1776: Encores! Production Takes Us to the Room Where It Happened When The Nation Was Born

If you haven’t been able to figure out how to crowdfund a ticket to Hamilton, you might want to get yourself over to City Center for the highly enjoyable Encores! production of 1776.  

In this case, the room where it happened is the Assembly Room in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the delegates from the 13 colonies met as the Second Continental Congress during that hot, hot summer of 1776 to debate whether or not to approve the document that would become known as the Declaration of Independence.  

The 1969 show, which walked off with a slew of Tony Awards (six plus a couple of additional nominations) and ran for over 1,200 performances, had the good fortune of having as its book writer Peter Stone, a gifted wordsmith who was responsible for such gems as the screenplay for Charade and the books for the Tony winning musicals The Will Rogers Follies and Titanic. In the case of 1776, there is no question but that this is one musical where the book outshines the songs. There is even one long stretch (30 minutes or so) in which not one note of music is delivered.  

This is not to disparage Sherman Edwards’ score, which is tuneful enough and does the show no harm; indeed, the songs provide much-needed breaks from the tension of the arguing, debating, and negotiating that are taking place in that stifling room (the heat and the flies are the only topics on which there is agreement). But it really is Mr. Stone’s detailed and tension-filled scenes among the delegates that make the show – even though, yes, we do know how things will turn out.  

Santino Fontana is terrific as John Adams, a man who, for his sheer orneriness and stubborn determination, may well remind you of the way that Alexander Hamilton is being portrayed over at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. He says of himself that he is “obnoxious and disliked” – a description that no one disputes – and his opening words about his fellow delegates ring as true today as they did way back when.  

One useless man, he says, is a disgrace; two are a law firm; and three or more are a Congress. (To underscore the point, and to make the contemporary connection, the gentlemen of the cast are all dressed in modern business suits.)

As we listen in on the arguments in the Assembly Room, they are generally as trivial and pointless as anything going on in Washington nowadays.  But Adams and his allies (among them Ben Franklin, played with a mix of avuncular wisdom and devilish charm by John Larroquette) have one goal in mind: to foment a revolution and establish an independent and sovereign nation out of the loose affiliation of colonies.  In order to do this, he must find a pathway to unanimity, a near impossible task given the various competing interests among the delegates.   

One of the great things about shows like this (and like Hamilton) is that they bring history to life. No one will claim that 1776 fails to play fast and loose with the details. It's a musical, after all, not a history lesson. But the big picture is brilliantly captured as we are introduced to those who were present at the beginning of our nation. 

Bryce Pinkham (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder) portrays John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, a man who is bound and determined to maintain the status quo with England, as he explains in his big number with the other conservative delegates, “Cool, Cool Considerate Men.” 

New York audience will appreciate the jabs at their state's politicians, and the New York delegate's persistent if "courteous" abstentions on every vote.  

And you cannot have a Declaration of Independence without its author, Thomas Jefferson, played by John Behlmann with a sense of quiet conviction, coupled with a genteel Virginia pragmatism that lead him to agree to changes in the Declaration in order to garner needed votes, especially from the Southern delegates who are particularly sensitive to anti-slavery language.  

Both Mr. Stone and Mr. Edwards use the show to make a strong statement about slavery, that “peculiar institution” that represents an unshakable truth about our first century as a nation. One of the more powerful songs is performed by the character of Edward Rutledge of South Carolina (Alexander Gemignani). Titled “Molasses to Rum,” it is an indictment of the hypocrisy of the Northerners who say they are opposed to slavery but who are quite content to share in the profits that slave trading brings.  

Of course, we are well aware that many of the founding fathers were slave owners (Jefferson and Washington, among them), and the production makes a sly statement about this by having an African American actress, Nikki Renée Daniels (The Book of Mormon, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess) play Jefferson's wife.  (We can't help but think of Sally Hemings).  

