Another enchanted evening

(David Pittsinger as Emile and Carmen Cusack as Nellie in the national tour of "South Pacific." Photo by Craig Schwartz.)

The view back from more than half a century is an ideal span for testing certain truths, such as the enduring grandeur of "South Pacific." When the original road company of Rodgers and Hammerstein's classic premiered on April 24, 1950, at Cleveland's Public Music Hall, it was a publicist's nirvana. The show managed to invade the front page of The Plain Dealer with not one, but two stories next to an article about President Truman's battle with Commies. The already-legendary composer and lyricist were in attendance to amp up the excitement. Hanna Theater manager Milton Krantz wailed to the media about the $738,000 of box-office lucre that had to be refunded to those tortured souls who couldn't score a ticket to Bali Hai.

On the home front, a family legend was founded on the story of this chronicler's 23-year-old mother, who had to view the impassioned wooings of Emile and Nellie reduced to ants from the last row of the cavernous Public Music Hall. It is a testament to the American dream that one generation later her son was able to view the same rapture just half-way back on the main floor at the Palace Theatre in PlayhouseSquare. To quote from William McDermott's 1950 Plain Dealer review: "The essential thing is that this performance of 'South Pacific' is first-rate by any standard. I would put it down as the best musical show and the most suitable performance since 'Show Boat' opened here many years ago preliminary to its Broadway engagement."

The 2011 touring production, based on Bartlett Sher's acclaimed Lincoln Center staging, illuminates the lasting truths of McDermott's appraisal. Sher is too canny to alter perfection. Instead, he has simply polished every nuance to set off its perpetual sparkle. Whereas other productions of "South Pacific" through the years have been star vehicles for aging matinee idols, this one makes the show itself the center of attention. When reviewing Janet Blair in the touring production in 1950, McDermott commented that "she hasn't quite got the mettlesomeness of Mary Martin. But she has a magic of her own."

(Rodgers and Hammerstein, at rear, try to wash the first three Nellies - Mary Martin, Janet Blair and Martha Wright - out of their hair in the early 1950s. Photo by Corbis-Bettmann.)

Flash forward six decades and the opposite proves true. Carmen Cusack plays Nellie in the 2011 tour with a delightful Southern mettlesomeness that would do Martin proud. There were two Nellies to be devoutly wished for: the one that happened in 1949 at the Majestic Theatre (Martin) and the one that didn't in the film version ( Doris Day). Cusack's feisty charisma makes us temporarily forget the incandescence of Martin and the loss of Day - and helps us purge the synthetic aftertaste of Mitzi Gaynor's performance in the bizarrely hued 1958 movie. Ironically, Sher's production, with its stunning transitions, lighting and texture, is far more cinematic than Joshua Logan's adequate but stiff film realization.

(Mitzi Gaynor, performing "Honey Bun" in the 1958 movie version of "South Pacific," makes one yearn for Mary Martin or Doris Day. Photo courtesy of Green Isle Productions.)

If Paulo Szot's Broadway Emile suggested a baritonal Clark Gable, David Pittsinger's sumptous basso in the touring production suggests Boris Godunov transplanted to an island just around the corner from Bali Hai. Pittsinger, with his cosmopolitan flair, contrasts splendidly with Cusack's naive buoyancy. Pound for pound, the rest of the cast equals the felicities of their Lincoln Center counterparts. For anyone who's ever failed to comprehend the magical ability of musical theater to illuminate universal human experience, one only has to watch the smitten Nellie Forbush throw her straw hat in the air and do a cartwheel while singing "I'm in love with a wonderful guy." 

It seems like a perfect synchronicity that after 40 years, Hammerstein's protege, Stephen Sondheim, accomplished equal musical euphoria out of a much darker corner of the human psyche. In "Assassins," which Lakeland Civic Theatre  is performing in Kirtland, we have the maniacal John Wilkes Booth trying to justify his nefarious act against Abraham Lincoln. Whereas "South Pacific" is musical theater as grand storytelling, "Assassins" is musical theater as a thesis about the need for attention that drives people to kill Presidents. "Assassins" is as great as it is perverse. Unfortunately, director Martin Friedman has only one trump card in his production, Scott Esposito's Booth. In every other aspect, Friedman only manages a flicker where a conflagration is needed.

