"Hellloooo, I’m Julie Andrews"

From Army Archerd:

Julie is also starting rehearsals for her spectacular program heading to the Hollywood Bowl July 18-19. The first half of the program boasts Rodgers and Hammerstein selections from “Cinderella,” “The Sound of Music” and “The King And I” — with Julie singing selected numbers in her carefully-limited range. The second half of the program features Julie hosting/narrating “Simeon’s Gift,” also written with daughter Emma, featuring a cast of five, music by Ian Fraser, the lyrics of John Bucchino and Harold Wheeler’s charts for the 82-piece Hollywood Bowl orchestra. The show will premiere in Louisville on July 11 before moving on to Atlanta in Philadelphia in August. Of course, these are only a few of the projects propelled by the inimitable Julie Andrews.

(The title of this post comes from the PBS documentary Broadway: The American Musical, which Andrews hosted. For many years in college I acted as a teaching assistant for my musical theatre professor and he would often use this six-part documentary as a supplement to his lectures, often to give names and faces to the people in discussion. The first time he popped in disc one each semester, it automatically started to play Andrews’ introduction. And each and every time, without fail, the classroom would fall completely to pieces).

"Thanks a Lot, But No Thanks"

It’s Always Fair Weather is one of the fascinating MGM musicals that gets lost in the shuffle of On the Town or Singin’ in the Rain, et al. Made in 1955, toward the end of the peak of the Freed unit, the film was originally rumored to be a sequel to On the Town, when that proved impossible, it became more of a loose follow-up where three WWII buddies reunite ten years after the end of the war, only to discover that they have very little in common anymore. The film, surprisingly cynical and dark-edged for a musical, stars Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse (who has a fantastic dance number set in a boxing ring), Dan Dailey, Michael Kidd and Dolores Gray.

Gray was a musical comedy star, winnings raves for the original London production of Annie Get Your Gun and on Broadway in Two on the Aisle and the flop Carnival in Flanders, which netted her the Tony award and the record for shortest Tony-winning run (the show closed after six performances in 1954). The following year, she would find herself under contract to MGM, where she made this and also the film adaptation of Kismet as the seductress Lalume. Her tenure as a major supporting player would end a couple years later after two more films: The Opposite Sex, a semi-musical remake of The Women and in the highly-underrated Designing Woman, a comedy starring Lauren Bacall and Gregory Peck (and featuring choreographer Jack Cole in a supporting role). Gray would soon return to Broadway in Destry Rides Again with Andy Griffith, and focus the remainder of her career on stage and concert work (including the flop Sherry! and the original London cast of Follies).

Playing a shameless television star, who is also an incredible self-promoter, this is her big number from the film, done as part of her live TV event. I first became aware of the song when I heard Audra McDonald sing it in her New Year’s Eve Live from Lincoln Center concert. The music’s by Andre Previn with lyrics by Comden and Green. Enjoy.

Well, I guess there’s always gotta be a first…

I left a show at intermission. I’ve never done this before. And to be quite frank I’m not sure how I feel about it. Perhaps a touch guilty, because I’ve prided myself on never doing that (even when I’ve wanted to run screaming into the streets; ie – Cats and a lugubriously unfunny production of Lucky Stiff that my college put in its summer rep a few years ago). I guess it’s not really a big deal, but for some reason I like to stick it to the end, even when it’s not good just because, you become that “someone walked out of…” and mostly respect to the performers, who are almost all of the time giving 110% in spite of the staging or material.

Well, I also happen to be an asthmatic, and as luck would have it, I suffered a rather terrible flare-up this afternoon while in Manhattan. Fortunately, I had my inhaler on me, or else this blog would be posted via medium (Madame Arcati, anyone?). The show was La Clemenza di Tito at the Met, starring the powerhouse mezzo-soprano extraordinaire, Susan Graham. I was feeling fatigued, with the feeling someone was pushing on my chest, leading into the performance. When I stood up for intermission, that feeling was compounded with dizziness and I told Noah I had to go. I left, and aside from a precarious elevator ride down (where I felt like I was about to do my best Lucille 2 impression) I got home safe and sound, where I immediately medicated and am much, much better. That’s just one of the miseries of the allergy season for you, especially when pollen becomes your worst enemy.

