For New Yorkers in the blogosphere, looking for a musical that won’t burn a hole in the pocket, travel uptown to Broadway and 76th Street, where Musicals Tonight!, a not-for-profit organization operating out of the McGinn/Cazale Theatre, mounts several no-frills shows a year.
For $20 a ticket, you can see a production where the emphasis is not on falling chandeliers and human beings dressed up as cats, but on where it’s supposed to be—the song.
For the last dozen years, founder and producer Mel Miller has gambled—so far successfully—that audiences will be willing to forego stars, costumes and scenery for the sake of the hummable show tune.
Actors carry scripts around in the concert versions of these shows (though to my relief, I only caught one stealing a quick, fertive glance at his in the matinee performance I attended)
A truly great musical—one with lyrics, music, libretto, and choreography working seamlessly together—is much rarer than you’d expect. Even those musicals not in this charmed circle, however, offer many pleasures. Exhibit A: Paint Your Wagon, the 1951 show by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe that just finished its two-week run for Musicals Tonight this past weekend.
Second only to Rodgers and Hammerstein in their prime as collaborators, Lerner and Loewe exhibited the flaws in cohesion and dramatic relevance that prevented their musical comedy about California in its frenetic gold-seeking era from being revived as often as My Fair Lady and Camelot.
For $20 a ticket, you can see a production where the emphasis is not on falling chandeliers and human beings dressed up as cats, but on where it’s supposed to be—the song.
For the last dozen years, founder and producer Mel Miller has gambled—so far successfully—that audiences will be willing to forego stars, costumes and scenery for the sake of the hummable show tune.
Actors carry scripts around in the concert versions of these shows (though to my relief, I only caught one stealing a quick, fertive glance at his in the matinee performance I attended)
A truly great musical—one with lyrics, music, libretto, and choreography working seamlessly together—is much rarer than you’d expect. Even those musicals not in this charmed circle, however, offer many pleasures. Exhibit A: Paint Your Wagon, the 1951 show by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe that just finished its two-week run for Musicals Tonight this past weekend.
Second only to Rodgers and Hammerstein in their prime as collaborators, Lerner and Loewe exhibited the flaws in cohesion and dramatic relevance that prevented their musical comedy about California in its frenetic gold-seeking era from being revived as often as My Fair Lady and Camelot.
At the same time, Miller’s troupe, under the adept guidance of director-choreographer Thomas Sabella-Mills, performed the show’s memorable tunes with the required gusto to make this not simply a museum piece, but an extremely pleasant way to spend a few hours.
Paint Your Wagon was typical of the lean approach used by Musicals Tonight! A few paintings, small enough to fit on an average-size easel, suggested the setting and time of the show: California from the spring of 1853 to two years later, long enough to encompass the boom-and-bust cycle—and a great symbol for the American dreams of fortune that have had a way of going belly-up ever since the dawn of the republic.
The music is a different, more fascinating matter. Forget all about the multiple textures from a full orchestra that Lerner and Loewe would have enjoyed in their heyday—even John Doyle’s scheme of having cast members double as musicians (done, to electrifying effect, in Sweeney Todd and Company) was not part of the repertoire here. (I’m not counting the harmonica and guitar that made a brief appearance during “Wand’rin’ Star” at the start of the show.)
So much, then, depends on the musical director, and James Stenborg delivered with rich, deeply evocative piano accompaniment.
At the Wednesday matinee I attended, I appeared to be, if not the junior member of the audience, then at least in the top 2%. “It’s nice to see a young person at this show,” one lady of a certain age told me.
This was less a cause for cheer than it might appear at first, as I have already passed the half-century mark and do not possess any Dorian Gray tendencies to suspend the erosion of time. It bothers me—a lot—than many people younger than myself, outside the theater world, are unaware of this particular work and others of its kind.
I had a somewhat personal interest in this musical, because in elementary school, one songs, “I Was Born Under a Wand’rin’ Star,” was performed by some class members, including—God help me!—your faithful blogger. (Thankfully, John Simon, Clive Barnes and company were not in attendance to record their thoughts on this event.)
The only consolation now, thinking back on these frightening three minutes of my life, is that I was a sixth-grade pressed into service against my will, whereas Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood warbled these songs with the connivance of studios, on the advice of their agents, at the height of their box-office success, when they were old enough to know better.
The he-men stars' 1969 movie version of Paint Your Wagon is regarded as a pretty colossal flop in a year that saw the classic Hollywood musical go into a long-term decline that, Moulin Rouge and Chicago to the contrary, shows no sign of being fully reversed.
Our audience was told before the show that in attendance was the vocal coach for one of the two male co-stars of the film. (We weren’t told the name of this individual, nor whether he dealt with Marvin or Eastwood—but I couldn’t help feeling that whoever was his pupil, the coach's task was about as thankless as supervising pitching for the Kansas City Royals this past season.)
As I watched the musical unfold, I kept thinking: this is nothing like the plot I recall from the film. A quick search of the Internet confirmed the suspicions of a memory grown increasingly tenuous with age.
The movie invented characters, promoted or demoted others, and scrapped an entire subplot involving a Hispanic love interest for the daughter of miner Ben Rumson. None of these mighty exertions improved things a bit, even with Paddy Chayefsky credited with the adaptation and Lerner himself with the screenplay.
Not that the filmmakers’ instincts were incorrect. The musical’s plot was tenuous, and, as the gentleman seated next to me in the audience noted, “They Call the Wind Maria” had little strong connection with the action.