"South Pacific" runs through Sunday at the Palace Theatre in PlayhouseSquare. For tickets, call 216-241-6000.

"Assassins" runs through Sunday at Lakeland Community College. For tickets, call 440-525-7526.

Boyz in the band

(The cast of "Altar Boyz" at the Hanna Theatre. Photo courtesy of PlayhouseSquare.)

Beck Center is to be commended for so well preserving the small pleasures that abounded two years ago in their rendering of "Altar Boyz." We'd even go so far as to hosanna the Lakewood institution for scaling the evolutionary ladder in the artful way they've replanted the show in the cozy environs of the Hanna Theatre in downtown Cleveland. Yet if we did so, those eponymous boyz would take us to task for evoking the Satanic teachings of Mr. Darwin.

This off-off-Broadway lark chronicles the breakup of a Christian boy band. Ostensibly, it's a swipe at pious rock 'n' roll. Yet, in spite of its satiric pokes at chastity, gay crushes, Jews who shill for Jesus and soul-saving theatrics, the show is about as subversive as a rerun of "A Charlie Brown Christmas." The score, by Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker, keeps its flavor for approximately the same length of time as a stick of Wrigley chewing gum.

What keeps these boyz afloat for 90 minutes is the show's unabashed, Glee-ish bonhomie. On the Hanna stage, this giddiness is brought to winking, but never obnoxious, fruition by director Scott Spence and his obliging cast. As the group's leader, Josh Rhett Noble hypnotizes with his Elmer Gantry-on-steroids grin. As Juan, Ryan Jagru pulverizes English with a nutty, Desi Arnaz aplomb. Connor O'Brien confounds us with a  Yiddishkeit worthy of Bing Crosby. And as the smitten Mark, Matthew Ryan Thompson out-twinkles Tinker Bell.

To make it all glow, lighting designer Trad A Burns imbues the stage with a Jesus Christ Superstar radiance. Best of all, choreographer Hernando Cortez manages to maneuver his boyz as if they were the Bill Baird Marionettes dancing for the delectation of Captain von Trapp and guests.

"Altar Boyz" may not save your soul, but it will do much to banish the chill from a wintry Saturday night.

"Altar Boyz" runs through Sunday, Jan. 30 at the Hanna Theatre. For tickets, go to playhousesquare.org or call 216-241-6000.

Muses in my midst IX

(Ginger Rogers in the 1940s.)

The only time I saw Ginger Rogers in the flesh, she was featured in a speakers series at the Cleveland Play House, forlornly painted like a cupie doll, reliving past glories in the manner of a Yankee cousin of the madwoman of Chaillot.

Then last night I had a vision of a distraught Rogers banging on the gates of my pantheon, using decidedly un-Hayes Code invective, demanding retribution for the ersatz Rogers currently on the Play House stage. The only way I could calm this perturbed spirit was to invite her to reign in my pantheon and to reprint excerpts from the tribute I had written at her demise in 1995:

"Rumor has it that it was Katharine Hepburn that coined the defining explanation for the perfection of the Astaire-Rogers partnership: 'He gave her class. She gave him sex appeal.'

"Yet like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes, Ginger somewhat resented being revered for only one aspect of a spectacular career, for Rogers excelled not only in musicals but also '30s Depression working-girl dramas, screwball comedy and poignant soap opera. If she had only been Fred's dance partner, there would be no need for JFG (Jews for Ginger). The group is formed to honor the great human precept that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. To the Hebrews, she is the great American Christian goddess at her natural best, the great other, the vivacious blonde, blue-eyed girl of the neighborhood, wise-cracking at the corner drugstore, sipping a soda and figuring the angles to get ahead.

"The most effortless Ginger was the tough, wholesome shop girl, portrayed at its best in Billy Wilder's first movie as a director, the glorious "The Major and the Minor" - gifted but not intellectual, eminently likable, but never grand, never distant, never Garbo.

"The most revered Rogers memory is the Ginger in feathered evening gown gliding with Fred to 'Cheek to Cheek,' but to the connoisseurs her peak is when the camera would zoom in for her world-famous, knowing look - the arched eyebrow, the turned-up, tight-closed mouth all saying, 'I've seen it all - here we go again.' Other Astaire partners may have danced with more panache, but none reacted to his musical wooing with more wit, more yearning or more tenderness. Her greatest friend was the close-up.