Of what I saw and could appreciate of the opera (which wasn’t much, I couldn’t follow the story or characters and I had difficulty with my supertitles), Susan was dynamite. The recitative got irritating (every time we’d switch between the orchestra and the harpsichord I wanted to throw something, but that could have been the way I was feeling). But she executed some rather thrilling mezzo coloratura runs; the kind that give chills, that’s how genius they are. However, I don’t feel I’ve given the score or Ms. Graham justice, really. Especially since I was supposed to meet her afterward. Anyway, I still feel weird about the whole evening, not sure why, but I do. I hope I get the chance to see Ms. Graham sing once again, and to be able to shout “Brava!” upon her curtain call.

Oh, almost forgot. To add to the fun of it all, I also bashed my knee into a turnstile in the subway, all while juggling my wallet and phone in one hand, ipod and metrocard in the other and hip-checking my way through. Hilarious. You should see the gorgeous storm cloud that used to be my right knee.

The 64th Annual Theatre World Award Winners!

The Theatre World Award is presented to those making an auspicious debut or breakthrough performance in the NY theatre, whether it be off-Broadway or on. The event is held every spring, and is hosted by Peter Filichia. Past winners act as presenters, and most often the afternoon’s entertainment consists of certain performers singing big numbers from the shows for which they won. The awards will be on June 10th at the Helen Hayes Theatre. As I said in an earlier post, I appreciate this awards ceremony more than the Tonys because the spirit is a genuine celebration of theatre and community, without the competition. Congratulations to the winners!!

de’Adre Aziza, Passing Strange
Cassie Beck, Drunken City
Daniel Breaker, Passing Strange
Ben Daniels, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Deanna Dunagan, August: Osage County
Hoon Lee, Yellow Face
Alli Mauzey, Cry-Baby
Jenna Russell, Sunday in the Park with George
Mark Rylance, Boeing-Boeing
Loretta Ables Sayre, South Pacific
Jimmi Simpson, The Farnsworth Invention
Paulo Szot, South Pacific

"Vertigo"

