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This week is the 60th anniversary of the 1961 film version of West Side Story.
It is hard to overestimate the impact this movie had on popular culture. The Broadway show had been moderately successful - but like The Sound of Music, it was the movie that brought the story and music to the masses. It was the biggest selling album of the year. I was just a kid, but I remember hearing the songs on the radio.
The acting is by Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood, and the singing is by Jimmy Bryant and Marni Nixon.
We are, of course, anxiously awaiting the new Stephen Spielberg remake, which will be out in December.
Little Shop of Horrors is back open Off-Broadway. Jeremy Jordan, who I think just got in a couple of performances before Broadway shut down in 2020, is back as Seymore, singing the hell out of the role, natch.
Sometimes people leave you
Halfway through the wood.
Others may deceive you.
You decide what's good.
You decide alone.
But no one is alone.
- "No One is Alone", Into the Woods
I will write more tomorrow. Today, it's just too hard.
Stephen Sondheim talked about his current projects 2 months ago to Stephen Colbert on The Late Show
For the US theater community it really feels like a death in the family. People want to get together and share what Stephen Sondheim's music has meant to them. And for most, it was formative.
For myself, I remember hearing the music from West Side Story on the radio as a child. The first Broadway show I saw was the original cast of Company. For others their first memory is the melodramatic gore of Sweeney Todd, or being in a school production of West Side Story or Into the Woods.
Part of the shock is that Sondheim seemed to be everywhere in the culture. Thursday night I watched tick, tick...BOOM! on Netflix where Sondheim is a character in Jonathon Larson's autobiographical musical. There is even an entire dream sequence where Johnathon reimagines Sondheim's climatic choral finale of Sunday in the Park with George as a song about brunch in Manhattan.
Stephen was just in the city last month celebrating the opening of revivals of Company and Assassins on Broadway. Trailers are everywhere promoting the new Steven Spielberg West Side Story movie. His new musical was almost ready for its first workshop - which had previously been postponed by the pandemic. A couple of years ago both Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson sang songs from Company in Marriage Story. Ben Platt and Beanie Feldstein are in the process of making the movie version of Merrily We Roll Along - a project that will take them 15 years to complete to allow them to age naturally in a story that spans from middle age to youth.
Adam Drive tackles karaoke Sondheim in Marriage Story (2019)
While other composers his age may have had their moment, they would be seen at the end of their lives with nostalgia. But Sondheim felt current. Like Bach and Shakespeare he seems to have defined his own genre that will keep being reinterpreted for each generation.
Part of that is deliberate on his part. Unlike contemporaries like Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, or Bob Fosse who froze their work after creation, Sondheim invited new interpretations. In the revival of Company the lead has been switched from a man to woman. One of the married couples in the show is now gay. Sondheim invited Lin Manuel Miranda to write Spanish lyrics for several songs in West Side to make them more authentic for the Puerto Rican characters. He constantly tinkered with Follies and Merrily We Roll Along in revivals - adding and subtracting songs. Nothing was ever set in stone.
This is what he left us - not just the songs and the music, but showing us that even something as entertaining as musical theater can also unveil truth and human frailty, as well as love, joy and elation. That, and a work ethic that was never satisfied with just good enough - one can always be challenged to work on something new that scares you just a little bit.
White, a blank page or canvas
His favorite, so many possibilities.
- Sunday in the Park with George
Yesterday, the first bracing cold Sunday of the winter, in Times Square on very short notice a couple hundred Broadway performers gathered to honor Stephen Sondheim by singing the closing number from Sunday in the Park with George - "Sunday". Some of them were stopping by on their way to their matinee performances of Wicked, Girl from the North Country, Six, Aladdin, Company, Assassins, or Hamilton. Others got the last minute invitation and just wanted to be there. I am posting this so you can be there too in your own way.
The Jonathon Larson musical tick, tick… BOOM! is now playing on Netflix and in some theaters. What a treat! The musical explores Jonathon's struggling career five years before Rent exploded (and Jonathon passed away). If you liked the score of Rent, then you will probably like this as well. It has Jonathon's trademark rock-theater synthesis.
On the other side of the spectrum, here is an a capella tune that Jonathon invents on the spot to perk up a lagging party in his tiny New York apartment.
The gender-switched revival of Company opens tonight on Broadway. And, of course under the current cirstances we are all a bit "Sorry Grateful". The cast gathered in their theater lobby a few weeks ago to do a social-distanced NPR Tiny Desk Concert with three songs from the show. This will give you a taste of how Sondheim adapted his lyrics for a female Bobbie in the lead.
