Musicals and Me
This is a page for my comments on my musicals, other musicals and other topics as well. More to come
MY SHOWS AND HISTORY
For reasons I don’ t understand, almost all of the shows I’ve written are based on historical events and people. If you wonder how accurate they are, it depends on the show.
She’s No Lady is a flight of fancy based on some historical figures.
Secrets of Success is pretty accurate historically, but events have been combined and the inner thoughts of characters are my best estimate consistent with the theme of the show.
SAGA IN 3 Keys is an evening of 3 musicals all about time place and person being out of joint. The first two are historically based. The third is a fiction.
“ANNE BROWN CREATES BESS AND FLEES TO NORWAY: An Introduction to Her Life in 9 Headlines and An Epilogue” Anne Brown is someone everyone should know. She was one of the great artists of the 20th century and the muse for the creation of Porgy and Bess. She had a long and rich public and private life in spite of the virulent racism of the US. Norway gave her that life and she enriched Norway.Her story is worth telling in many ways. In Norway in 3 Keys, this is a first step in telling her story.
“JOACHIM RØNNEBERG AND HIS SKIERS SAVE THE WORLD” Skiing was a crucial skill in defeating the German WW II occupation of Norway. Joachim Ronneberg, who died at 99 in 2018, led the attack that destroyed the heavy water plant in Telemark preventing the Nazis from developing an atomic bomb. Joachim (calling it his best ski weekend) with five of his men skied to safety in Sweden though chased by 2,800 German storm troopers .
“ON A SUNNY SPRING MORNING IN OSLO, 1925” 1925 was the year when Oslo regained its own name after bearing the name Denmark had imposed during centuries of colonial rule. Two elderly people meet in a park. They both come to realize that they were once young lovers split apart by class divisions. They are afraid to reveal themselves to one another, but, instead, spin fantastical stories about the lovers whom they both knew. The deception becomes a flirtation.
Vermont The Musical is a broadly accurate story of Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys and the creation of Vermont. The central conflict is between Ethan and Isaac Tichenor, a lawyer from New Jersey who Ethan named Jersey Slick! (the first New Jersey joke?) It was Ethan’s radical egalitarianism that was the foundation of Vermont as a very different state. Tichenor did become powerful in Vermont after Ethan’s death mainly because the repression (which he helped foster) under the Alien and Sedition Acts. That is why I’ve portrayed him as a revolutionary era Joe McCarthy.
A Lifetime of Musicals
I saw my first musicals in 1954!!!! Just missed the original South Pacific and The King and I. I saw Kismet, Wonderful Town and By The Beautiful Sea. The less said about BTBS the better. My mother was a Shirley Booth fan. This show earned her no new fans.
Wonderful Town was exciting and I was totally involved. I didn’t get some of it. Everyone said how wonderful Roz Russell was; she seemed to be yelling. (More than on the OBC) The year before 1953 I saw the marquee of the Winter Garden “Rosalind Russell Wonderful Town.” I though it meant she was a famous tour guide and this was where the tours began. I was a kid!
But Kismet won me over. A scrim. I saw my first scrim! Magic. My aunt and uncle took me to see it. They were overjoyed. They were so happy it was an operetta and not a musical. I figured that one out in short order. The costumes, the sets, the chorus b boys, the music. Alfred Drake. Joan Diener. Both were larger than life (I didn’t know that expression until later, but they were. Doretta Morrow: not at all. I don’t remember Richard Kiley. Perhaps he had left by the time I saw the show.
The Ziegfeld Theater. THEATRE! Beautiful. They tore it down. Broadway had kept moving uptown for decades and seemed to be continuing to do so. But it didn’t. Those theatres built too far from the Times Square theater district were eventually little booked and torn down - the Century, the Adelphi (54th St, George Abbott) and the Ziegfeld. The Ziegfeld should never have been demolished. The twin crimes of NYC in the 1960s were destroying Penn Station and the Ziegfeld. The OBC of Kismet is comfort food for me.
In the 1950s, I found every excuse to see shows on Broadway and off. Saturday matinees, of course, were usual. But so we Wednesday matinees. How? Well, my dentist was on 57th St in the then Steinway building. I had been in a riding accident so needed more than the usual amount of dental work. Wednesday morning was the perfect time. I’d go to the dentist, have lunch in the automat across the street, stop at some hotels along the way to pick up twofers and go see something. Saw hits, flops, plays and musicals.