“Here I was born…and there I died. It was only a moment for you. You took no notice.”
One of my favorite films is turning 50 this week. Being an enormous fan of Hitchcock films since I was a child, I was the brazen 13 year old who went out to the store and bought Vertigo without really knowing what sort of bizarre exercise in obsession on which I was about to see. The first time I saw the film, the ending completely stunned me. Literally sent me walking through the house unnerved. Uncertain of how I was supposed to synthesize the film, I was confused and almost disappointed. However, I knew and almost instantaneously, that I had to see it again. I watched it again two days later. It’s remained an all-time favorite ever since.
Has Kim Novak been any more alluring? Has Jimmy Stewart ever played a character as tormented or complex? (Alright, I can understand arguments for George Bailey, but with all due respect, he’s no where near as messed up as Scottie Ferguson). And who can forget Barbara Bel Geddes as Midge, who harbors an unrequited crush on Ferguson? Bernard Herrmann‘s score (with its shades of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde) is mesmerizing. And that final shot…? Wow.
As the case with so many films that are regarded as classics, the film was eviscerated by critics in 1958 and the property performed underwhelmingly at the box office. Its failure led Hitchcock to drop Stewart as the protagonist of his upcoming North By Northwest, instead going with Cary Grant. Of course, it is now regarded as a masterpiece today. I certainly hope that there will be some screenings in honor of the film’s 50th anniversary.
To honor the occasion, Terrence Rafferty muses on the film in the NY Times. (Potential spoiler alerts? Don’t spoil the film for yourself in any way. Just see it!)
50 Years of Dizzy, Courtesy of Hitchcock
By TERRENCE RAFFERTY
“I LOOK up, I look down,” says Detective John (Scottie) Ferguson of the San Francisco police, standing nervously on a stepladder in an early scene of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.”
Scottie (James Stewart) is trying to cure himself of the title affliction, recently discovered during a rooftop chase in which his fear of heights resulted in the death of a fellow officer. So, impatient with his recovery, he gingerly mounts the three steps of the ladder, looks up, looks down, looks up and looks down again, then collapses into the arms of his college friend Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes), who always seems ready to catch him when he falls.
Fifty years and two days ago, at a preview in San Francisco, moviegoers looked up at the screen and saw “Vertigo” for the first time, and maybe some of them looked down too in confusion or dismay, wondering, as in a dream, where they were and how they had gotten there and how they would make it back to safer ground.
With “Vertigo” you never know. It’s a movie that — even if you know that it will always end the same way, tragically — never takes you to that inevitable conclusion by the same route. You feel as if you are wandering, which is the word Scottie and the object of his desire, Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak), use to describe their days.
Neither, actually, is quite as purposeless as that sounds. Madeleine is chasing the ghost of her great-grandmother, Carlotta Valdes, and Scottie is tailing Madeleine, a private-eye job he’s doing as a favor for another old college chum, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), who is her husband. But it’s a desultory sort of surveillance, which turns gradually and with a mysterious inexorability into something else: a love story in which Scottie and Madeleine wander together, pursuing the past and running, with all deliberate speed, from themselves.
You can’t help wondering what those first Bay Area viewers 50 years ago must have thought as they watched this strange, drifty, hallucinatory romance unfold on the big screen, with the strains of Bernard Herrmann’s lush score — brazenly echoing the “Liebestod” from Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde” — swelling on the soundtrack. It wasn’t what they had come to expect from Hitchcock, the beloved portly “master of suspense,” who had been making impishly macabre thrillers for 30-some years and had since 1955 also been the host and impresario of a very popular mystery-story anthology series on television.
“Vertigo” — based on a novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, the authors of “Diabolique” — features one murder and two other deaths, but it isn’t built like an ordinary suspense film. Its only action sequence is the first scene, that rooftop chase. The detective never really investigates the movie’s lone murder because he doesn’t know until just before the end that one has been committed; the killer is not brought to justice.
And Hitchcock doesn’t content himself simply with violating genre conventions. He seems determined to unsettle every reasonable expectation — anything that could give us a footing in the shifty, unstable world he’s creating before our eyes.
A couple of years later he notoriously killed off his lead actress in the first 40 minutes of “Psycho,” but that is only marginally more perverse than what he does with Kim Novak in “Vertigo”: in the first third of the picture, when Scottie is following her, she has precisely one close-up and not a single line of dialogue. And in the movie’s final third, every supporting character drops off the screen, leaving Mr. Stewart and Ms. Novak to work out their characters’ awful fate alone. Along the way Hitchcock also throws in a bizarre, partly animated dream sequence and a startling scene in which, as the lovers kiss, the camera pans 360 degrees around them and the background changes from a small hotel room to the stables of an old Spanish mission, where they had kissed once before. You never do know quite where you are in “Vertigo.”
The film wasn’t a hit in its initial release, and it wasn’t enthusiastically reviewed either. But its stature has increased exponentially in its five decades of screen life, especially in the 12 years since its brilliant restoration by Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz; it now routinely places in the Top 10 in critics’ and viewers’ polls of the greatest movies ever made.
For a movie so revered, “Vertigo” hasn’t been terribly influential. The films that try hardest to recapture its twisted, doomy romanticism, like Brian De Palma’s 1976 “Obsession” (with a score by Mr. Herrmann) and Mike Figgis’s 1991 “Liebestraum” (in which Ms. Novak plays a supporting role), always wind up proving that Hitchcock’s dark vision is too wayward, too eccentric to be imitated: there’s never enough wandering in them.
And in a way the wandering is all that matters when you’re watching “Vertigo,” for the first time or the 10th or — like the fictional correspondent of Chris Marker’s beautiful essay-film “Sans Soleil” (1982) — the 19th. This movie isn’t constructed, as most thrillers are, to get us from point A to point B as swiftly and as efficiently as possible. “Vertigo” instead circles compulsively around a set of visual and verbal (and musical) motifs — spirals, towers, bouquets, the words “too late” — which keep bringing us back to the same places, turning us in relentlessly on ourselves. There’s a wonderful scene in which Scottie follows Madeleine through the dizzying streets of San Francisco to his own home. He looks puzzled, utterly disoriented, and the viewer knows exactly how he feels.
Seeing “Vertigo” on DVD is maybe a shade less overwhelming, less deranging, than seeing it as its first audience did, but it has the compensating quality of seeming a more solitary and more intimate experience, and this is, always has been, a movie that makes you want to be alone with it. It’s like Scottie’s surveillance of Madeleine: he watches from a distance, then there’s no distance at all, just him and her, no one else around. Jean-Luc Godard once described the difference between cinema and television as the difference between raising your eyes to the movie screen and lowering them to the TV screen. Whether you look up at “Vertigo” or look down, the effect is the same: You fall and hope that somebody’s there to catch you.