Playbill did a special edition for the opening night and someone just tweeted out a picture of the program on their way in to the theater.
Sure, Steven Spielberg is a great director and all, but why tamper with a classic like the Robert Wise / Jerome Robbins 1961 Best Picture winner, West Side Story? I was skeptical. And how would modern audiences respond to a full scale musical with dancing hoodlums singing Leonard Bernstein's semi-classical score?
I needn't have worried. Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner (Angels in America) kept all the music, all the plot, added more nuance and darkness, and made it better. Much better. Like, maybe the best film musical I have ever seen.
How audiences will respond remains to be seen. But, all I can say is "go". See it in a theater, if you can. And let me know what you think.
This is my favorite Christmas musical movie. If you like it too, you might be interested in hearing some of the behind-the-scenes gossip from star Rosemary Clooney, below.
Broadway has stars that everyone knows, and then there are treasured individuals that every star knows and respects. Harvey Evans who passed away after some months of illness was one of the later.
While he never became a star to the general public, he was the dancing man all the stars wanted working beside them. Gwen Verdon, Ethel Merman, Judy Garland, Chita Rivera, Carol Lawrence, Peter Genero, Bob Fosse, Gower Champion, Jerome Robbins, Michael Bennett, Carol Channing, Shirley MacLaine, Debbie Reynolds - they all loved him. Because not only could he deliver the dancing chops, but his positive energy raised the morale of every show he was in.
Harvey and Gwen Verdon do Bob Fosse's choreography for "Who's Got the Pain" from Damn Yankees.
Harvey got his start in 1955 at 17 years old when Bob Fosse hired him for the national tour of The Pajama Game. The next year Fosse put him in the Warner Brothers movie version. He then did the films Silk Stockings with Fred Astaire and The Girl Most Likely, back to back before he was contacted by Bob Fosse to join the cast of New Girl in Town with Gwen Verdon which had just opened in New York. From there he went into the cast of West Side Story for over a year.
He left when Robbins asked him to do the West Side Story movie. Harvey's tall stature and sandy hair made him stand out in the Jets gang (as Mouthpiece), even though he only had a couple of lines.
Harvey and other members of the Jets gang talk about Jerome Robbins and West Side Story
When filming ended he went back to Broadway and right into Gypsy with Ethel Merman (playing Tulsa). He came back to Hollywood to be a dancing chimney sweep in Mary Poppins, and then back to New York for Hello Dolly! opposite Carol Channing, then Betty Grable and then Eve Arden. On television he danced in The Judy Garland Show, and did versions of Dames at Sea with Bernadette Peters and Applause! with Lauren Bacall.
Harvey originated the role of Young Buddy in Stephen Sondheim's Follies singing "You're Gonna Love Tomorrow".
Big musicals fell out of fashion on Broadway and in Hollywood in the late 1970s and 1980s, and Harvey was aging out of the chorus boy role. But he kept working in tours, regional theater, and as a standby for the stars in Broadway shows like Barnum and Sunset Boulevard.
“When I look back,” Evans told Playbill in 2007, “I think I’ve had some kind of angel on my shoulder, leading me toward the best shows of Broadway’s golden years. I didn’t pick and choose them — they just came around that way.”
He helped start the organization Dancers Over 40 to support older dancers and choreographers and pass their legacy on to a newer generation. He mentored two new generations of dancers who looked to him for support and encouragement.
He was also instrumental in founding Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDS in the 1980s to respond to the devastation that HIV brought to the theater.
Harvey Evans and Lee Roy Reams do a spontaneous tap number at the Dancers Over 40 Legacy Awards 2011
In 2006 Harvey and some of his Mary Poppins and West Side Story buddies were brought out of retirement to dance in the Disney movie Enchanted in the "How Do You Know" number set in Central Park.
Harvey's final film role was supposed to be a cameo in the new West Side Story, however his illness prevented him from appearing.
Here is a peek behind the scenes at TV director Glenn Weiss calling the shots live for the most spectacular opening number ever devised. The 2013 Tony Awards used the casts of every show then running on Broadway. Here are the final moments which are followed by the longest audience ovation I have every seen on an Awards show, during which Weiss is directing off-script, calling the shots by the seat of his pants.
You won't be surprised that Weiss and White Cherry Entertainment won Emmy Awards for their work that night. As did Neil Patrick Harris for performing, and Lin Manuel Miranda who wrote the tongue-twisting number.
You can see the whole thing here. The show opens on the set of the previous year's best musical, Once, and then proceeds to involve casts from Kinky Boots, A Christmas Story, Bring it On, Pippin, Newsies, Annie, Cinderella, Lion King, Matilda, Chicago, and many others.
