Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber (14 page)

It has become a commonplace almost universally shared by writers on Broadway musicals—along with directors and producers—that weak books are the main reason for the neglect of most musicals before
Oklahoma!
and
Carousel
. For this reason, after Rodgers and Hammerstein began an irreversible vogue for integrated book musicals, revivals of musicals were almost invariably accompanied by a team of doctors performing major surgery that included the reordering of songs and interpolations from other musicals of the same composer.

This type of surgical procedure begs several questions that merit further exploration. Is the idea of the so-called integrated musical heralded by Rodgers and Hammerstein in the 1940s intrinsically superior to a musical with an anachronistic book and timeless songs? Are the books of the 1930s as weak as later critics make them out to be? Can some of the alleged weaknesses be attributed to the modernized books rather than to the originals? If the books of 1930s musicals are weak, why are they weak, and can they be salvaged by revisions and interpolations? Is it really a good idea to strip the original books down to their underwear and then dress them up again with as many songs as possible
from other shows? Or can reasonable men and women provide an acceptable modern alternative? Are modern actors unable to successfully recapture and convey an older brand of comedy? Might the problem with
Anything Goes
stem more from an incongruity between music and text than from a diseased book?

Part of the answer to these questions might be traced to evolving social concerns rather than aesthetic considerations. Our current sensitivities and our understanding of topical issues are no longer what they were in 1934. As Porter would say, “times have changed.” The following chapter will suggest that much of the criticism of
Porgy and Bess
, which followed the Porter hit one year later, was due (especially after the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s) less to its artistic qualities than to its perceived perpetuation of negative black stereotypes and Heyward’s and Gershwin’s presumption to speak for blacks. In
Show Boat
, changing sensitivities made it necessary for Hammerstein to alter offending references, and later versions, especially the 1951 MGM film and the 1966 Lincoln Center production, tried to deflect criticism by minimizing the miscegenation scene and the role of blacks in general. Most musicals suffer, some irreparably, when their depiction of women is judged by feminist standards that emerged in the 1970s (see the discussion of
Kiss Me, Kate
in
chapter 10
).

Although increasing sensitivity to ethnic minority groups or to women is probably not the major obstacle to the revivability of
Anything Goes
, the stereotypic depiction of Reverend Dobson’s Chinese converts to Christianity, Ching and Ling (and the pidgin English adopted by Billy and Reno when they put on Ching’s and Ling’s costumes), were subsequently considered to be racially insensitive. In act I, scene 6, of the 1934 libretto, Moon refers to the converts as “Chinamen”; in the analogous place in 1962 he refers to them as Chinese.
²¹
In 1987 Reverend Dobson was still accompanied by two Chinese converts, but their names have been changed to the more biblical John and Luke. The new authors also took care “to give them independent comic personas and not base the humor on the fact that they’re Chinese.”
²²

In response to dated slang, Crouse (the younger) and Weidman removed some “terrible words in the language like, ‘wacky’ and ‘zany’” and other topical words and phrases that required a 1930s cultural literacy alien to later audiences.
²³
But since the lyrics to the musical numbers were considered untouchable onstage, if not the screen (see the discussion of the
Anything Goes
and
Kiss Me, Kate
film adaptations in
chapters 8
and
14
, respectively), the removal of “wacky” and “zany” do not fully solve the problems of topicality. In the preface to his essay “The Annotated ‘Anything Goes’” that accompanies McGlinn’s reconstructed recording, Kreuger describes the audiences for this and other 1930s shows as a “constricted group of
cognoscenti
, who went to the same night spots, read the same newspaper columns, and spent weekends at the same estates,” and were therefore “swift to pick up even the most obscure references in all the
lyrics.”
²⁴
Kreuger goes on to explain the meaning of seven references in the title song and no less than thirty-eight topical references in “You’re the Top.”
²⁵