"Some venal political and personal sins during the McCarthy era and the ravishes of time and taste drove the final coffin nails into her career. The Hollywood liberals declared her passe. Her 15 years of top stardom were brushed under the carpet. But the charming reality remains fixed in celluloid to be joyously rediscovered by each generation."

Let's call the whole thing off

(Matthew LaBanca and Anna Aimee White in "Backwards in High Heels" at The Cleveland Play House. Photo by Tim Fuller.)

"Backwards in High Heels: The Ginger Musical," at the Cleveland Play House, is a due-for-oblivion, bargain-basement musical desecration of the piquant luster that was Ginger Rogers. However, it serves a purpose as a tawdry object lesson. First and foremost, it helps us understand the reasons why some venerable religions have forbidden portrayals of its deities.

Speaking on a personal level, as founder and sole parishioner of Jews for Ginger, the show's flagrant disregard for taste, fact and smarts has sent me into a deep melancholia. The only solace is that virtually every successful show-biz icon, from Jerome Kern to Marilyn Monroe, has gone through the same form of mortification. We can only think of a handful who have escaped this fate: Irving Berlin forbade any dramatization of his life; George M. Cohan had Jimmy Cagney; Fanny Brice had Barbra Streisand; and Gypsy Rose Lee was outstripped by her Mom and Merman...

There is another useful purpose for "Backwards in High Heels." It is a shining example for theater professors across the land of how not to create a musical. Do not try to resurrect magic that's available on Netflix. Avoid squeezing original songs into the neighborhood of classic tunes by the Gershwins, Kern, Berlin and Warren. When doing a show about a musical icon, do not make the gross miscalculation of employing beloved songs associated with other icons, i.e. the first music we hear in "Backwards in High Heels" is "You'll Never Know," which was immortalized by Alice Faye. At all costs, avoid Mad Magazine caricatures of household saints like Jimmy Stewart, Bette Davis and, especially, Fred Astaire.

Admittedly, the real story of the red-baiting Lela Rogers and her brilliant tabula rasa daughter is the thing of  fascinating Hollywood folklore, but ruthlessly forced into the template of "Gypsy" - that towering realization of mother-daughter angst - makes it come across as a stale leftover. Even the final image of Lela and Ginger walking offstage arm in arm gives off the waft of desperate thievery.

Pinned on the bulletin board in these groves of musical-theater academia will be Wanted: Dead of Alive posters of those notorious "Backwards in High Heels" creators Lynnette Barkley and Christopher McGovern. Down the hall, in directing and dance classes, will be equally large posters of one Scott Schwartz for grievous staging offenses and of one Patti Colombo for choreographic shop-lifting.

To the six-member cast, we offer a heartfelt sympathy card for the loss of their dignity as they face the impossible tasks of evoking the unevokable. We have high hopes that Anna Aimee White, who plays Ginger, someday will able to share her talents in a flesh-and-blood role and not a freeze-dried icon. Heather Lee's Lela somehow manages moments of reality, indicating a genuine actress behind the show's mask.

The Cleveland Play House, halfway through the final season in its longtime edifice, needs to get over its unhealthy preoccupation with the Silver Screen. The season thus far has gone from Hitchcock to Astaire and Rogers. Let's hope the upcoming production of Horton Foote's "The Trip to Bountiful" brings us back into the world of bona fide theater.

"Backwards in High Heels: The Ginger Musical" runs through Sunday, Jan. 30. For tickets, call 216-795-7000, ext. 4.

A Nude Deal for Christmas

(Greg Violand as Mr. Charles and Steven J. West as Shane in the Dobama Theatre production of Paul Rudnick's "The New Century." Photo by Steve Wagner.)

Last Saturday, Dobama Theatre proved itself to be the most obliging of theaters. The boyish box office manager offered a delightful tutorial on where to sit to receive the optimal gander at the entertainment's nominal star, a studly performer's "engine of desire." Then, just in case dyslexia inopportunely flared up, landing us where we could only admire the tush, the managing director personally escorted us to our voyeureristic throne.

