider the classic absurdist comedy?

In Waiting for Godot, two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait in vain for the arrival of someone named Godot.  Aside from the fact that both men have seen better days, we know nothing of them.  Indeed, we know nothing of Godot, or of where the two men are, and why they are waiting. Or even what Godot means to them.  In fact, it almost seems as if Pinter provided a wealth of information in No Man’s Land provided compared to what we are told by Beckett in Godot.

This, of course, has led to endless interpretations of what the play “means” since its first premiere in Paris in 1953.  Is it mediation on religion?  On politics?  Is it Freudian?  Jungian?  Christian?  Existential?  Ethical?  Are they gay men, or is this a comment on deeply homo-social friendships?  Or is it simply surrealism run amuck?

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) was not going to be any help in pointing out the meaning.  He famously told Sir Ralph Richardson (1902-1983) that if I had known more I would have put it in the text, and that was true also of the other characters.  He remained remarkably closed-mouthed about what it all meant until the very end.  Indeed, in his introduction to the play, Beckett writes:  I don't know who Godot is. I don't even know (above all don't know) if he exists. And I don't know if they believe in him or not – those two who are waiting for him. The other two who pass by towards the end of each of the two acts, that must be to break up the monotony. All I knew I showed. It's not much, but it's enough for me, by a wide margin. I'll even say that I would have been satisfied with less. As for wanting to find in all that a broader, loftier meaning to carry away from the performance, along with the program and the Eskimo pie, I cannot see the point of it. But it must be possible ... Estragon, Vladimir, Pozzo, Lucky, their time and their space, I was able to know them a little, but far from the need to understand. Maybe they owe you explanations. Let them supply it. Without me. They and I are through with each other

We here at The Jade Sphinx protest that I cannot see the point of it is not exactly an artistic credo of any great worth.  Indeed, it abdicates the artist’s foremost responsibility – to represent life and give it meaning.  But, if we want to see two great actors in a once-in-a-lifetime chance, we take it as it comes, to quote Pinter.

One other constant in most productions is that both Vladimir and Estragon wear bowler hats, and I cannot help but thinking while watching Stewart and McKellen last night that I was watching some weird synthesis of Laurel and Hardy and the worst excesses of Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953).  There is an underlying sweetness and innocence in both Vladimir and Estragon that is extremely reminiscent of Laurel and Hardy, and if ‘the boys’ were somehow cast in Strange Interlude, the result would be Godot.  It is also a sweetness that is sadly lacking in the mostly mean and rather vicious No Man’s Land.  Both McKellen and Stewart have a remarkable warmth about them that infuses Godot with a humanism that is absent in the text.  I wish they had a better vehicle to show their innermost hearts.  The tenderness they shower on one another, the simple acts of affection, the acceptance of human frailties: these, more than anything else in the play, leave a profound impression.

As with No Man’s Land, McKellen somehow scores the showier part, here playing Estragon.  (Bert Lahr in the original Broadway production – and if the contrast between McKellen and Lahr does not illustrate how malleable these characters are, nothing does.)  McKellen is a marvel: he is completely submerged in the character and layers of old man makeup.  His performance is wonderfully physical, and his mutterings and asides are great comic business.  It is also a fearlessly naked performance: McKellen is unafraid of being frail, dirty and vague.  It is a masterful bit of underplaying.

Stewart, as Vladimir, has the lion’s share of the dialog and he is wonderful.  He manages to achieve a lilt to his usual stentorian voice – and if I’m not mistaken, he consciously or subconsciously is modeling much of his performance on Stan Laurel (1890-1965).  This makes a great deal of sense, and seldom has Stewart played to sweeter effect.  It is Vladimir who is moved throughout the play by compassion, empathy or outrage; he is also ribaldly funny.  I never expected to see Stewart sing or dance – both of which he does here – nor have I ever expected to see him master low comedy slapstick.  It seems this protean actor’s range is limitless, his energy galvanic and his touch both deft and profound.

The sour note of the evening was Shuler Hensley (born 1967) as the barbarous Pozzo.  Hensley’s playing was broad enough to embarrass a church-basement performance of the play.  Fortunately, Billy Crudup (born 1965) as the ironically named Lucky, shines once again.  Both Pozzo and Lucky were components Beckett threw in to provide some kind of action in the play; however, the action is so brutal and callus as to throw off the emotional tenor of the play … whatever that is.

I think a more interesting approach to both plays would have been for these two great actors to switch roles on alternate performances.  How wonderful it would’ve been to see each man’s interpretation of each role – and where they differed.  Gielgud and Oliver did it in the 1930s, switching Mercutio and Romeo, so it’s not impossible – perhaps someday.

For readers able to see only one of the plays, certainly Godot is the one to catch.  It has the greater warmth, is more open to interpretation, and both actors are more evenly matched.  More importantly, they actually play off one another, whereas in No Man’s Land, they might as well have been in separate rooms (or plays). 

Godot also left me strangely … moved.  As a play, I cannot respect it, nor can I defend it.  I certainly can’t explain it.  But these two sad ragamuffins caring for one another in an indifferent universe cannot help but deliver a level of pathos.

Returning again to Laurel and Hardy, a critic once wrote that the world wasn’t their oyster, but that they were the pearl inside of it.  So, too, with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in Waiting for Godot.

The King of Broadway?

Jake La Botz as The Shape

Many theater buffs both in-and-out of New York have little idea of how formidable mounting a large-scale Broadway show can be.  While “straight” plays would seem to be easy, new plays are often rewritten or recast, directors changed, and sometimes, nightmare of nightmares, even sets and costumes can change days (or hours!) before opening night.

Now take those problems and multiply them by a factor of 1000.  That’s how hard it is to mount a large-scale musical.

One show that promises to come to Broadway is Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, a new musical with a book by Stephen King and music by John Mellencamp.  It is currently on hand at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, and initial reviews are little-short of ecstatic.

As could be expected from the American master of the macabre, Darkland County is Southern Gothic of the most delicious type.  The story shifts between 1967 and 2007, and chronicles the haunting of Joe McCandless (Shuler Hensley).  McCandless witnessed his two brothers die while fighting over a girl 40 years ago -- he now fears that history will repeat itself as his two sons are heading for a similar fate.  Connecting these desperate threads is The Shape (Jake La Botz), who functions as the Devil, the MC and Virgil to Hensley’s Dante.

Darkland has had a long gestation period, with King and Mellencamp working on it for 12 years.  The show missed its originally-planned 2009 debut when Mellencamp had disagreements with the original director, subsequently bringing on Susan V. Booth (who also runs the Alliance).

The show has opened to extremely positive reviews, with La Botz receiving the lion’s share of praise for his slithery turn as The Shape.  This handsome, talented actor and musician has been increasingly cast in featured supporting roles in big-budget films, and The Shape may be his long-deserved breakthrough part.  Darland County continues in Atlanta until May 13th.  If all continues to augur well, Darkland may create a new star in La Botz, and cement a Broadway triumph for both King and Mellencamp.

John Mellencamp (born 1951) is, of course, one of the country’s most famous rock stylists.  Stephen King (born 1947) is the author of 49 novels, many screenplays and countless short stories; it’s possible that King has sold more books in the 20th Century than any other living author.  His most recent novel, 11/22/63, takes as its conceit a time traveler seeking to stop the Kennedy assassination.  It is one of the most satisfying reads I’ve had in some time.

Will Ghost Brothers of Darkland County make it to Broadway?  Certainly the names Mellencamp and King have proven to be golden in the past, and La Botz is rapidly building a devoted fan base.  This is definitely a show to watch.