Oh, but what a song—and, in the person of Eli Brudwell, the musical had one of those thrilling, stop-the-show moments that you don’t forget. And that was just one of the fine tunes on display here, along with “I’m on My Way,” “What’s Goin’ On Here?”, “I Still See Elise,” and “Take the Wheels Off the Wagon.”
You won’t get a Brian Stokes Mitchell or Donna Murphy in this setting, but you will see performers that range from well-traveled veterans (the estimable Paul Carlin, playing weathered but ever-hopeful miner Ben) to neophytes just out of drama school. All, however, sing with zest and passion for the material.
(I would be much remiss if I did not, however, mention the lovely voice of Jillian Louis as Ben’s devoted daughter Jennifer, for much of the musical the sole woman in the miners’ town—and for that reason, the object of overwhelming male attention).
These days, the operative word for Broadway musicals is not “magic” but “economics”—and they don’t call the latter the “dismal science” for nothing. I’m going back to Musicals Tonight! to see if their other shows similarly recapture the magic of the old Broadway show tunes.
Next up: Cole Porter’s final show, Silk Stockings (1955), running from November 3 through 15, with, coming in the winter and spring, Noel Coward’s Sail Away (1961), John Kander and Fred Ebb’s The Rink (1984), and Anthony Newley’s Stop the World—I Want to Get Off (1962). Paint Your Wagon definitely has put at least one of these future shows on my calendar.
Paint Your Wagon was typical of the lean approach used by Musicals Tonight! A few paintings, small enough to fit on an average-size easel, suggested the setting and time of the show: California from the spring of 1853 to two years later, long enough to encompass the boom-and-bust cycle—and a great symbol for the American dreams of fortune that have had a way of going belly-up ever since the dawn of the republic.
The music is a different, more fascinating matter. Forget all about the multiple textures from a full orchestra that Lerner and Loewe would have enjoyed in their heyday—even John Doyle’s scheme of having cast members double as musicians (done, to electrifying effect, in Sweeney Todd and Company) was not part of the repertoire here. (I’m not counting the harmonica and guitar that made a brief appearance during “Wand’rin’ Star” at the start of the show.)
So much, then, depends on the musical director, and James Stenborg delivered with rich, deeply evocative piano accompaniment.
At the Wednesday matinee I attended, I appeared to be, if not the junior member of the audience, then at least in the top 2%. “It’s nice to see a young person at this show,” one lady of a certain age told me.
This was less a cause for cheer than it might appear at first, as I have already passed the half-century mark and do not possess any Dorian Gray tendencies to suspend the erosion of time. It bothers me—a lot—than many people younger than myself, outside the theater world, are unaware of this particular work and others of its kind.
I had a somewhat personal interest in this musical, because in elementary school, one songs, “I Was Born Under a Wand’rin’ Star,” was performed by some class members, including—God help me!—your faithful blogger. (Thankfully, John Simon, Clive Barnes and company were not in attendance to record their thoughts on this event.)
The only consolation now, thinking back on these frightening three minutes of my life, is that I was a sixth-grade pressed into service against my will, whereas Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood warbled these songs with the connivance of studios, on the advice of their agents, at the height of their box-office success, when they were old enough to know better.
The he-men stars' 1969 movie version of Paint Your Wagon is regarded as a pretty colossal flop in a year that saw the classic Hollywood musical go into a long-term decline that, Moulin Rouge and Chicago to the contrary, shows no sign of being fully reversed.
Our audience was told before the show that in attendance was the vocal coach for one of the two male co-stars of the film. (We weren’t told the name of this individual, nor whether he dealt with Marvin or Eastwood—but I couldn’t help feeling that whoever was his pupil, the coach's task was about as thankless as supervising pitching for the Kansas City Royals this past season.)
As I watched the musical unfold, I kept thinking: this is nothing like the plot I recall from the film. A quick search of the Internet confirmed the suspicions of a memory grown increasingly tenuous with age.
The movie invented characters, promoted or demoted others, and scrapped an entire subplot involving a Hispanic love interest for the daughter of miner Ben Rumson. None of these mighty exertions improved things a bit, even with Paddy Chayefsky credited with the adaptation and Lerner himself with the screenplay.
Not that the filmmakers’ instincts were incorrect. The musical’s plot was tenuous, and, as the gentleman seated next to me in the audience noted, “They Call the Wind Maria” had little strong connection with the action.
Oh, but what a song—and, in the person of Eli Brudwell, the musical had one of those thrilling, stop-the-show moments that you don’t forget. And that was just one of the fine tunes on display here, along with “I’m on My Way,” “What’s Goin’ On Here?”, “I Still See Elise,” and “Take the Wheels Off the Wagon.”
You won’t get a Brian Stokes Mitchell or Donna Murphy in this setting, but you will see performers that range from well-traveled veterans (the estimable Paul Carlin, playing weathered but ever-hopeful miner Ben) to neophytes just out of drama school. All, however, sing with zest and passion for the material.
(I would be much remiss if I did not, however, mention the lovely voice of Jillian Louis as Ben’s devoted daughter Jennifer, for much of the musical the sole woman in the miners’ town—and for that reason, the object of overwhelming male attention).
These days, the operative word for Broadway musicals is not “magic” but “economics”—and they don’t call the latter the “dismal science” for nothing. I’m going back to Musicals Tonight! to see if their other shows similarly recapture the magic of the old Broadway show tunes.
Next up: Cole Porter’s final show, Silk Stockings (1955), running from November 3 through 15, with, coming in the winter and spring, Noel Coward’s Sail Away (1961), John Kander and Fred Ebb’s The Rink (1984), and Anthony Newley’s Stop the World—I Want to Get Off (1962). Paint Your Wagon definitely has put at least one of these future shows on my calendar.
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