Yes, the genitals were stellar, but since the purpose of the evening was legit theater, rather than male burlesque, it would be unseemly not to mention that they were attached to one Stephen J. West, who in turn was attached to a buoyant production of Paul Rudnick's "The New Century."

Just as Ibsen's social conscience and Chekhov's expert grasp of failed souls gave birth to a generation of high-minded passion plays, so here Neil Simon's knowing, wisecracking insights into human behavior and Patrick Dennis' campy, fey, joyous gooses of human absurdities commingled to engender the daffy wisdom of playwright Rudnick.

Rudnick functions best as a miniaturist. His plays and screenplays tend to splinter into hors d'oeuvres, rather than sustained meals. But these tidbits have the airy confection of an expert pastry chef. "The New Century" is composed of three separate character studies, each equipped with a gimmick, a multitude of Simon-esque guffaws and a well-earned heart tug. At the end, Rudnick attempts a flourish by bringing his disparate kvetchers together in a maternity ward for a mystical, Tony Kushner-like resolution.

The vignettes commence with the most liberal of Jewish mothers coming to terms with a triumvirate of offspring, who change their sex, eroticize feces and practice law in sadomasichistic leather. The second part chronicles the public-access TV adventures of one Mr. Charles, "the world's gayest man," as he combines Ed Sullivan and Liberace in a show dedicated to gay theater and more camping than ever took place in the Adirondacks. Eventually, the long-suffering Mr. Charles has to accept the fact that his brand of queerness has become passe and that his splendid boy-toy is anything but a brainless guttersnipe. The third vignette shows Rudnick's skill for sneaking melancholy into the mirth in Decatur, Ill., where one Barbara Ellen Diggs exults in the healing powers of macrame as she tearfully reminisces about the AIDS death of her beloved son.

There are many reasons why the evening's 90 minutes seem to dance by with the exquisite grace of Balanchine's snow flakes. But let us lay the blame or praise on Scott Plate, who directs with the giddy aplomb of a Paul Lynde mug. Among his gleaming ensemble players, Greg Violand's Mr. Charles suggests a castrated French bulldog in a platinum toupee. West, as his voluptuous sidekick, performs a wonderful sex change of the oh-so-wise dumb blondes of Judy Holliday vintage.

As the ur-Jewish mother, Helene Nadler serves up the vinegar-through-the-schmaltz routine in the manner of our finest delis. And in the most heartbreaking performance of the evening, Molly McGinnis unravels like one of her beloved tea cozies as the arts-and-crafts addicted Barbara Ellen.

"The New Century" may not be your traditional Yuletide revels, but it has the essential holiday ingredient - the milk of human kindness behind each ho-ho-ho.

"The New Century" runs through Sunday, January 9. For tickets, call 216-932-3396.

Muses in my midst VIII

(Alice Faye in "The Gang's All Here.")

For the worrying multitudes, relax. Frank Lloyd Wright and Michelangelo have finally gotten their act together, and the pantheon is ready to re-open for Christmas. I've had to do some serious soul-searching as to who is to host the opening-night Yuletide cotillion. Merman always cracks the crystals in the chandelier. Dietrich makes the queens hyper-ventilate. And Betty Grable keeps chewing gum. The answer is obvious: the eternally likable Alice Faye. Climbing the ladder from Jean Harlow wannabe to America's own shopgirl thrush, she was the reigning star of the 20th Century Fox musical from 1938 until her retirement from films in 1945. She could wisecrack with Mae Westian aplomb, wring glorious tears out of her made-for-Technicolor eyes, and even steal candy from America's most illustrious youngster, filching a scene from Shirley Temple while singing "You Gotta Eat Your Spinach, Baby." Faye made suffering at the hands of such scoundrels as Don Ameche and Tyrone Power as moving an art form as any geisha performing in a tea house. Garland got "Over the Rainbow" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," but Faye got the third musical plum of Hollywood Americana. No one who lived through World War II can help holding back the wave of nostalgia when she breaks into Harry Warren and Mack Gordon's "You'll Never Know" (from "Hello, Frisco, Hello"). If you want to sample the ultimate Alice Faye vehicle, we suggest Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band." She also accomplished something very rare for a movie star. She got out of the business in time to have a deliriously happy marriage with comedian and band leader Phil Harris, with whom she had a second career in radio. Faye elegantly ended her years promoting senior health for Pfizer. She was a doyenne of good health and good cheer with the poignancy of Garland- minus the pharmaceutical baggage.