Musing on City Center Encores!

You know, I’m really looking forward to On the Town. I like that Encores! has found a way to celebrate Mr. Bernstein’s 90th birthday along with the rest of the crowd, in spite of the fact that he’s no longer with us. Perhaps his 100th will finally get us a staging of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue… But I digress. I’ve admired the stage score for many years, but have never had the privilege of seeing the show performed live. Don’t ask me why, but one of my favorite pieces in the score is the “Carnegie Hall Pavane: Do-Do-Re-Do” – and it’s all because of the ride-out, especially on the 1960 studio album where the ladies hold out the note forever while we get a true Broadway finish to a number that is pretty much a throwaway, especially in regards to the standards that emerged from the show. I’m also excited we’ll be getting Music in the Air (while I would have preferred Very Warm for May), but I gladly take my Hammerstein and Kern when I can get them.

I have to admit I’m pretty less than excited about the prospect of Finian’s Rainbow as an Encores! entry next season. I think the score to the show is very engaging and enjoyable. (a Burton Lane and Yip Harburg collaboration is nothing to scoff at) but unfortunately I just don’t care much for the show itself. The book, while solid satire in 1947, creaks along a bit too much today. I’m not sure how they got away with it in the Irish Repertory revival in 2004. There just seem to be a lot of shows I would like to see in its stead, more of the Napoleonic “If I Ruled the World” syndrome. However, if Encores! should bring back Malcolm Gets and Melissa Errico, so we can hear their fine voices with the original orchestrations, I might not be as reticent about its selection. And as much as I love Follies and will see it every time it’s staged until my death, it didn’t quite fit the criteria of the Encores! mission. With that said, what a fantastic production it was too! Also, I feel like we’re slipping away from the lost shows. So many musicals exist that won’t see the light of day in commercial productions unless you find a producer with the reckless abandon or in search of a tax relief.

If I were planning Encores, we’d be set for the next few decades. Or perhaps I’d add a fourth show a year to the list.

These are some of the things I’d like to see at the City Center:

Darling of the Day (w. Victoria Clark), New Girl in Town, Irma La Douce, Very Warm for May (preferably with Kelli O’Hara leading “All the Things You Are”), Street Scene, Do I Hear a Waltz?, Good News, Irene, Dear World, The Grass Harp, Carmen Jones, A Time for Singing, Pipe Dream, The Golden Apple, Carmelina, Coco (w. Harriet Harris!), Fanny, Henry Sweet Henry, Tovarich, The Girl Who Came to Supper, Donnybrook!, Redhead, On Your Toes, Lost in the Stars, Milk and Honey, Oh Kay!, Sugar, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Woman of the Year. And of course: the no-shot in hell: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

If you got to plan an Encores! season, what three shows would you select? (And optional, why?)

"Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet"

Patricia Routledge delivers one of Alan Bennett‘s Talking Heads monologues on the BBC. In this particular story, Miss Fozzard is a lonely clerk in a department store who has to take care of her brother, who is recovering from a severe stroke. It starts with the retirement of her chiropodist, and the relationship she has with his replacement and it goes someplace entirely unexpected. This was a part of Talking Heads 2, Bennett’s second entry that aired in 1998, with this particular piece written expressly for Ms. Routledge, who incidentally, is also his favorite actress.