The Assembly Room is decidedly a man's world, however. The only other woman in the show is Christiane Noll as Abigail Adams, with rather too little to do beyond singing about how much she misses her husband. Also underutilized is André De Shields (The Wiz, Ain’t Misbehavin’) as a rum swilling Rhode Island delegate.   

Still and all, this is a fine production of a show that has seen only one Broadway revival (in 1997) since its initial run.  If you want to catch it, you’ll have to move quickly.  Encores! shows run for just a handful of performances. This one ends on Sunday.

Feel free to share this blog with your friends, and to offer up your own theater stories by posting a comment. I also invite you to check out the new website Show-Score.Com, where you will find capsule reviews of current plays from Yours Truly and many other New York critics. 



   

PAINT YOUR WAGON: Complex Orchestrations and Big Production Values Clash With An Intimate Story

If ever a show needed to be John Doyle-ized, it’s Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s 1951 musical Paint Your Wagon, now having a brief run as part of the Encores! season at City Center. 

Doyle, of course, is a director known for his stripped-down versions of Sweeney Todd, Company, and Allegro, among others. He has nothing to do with the Paint Your Wagon revival, of course (Marc Bruni is doing the honors at Encores!), but his ability to tame lavish productions to get at their essence—including having the acting company double as musicians—would do this musical a world of good.  

Lerner and Loewe, coming off their lushly-scored hit musical Brigadoon, switched gears entirely with this earthy tale about the dreamers and drifters who pinned their hopes on the California Gold Rush of the mid-1800s. The theme is set with the opening song, “I’m On My Way”:

                             Where am I goin’

                             I don’t know

                             Where am I headin’

                             I ain’t certain

                             All that I know is I am on my way

The song is performed by a male chorus that includes stock American characters and recent immigrants from various European countries.  It perfectly captures the sense of men adrift.   

One of these is Ben Rumson, a grizzled ‘49er who stumbles across a vein of gold, stakes a claim, and establishes the town of Rumson Creek somewhere in Northern California, where he is quickly joined by the other gold-seeking men. The only female in town is Rumson’s 16-year-old daughter Jennifer. The plot, such as it is, has two central storylines.  One follows Rumson and the men. The other follows Jennifer, who falls in love with Julio, a handsome young miner pressured to live alone outside of town, treated as an outcast because he is Mexican. Added to the mix is a separate off-the-wall thread that has to do with a newcomer, Elizabeth, one of two wives of a Mormon man who auctions her off to the highest bidder.  

Paint Your Wagon is not exactly a well-plotted tale (Lerner wrote the book as well as the lyrics to Loewe’s music), but it does have some interesting elements, including a cross-ethnic love story, broaching the theme of prejudice that Rodgers and Hammerstein made central to their glorious South Pacific (1949), and a character (Elizabeth), who bears a resemblance to the same pair’s Ado Annie from Oklahoma (1943).

What rescues Paint Your Wagon from its clunky and at least partly derivative storyline are a plethora of catchy and memorable songs that have withstood the test of time (“I Talk To The Trees,” “They Call The Wind Maria,” “Wand’rin' Star”) and that fit the characters to a T.  What they don’t fit, however, is the outsize production or Ted Royal’s original (i. e. from 1951) orchestrations, though I hasten to praise the on-stage orchestra which does a splendid job of performing the score under Rob Berman’s always-masterful direction. 

The songs—in keeping with the rough-hewn characters—are carefully crafted so as to follow a simple and easy-going structure. They cry out to be accompanied by banjos and guitars (these instruments occasionally appear in this production, but, alas, only for moments at a time) rather than a large theater orchestra performing lush and complex orchestrations. On top of that, choreographer Denis Jones has taken a cue from Agnes de Mille’s original work, and so there are a several balletic dance numbers that--as nicely performed as they are--ill suit the production, which, after all, features a stage full of scruffy men for most of the time.   