Lunching with Gertie and Fanny

(The cast of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" at Beck Center.)

As a devotee of the then and departed, it gives me great satisfaction that Judy, Elvis and Mark Twain continue to rake in millions demonstrating that death can never curtail a trouper. Dickens, also proudly deceased, amply illustrated in his best-selling "A Christmas Carol" just how helpful the ministrations of ghostly souls can be. Following this precept, I never let their half-century-plus tour in the provinces of Hades spoil my Yuletide revels with Gertrude Lawrence and Fanny Brice next to our favorite table at Otto Moser's Restaurant in downtown Cleveland. Ignoring the puzzled stares of servers and patrons, I do my best to charm these illustrious dead divas while munching on my sauerkraut hot dog.

First, I let the girls do their usual gripes about how Hollywood has defamed and bowdlerized their reputations. Gertie moans over the sugary Julie Andrews ruining her tempestuous glory, and then Fanny kvetches about how that Streisand laid pretentious schmaltz on her kosher comedy. After the grousing, I placate their ethereal egos by soliciting their advice on what Christmas shows to see in Cleveland.

(The author and his beloved Gertrude Lawrence at Otto Moser's Restaurant in downtown Cleveland.)

Gertie has admired the work of choreographer-director Martin Cespedes ever since he toured, shirtless, with Faith Prince in Gertie's own "The King and I." She instructed me to see how and if he was able to breathe some life into the ubiquitous Webber-Rice Gap commercial rendering of the Old Testament, "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," at Beck Center.

Fanny, who revels in the pulling off of stunts due to her own legendary run as adolescent Baby Snooks when well past 40, urged me to see the one-man version of "It's A Wonderful Life," titled "This Wonderful Life," at the Cleveland Play House.

Gertie was right. Cespedes is a genius of goosed-up pastiche. "Joseph" was written for church pageants back in the days when Webber's creative borrowing seemed fresh and cheeky. Every number is in a different style, ranging from country-western and Elvis rock 'n roll to French bistro music. Recruiting Connor O'Brien, who looks like the lost Osmond, to play the eponymous Joseph, Cespedes has a field day interpreting every musical number in an equally vibrant dance style. The array is so dizzying that we encourage the administrators at Beck to engage the audience in a guess-the-choreographer-and-show game. Here are some helpful hints: think Robbins' Sharks, Champion's shriners, Fosse's denizens of the Pompeii Club and de Mille's rodeos. My suggestion for the winner would be the first prize of a certificate for Cespedes' services to choreograph a bar mitzvah, wedding or briss. He can make any amateur dance like a twinkle toes.

Those of you who have sworn off this show after your fifth viewing at the local junior high should reconsider, for it has undergone a glorious resurrection and is perhaps only slightly less fulfilling than the dance-rich "Billy Elliott" that is wowing them at PlayhouseSquare.

(Fanny Brice shares a hallowed place on the wall at Otto Moser's Restaurant with Gertrude Lawrence and friends.)

Fanny, however, was not so sagacious in her choice. Admittedly, James Leaming has the charm and charisma of a rosy-cheeked Norman Rockwell caroler. Jumping off bridges onto offstage trampolines, doing a plethora of accents ranging from Barrymore to Stewart, and schmoozing the audience, he is likable enough to outdo Harold Hill in the sale of band instruments. The problem is that the concept of one man racing through the many-splendored script of a beautifully photographed and directed film classic is akin to someone playing Beethoven's Ninth on harmonica. It's an enjoyable stunt, but why? After a while, Leaming, with all his energy and brio, unfortunately starts to take on the air of a hamster speeding on its wheel. The final indication of what's wrong with this gimmick is that after seeing George Bailey's salvation and hearing Clarence's bell ring, the only music evoked by this production is Peggy Lee's "Is That All There Is?"

"Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoast" plays at the Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood through Sunday, Jan. 2. For tickets, call 216-521-2540.


"It's Wonderful Life" runs at the Cleveland Play House through Sunday, Dec. 19. For tickets, call 216-795-7000, ext. 4.