Although this level of topicality is problematic to modern audiences who have neither lived through the 1930s nor had the opportunity to study Kreuger’s annotated guide, it might also be said that Porter’s lyrics presented problems to his British neighbors in his own time. In fact, in preparing for the London opening of June 14, 1935, Porter was asked by producer C. B. Cochran to remove several incomprehensible Americanisms when he took his show across the Atlantic. Eells mentions a few of these changes: “Cole agreed and set about converting the Bendel bonnet into an Ascot bonnet; a dress by Saks into one by Patous; and the eyes of Irene Bordoni into those of Tallulah Bankhead.”
²⁶
Nevertheless, in contrast to audiences who attended the 1962 and 1987 productions, most 1930s audiences, both in New York and London, would have recognized the parodistic parallels between Reno Sweeney, the evangelist who became a singer, and the then-famous evangelist Aimée Semple McPherson.
²⁷
What about audiences in 1962 or 1987 and beyond? And does it matter?

In a
New York Times
interview that appeared shortly before the 1987 revival, the younger Crouse and Weidman admit to adding even more “swashbuckling slapstick gags” to their updated version, although they quickly add that none of these new gags were “gratuitous” and that they are “all closely tied to the plot.”
²⁸
Crouse and Weidman also express their intention to take their characters “more seriously” and to make them three-dimensional (or “maybe two and two-thirds”).
²⁹
In a feature story on
Anything Goes
that also appeared several days before the premiere of the 1987 revival, director, editor, and dramaturge Jerry Zaks discusses his search for a theme (“people dealing with the ramifications of trying to fall in love”) and explains his intention “to ground everything in a recognizable reality,” that is, to remake the book in a post–Rodgers and Hammerstein image. He continues with a telling example: “In previous versions of the show, Lord Evelyn Oakleigh, with whom Reno Sweeney falls in love, is someone so totally foppish and out of touch with his sexuality that she ends up looking stupid for having fallen for him. Both in the book and the casting we tried to suggest the potential for a real relationship between them.”
³⁰

Zaks makes a good point. When Sir Evelyn is introduced in 1934 (scene 2) his masculine identity is immediately called into question:

REPORTER:
Sir Oakleigh, you and Miss Harcourt. Right here, please. (
SIR EVELYN OAKLEIGH
and
HOPE HARCOURT
are pushed into focus
) Society stuff.

CAMERA MAN:
What are their names? Who are they?

REPORTER:
Sir—what’s your first name?

OAKLEIGH:
Evelyn.

1ST CAMERA MAN:
Not her first name—your first name!

When in act II, scene 1, Sir Evelyn relates that he “had an unpremeditated roll in the rice and enjoyed it very much” with a Chinese maiden named Plum Blossom, his admission may be taken more as a boast of his full-blooded heterosexuality than the confession of a sin. And Reno, who has experienced chagrin that Evelyn has been treating her every inch a lady and is much relieved by this welcome revelation, immediately responds accordingly: “Brother, I’ve been worried about you but I feel better now.”
³¹
Reno will repeat this sentiment in both 1962 and 1987.

The main reason that the generally stiff and staid Sir Evelyn provides a less-than-perfect match for the exuberant Reno in the original
Anything Goes
is more substantive than his androgynous first name and questionable heterosexuality: the Englishman is never allowed to sing. Although his sexual identity is eventually resolved to the satisfaction of a 1930s audience, his non-singing status significantly reduces his dramatic identity. In a musical (or opera) a character who does not sing—for example, Parthy before the 1994
Show Boat
revival (discussed in
chapter 2
)—proceeds at his or her own peril.

Apparently, future book doctors saw this as an illness that needed a cure. Thus in the 1962 revival Bolton celebrates Sir Evelyn’s emergence as a regular fellow in act II, scene 1, by letting him sing an innocuously risqué interpolated duet with Reno, “Let’s Misbehave.” In 1987 Sir Evelyn remains musically silent in his stateroom scene with Reno but eventually emerges in act II, scene 3, with his own song for the first time, “The Gypsy in Me,” a song that Hope sang in the 1934 original and no one sang in 1962.
³²