There are, to be fair, a couple of lovely ballads, including “I Still See Elisa,” which Rumson sings about his late wife, and the duet for Julio and Jennifer, “Carino Mio.”  For these, a more lushly romantic arrangement makes sense. There is also a fun and raucous opening to Act II, featuring a troop of gals who have been brought to town to entertain the men in the saloon, performing the bouncy “Hand Me Down That Can O’ Beans,” followed by “Can-Can.” Here it makes sense to open up the production. But for much of the show, things ought to be focused on the individual characters, whose solitary, rootless lives gnaw at them (“Now I’m lost, so gol-durned lost, not even God can find me” is a powerful lyric that needs to be sung against a very quiet accompaniment).

Regardless of the cross-purposes facing the production, there are standouts among the cast at Encores! These include Keith Carradine as Rumson, Justin Guarini at Julio, and Jenni Barber in the comic role of Elizabeth, who is unfazed at the prospect of being auctioned off and who later happily runs away with one of the men. 

Certainly there are many who will be taken by the production values and the grand orchestrations. But if you were to strip a lot of that away, you would find an intimate musical about a group of society's rejects, the kind who will always be seeking to fill the holes in their lives by searching for the ever-elusive pot of gold.

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‘Irma La Douce’: Encores! Production of Frothy Musical Fails To Froth

Irma La Douce is a French cream puff of a musical that should float and dance and soar like a kite caught in a rambling breeze. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the two charming stars at its center, the Encores! production rarely breaks loose from the tug of gravity and remains earthbound. 

There have not been very many revivals of this show, which dates to 1956 and a highly successful run in Paris (4 years) and then London (3 years). It landed on Broadway in 1960 in a production that was helmed by renowned director Peter Brook and choreographed by Oona White. Starring Elizabeth Seal, Keith Michell, and Clive Revill, Irma La Douce was a moderate hit here, running a little over a year on Broadway before making the rounds of summer stock (which is where I happened to see it for the first time) before more-or-less disappearing, save for the original cast album (still in print).

The plot is really just an excuse to pull off a lot of silliness, dependent on a pretense that gets out of hand. Nestor le Fripé (Nestor “the disheveled”), a poor law student, falls in love with Irma, a highly successful prostitute.  But he quickly decides he no longer is comfortable with her career (which pays the bills for both of them), so he invents a rich older man, “Oscar,” who will become her only client, while Nestor will be her “mec” (pimp). The gag of the show is that “Oscar” is actually Nestor, donning a two-bit fake beard that somehow manages to fool everyone.

Things work out for awhile, but all that flip-flopping between  “Oscar” and Nestor is getting to be an exhausting enterprise for our hero, so he decides to get rid of “Oscar” by drowning him in the Seine. Immediately, Nestor is arrested for murder, is convicted, and is packed off to Devil’s Island, along with most of the rest of the cast. The show wraps up with a sequence of events worthy of the Marx Brothers that eventually reunites the two lovers once more.       

I mention the Marx Brothers because that’s the level of wackiness it would take to pull off a winning production of Irma La Douce.  I envision actors swinging on ropes, falling from the rafters, and running up and down the aisles of the theater.  Alas, there is precious little of this kind of zany staging in the Encores! production, and, unfortunately, scenic designer John Lee Beatty, who is retiring after two-decades with Encores!, has chosen this time to build a solid fixed set, when sparse, fly-away pieces would better serve the style of the show. 

Under John Doyle’s less-than-inspired direction, Jennifer Bowles exudes a great deal of charm as Irma, and shows lovely loose-limbed skill as a dancer in the two numbers that give choreographer Chase Brock the opportunity to let loose his imagination (the exuberant “Dis Donc” in Act I, and the absurdly improbable “Arctic Ballet” in Act II).

Rob McClure—a very gifted comic actor—tries his best to raise the level of fun as he manically switches between Nestor and “Oscar.” But truthfully he did something similar and with far greater success in the Encores! production of Where’s Charley three years ago, in which he transformed frenetically between the roles of the title character and his “aunt.”   