The Music Man with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster has been gamely trying to go forward with their previews - though first Sutton and then Hugh tested positive for COVID, which meant they had to shut down the production right after Christmas. They plan to restart this weekend.
Here is a feature on Hugh and the show from the CBS Sunday Morning show.
Right before Christmas in their first week of previews was when Sutton got COVID and couldn't go on. Her understudy, Kathy Voytko, did the performances. One thing to note - understudies are not rehearsed until after a show opens, so Kathy had never had a single rehearsal as Marian. Hugh and whatever cast members they could round up rushed to the theater at 1pm that afternoon to help Kathy run through the show before she went on.
Afterward, Hugh made a heartfelt curtain speech praising Kathy and all the Broadway swings and understudies that were keeping shows running during this latest outbreak.
Brace yourself - Bob Fosse's Cabaret (1972) turned 50 years old last week. It's still one of the best film musicals ever made and packs a punch even today. If you haven't seen it yet, you are missing one of the great films of the 1970s.
It's that special day in the musical theater calendar when we celebrate the arrival of two greats. First, Lord Webber turns 74 today. He is currently represented on the West End with his new musical version of Cinderella.
Happy Birthday Stephen Sondheim
It is with sadness that we remember that today would have been Stephen Sondheim's 92nd birthday.
Here are some quick highlights from the 1985 concert version of Follies - the first time that show was revisited and recorded in its entirety.
After a sold out staging at the Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey, Walt Disney Theatricals decided to transfer the stage adaption of their flop 1992 movie musical to Broadway. Apparently the time was right. And with help from a much improved script by Harvey Firestein and spectacular choreography by Christopher Gattelli the stage version was the hit Disney had always hoped it would be.
Here is a look at the history of both the film and the Broadway show.
Broadway veteran Joel Grey turned 90 last week. You have probably seen him in is Oscar winning role as the MC in Cabaret. Younger fans will know him as the Wonderful Wizard of Oz in Wicked. And now he is known primarily as a director. Several years ago he directed the acclaimed production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish. Joel is also the father of Dirty Dancing star Jennifer Grey, and he came out as gay about a decade ago.
But, his biggest role was portraying legendary actor, writer, composer, and producer George M. Cohan in the 1968 Broadway musical bio George M.. Cohan was born into an Irish immigrant vaudeville family who began touring the country in an act with his parents and sister, and then in the early 1900s took over Broadway writing his own shows - sometimes with multiple shows running at the same time.
Here is Grey doing of medley of Cohan songs on the 1974 Tony Awards.
Robert Morse rocketed to fame in 1961 when he starred as J. Pierpont Finch in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying - a musical satire on corporate culture directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse.
He tried making the switch to the movies, but except for the movie version of his musical, found himself competing with Jack Lemon for parts (and losing). He went back to Broadway to take on the musical version of one of Lemon's own roles in Sugar - an adaption of Some Like It Hot.
He found work as a character actor on TV (including am Emmy-nominated featured role in Mad Men) and returned to Broadway in a one man show, Tru, about Truman Capote - which won him his second Tony Award.
Mr. Morse made a huge impression on me, personally. Around 1976 I was still in college and he was casting a new revival of How to Succeed that he was directing and starring in. There was an open call and I went down to a rehearsal room at the top of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with a bunch of my friends. It was one of those calls with hundreds of people and you go in and sing your 8 bars and you're out. And all my friends were in and out pretty quickly - which is what we expected, really. We were doing it for the experience.
I went in and did my song, and Mr. Morse told me "You are really good." And I said "Thank you", and turned to retrieve my music from the pianist. But, he stopped me and said "Wait, do you understand? You are really good. We can't use you in this show - you look too young for all the parts. But, I really like you and I hope I see you again. Keep at it."
I was kind of stunned. I stammered another "Thank you" and made my way out. It was the most impressive rejection I ever got. Those words kept me going for years until I got my first professional tour. I learned later of similar stories of Mr. Morse being generous and supportive of newcomers.
Robert Morse taught me that kindness and sincere encouragement have a value far beyond what we can see in the moment. It is never wasted. He will be missed.
Here is his final scene on Mad Men after his character dies.
stances we are all a bit "Sorry Grateful". The cast gathered in their theater lobby a few weeks ago to do a social-distanced NPR Tiny Desk Concert with three songs from the show. This will give you a taste of how Sondheim adapted his lyrics for a female Bobbie in the lead.