Extending the premise that a musical comedy character will be denied three-dimensionality or identity if he or she is not allowed to sing, even Billy’s boss, Elisha J. Whitney, is given a brief interpolated song to open act I, scene 4, in 1987. On this occasion he sings “I Want to Row on the Crew,” borrowed not from Broadway but from one of Porter’s fraternity shows at Yale. The ship’s deck becomes even more crowded when Moon’s female accomplice, Bonnie, is given two interpolated numbers in 1962 (“Heaven Hop” in act I and “Let’s Step Out” in act II). In 1987 Crouse and Weidman discard these interpolations and in act II give Bonnie (now named Erma) “Buddie, Beware,” the tune sung briefly by Ethel Merman as Reno in the original Broadway production before she persuaded Porter to give his late-arriving friends an opportunity to hear a reprise of “I Get a Kick Out of You.”

In the 1987 revival words such as “wacky” and “zany” had been replaced, offending ethnic stereotypes were removed, and all the important characters were dramatically enhanced and, more important, allowed to sing. But do
these changes make the 1987
Anything Goes
superior to the original? Is it any funnier to hear a new set of topical jibes at Yale, Porter’s alma mater, in a libretto created by two former Harvard roommates? Is it an improvement that Reno in 1934 is asked by Billy to seduce Sir Evelyn while in 1987 Reno meets and falls in love with the Englishman on her own?

What is lost and gained by this book surgery? Gone from latter-day versions of
Anything Goes
, for example, is much of the Marx Brothers humor built on puns and misunderstandings. Note the following exchange between Mrs. Wentworth (a humorless society matron not unlike Groucho’s Margaret Dumont) and Moon, an exchange missing from the 1962 and 1987 revivals. Are modern audiences better or worse off for its absence?

MRS. WENTWORTH:
We have a great deal to talk about. You see, I’m honorary president of the Texas Epworth League.

MOON:
Oh, the Texas League—you must know the Dean Boys.

MRS. WENTWORTH:
The Dean boys?

MOON:
Yes, Dizzy and Daffy.

MRS. WENTWORTH:
No, I don’t remember them—

MOON:
Well, you ask the Detroit Tigers about them. They remember them.

MRS. WENTWORTH:
The Detroit Tigers? I know a family in Detroit named Lyons.

MOON:
Lyons? Well, I know Maxie Baer [the boxing champion], but he’s from San Francisco.

MRS. WENTWORTH:
Ah, San Francisco. Have you ever been there?

MOON:
I summered a few years at San Quentin.

MRS. WENTWORTH:
San Quentin … Is that near Santa Clara?

MOON:
Clara wasn’t there when I was there. I wonder what ever became of Clara?

MRS. WENTWORTH:
I’m not sure I understood what you just said.

MOON:
Well, I wasn’t listening.
³³

Some things about the evolving
Anything Goes
books stay the same the more they change. In 1987 Billy still has the opportunity to reply when asked his nationality that he is Pomeranian—the beard he is wearing was taken from a dog of that breed—even though Reno no longer notices that Billy is “putting on the dog.”
³⁴
Although many of the original puns and gags had disappeared by 1987, one 1934 line, “calling all pants,” remained a part of
Anything Goes
scripture because it always got a laugh, even though no one involved in the production was able to explain why it was so funny or even precisely what it meant (the discussion of the 1936 film adaptation of
Anything Goes
in
chapter 8
should hopefully clear up this mystery).

This survey of the reworked books for
Anything Goes
in 1962 and 1987 evokes a paradox: comedy seems especially susceptible to becoming dated, yet many of the plays that have survived from the 1930s are comedies rather than serious dramas. Revivals of George S. Kaufman’s and Moss Hart’s comedies
You Can’t Take It with You
(1936) and
The Man Who Came to Dinner
(1939) or Noël Coward’s British import
Private Lives
(1930) are frequent guests on modern stages, yet audiences may have to wait a lifetime before getting an opportunity to see Clifford Odets’s
Waiting for Lefty
(1935). Theater historian Gerald Bordman, who plays an active role in the resurrection of unjustifiably forgotten musicals, concedes “that some older musicals seem old-fashioned,” but is quick to point out that “so are gingerbread houses, Charles Dickens, and Mozart symphonies.”
³⁵