What Irma La Douce has going for it is the original music by French composer Marguerite Monnot, including “Valse Milieu,” “Our Language of Love,” the Piaf-like title song, and the bouncy “Dis Donc.”  The always reliable Rob Berman conducts the small (10 players) orchestra performing the original score, allowing the delectable music to come shining through. The English language lyrics by Julian More, David Heneker, and Monty Norman are generally not much more than serviceable, though, and sometimes are forced to the breaking point in order to push a rhyming line.  Example:

                        It's clear to you, it's clear to me

                        This precious moment had to be

                        Other moments outclassing,

                        Guardian angels are passing.   

I do believe a production in French (with supertitles if necessary) might do a better job of capturing the show’s helium-balloon spirit.  

Ah, dis donc!

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‘Little Me’: A Fun-Time Romp from Encores!

Little Me, the 1962 Neil Simon/Cy Coleman/Carolyn Leigh musical, is probably not a rare undervalued masterpiece that needs to be lovingly restored to appreciate its true worth. But the current joyful production by Encores! is as welcome as a cup of hot chocolate laced with whipped cream during these snowy, icy, sleety, bitterly cold days and dreary nights that have been the hallmark of this winter in New York. 

Little Me is a laugh-filled show with TV sketch comedy roots (Simon famously launched his career writing skits for Sid Caesar, who starred in the original Broadway production) and a tuneful score, with music by Coleman and lyrics by Leigh. 

The story unfolds through the frame of depicting the writing of the memoirs of the fictional stage, screen, and television star Belle Poitrine, as told to “Patrick Dennis,” the pen name of the author of the book on which the musical is based (as well as the author of the more highly successful Auntie Mame).   

But even though Belle’s life story provides the shape for the show, the musical rises or falls on the strength of the male lead, who portrays 7 different men in Belle’s life, most of whom die before the end. 

With the Encores! production, we are most fortunate in that the shoulders on whom this task falls belong to Christian Borle, who has a keen and mischievous sense of comic timing reminiscent of Groucho Marx or Charlie Chaplin (this was even truer of Borle’s performance as Black Stache in Peter and the Starcatcher). 

Borle runs on and off the stage, going through quick costume and personality changes throughout the entire show. (This includes the requisite gag where he has to “ad lib” a cover-up for an incomplete change in appearance). The best of these characterizations is that of Fred Poitrine, the terribly nearsighted and socially inept World War I doughboy, who endearingly sings “Real Live Girl” to Belle, and marries her just in time to legitimize the ensuing birth of her daughter before he marches off to his untimely death by paper cut. 

As good as Borle is, this is far from a one-person show, which boasts wonderful performances from the entire cast, including Rachel York as the young Belle; the marvelous Judy Kaye as the older Belle; Tony Yazbeck as George, the boy-next-door turned hotshot nightclub owner (he delivers a terrific “I’ve Got Your Number”); Harriet Harris as the snobbish mother of Noble, Belle’s one true love; and Lee Wilkof and Lewis J. Stadlen as Belle’s agents, the Buchsbaum brothers. Stadlen, who most recently appeared with Nathan Lane in The Nance, is another theatrical stalwart who took the world by storm when he gloriously pulled off the multiple-roles acting feat by playing five characters in the acclaimed 1974 revival of Candide.   

This production also boasts outstanding work by the singers and dancers of the chorus.  And might I add, the choreography by Joshua Bergasse is so creative it is a wonder to me he has not become a major Broadway fixture. 

With Little Me, Encores! is entering its 21^st year of producing short-term revivals of Broadway musicals, and it almost seems to top itself year after year.  Minimalist set designs have become increasingly clever (the sinking of The Gigantic in Little Me could give Titanic: The Musical a run for its money at the concert production at Avery Fisher Hall later this month), and the eschewing of script-in-hand performances by the cast is becoming more and more de rigueur. 

A shout-out to director John Rando and music director Rob Berman, as well as to everyone involved with this production.  They should all join Belle in raising a glass and singing:  Here’s to us, my darling my dear/Here’s to us tonight!

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