Hats off to On the Town

Phil Tayler, Zach Eisenstat and John Ambrosino go  . .. well, On the Town.  Photos: Mark S. Howard

The original musical On the Town has been so overshadowed by its 1949 film treatment (an Oscar-winner that starred Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Ann Miller and Vera-Ellen) that the current Lyric Stage production (through this weekend only) almost feels like a discovery. The movie is a monument in Hollywood history (not only was it the first musical shot on location, but it also marks the first time Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen co-directed a full film); but the MGM suits yanked most of Leonard Bernstein's subtler songs (they found them "complex" and "operatic"), and replaced them with broader numbers by producer Roger Edens - a talented mainstay of the Freed Unit, but there's a reason why you've never heard of him.

Happily, however, Bernstein's original melodies survive in the score of the stage show, which was a spin-off of Jerome Robbins' ballet Fancy Free (which Boston Ballet staged just last year) - itself a spin-off of Paul Cadmus's sardonically homo-erotic The Fleet's In! (below- a WPA commission, believe it or not, that caught the eye of the closeted choreographer).

In Fancy Free, Robbins largely dropped Cadmus's gay subtext (let alone the suggestion of marijuana use), but still conjured a surprisingly dark look at a trio of sailors on leave, whose lonely, frustrated aggression eventually thwarts their sexual impulses (their girls wind up fleeing their brawling). The musical sweetened things even further, keeping the sex but deep-sixing the violence; and just as the jump from Robbins to Bernstein marked another step into the closet, so On the Town all but reversed the content of the original Cadmus source (as often happens in the long arcs that cultural material charts through the pop firmament).

Paul Cadmus' The Fleet's In! of 1934 - the source inspiration for On the Town

Indeed, in the musical version, it's the women who are most often amusingly on the make: one of the leading ladies, for instance, primly explains that she gets "carried away" with prime specimens of homo erectus (her words, not mine), while another simply suggests to sailors, "Why don't we go up to my place?," and the third, we learn, earns her living as an exotic dancer (even though she has won the title of "Miss Turnstiles").  Meanwhile the sailors, though horny, hardly seem worldly - indeed, one of them is probably a virgin, while another dreams of finding true love during a 24-hour leave; only one of them has his eye on the main chance, and even he's a softie.

So don't worry, On the Town reliably diverts its erotic undercurrents into proper romantic yearnings - but only barely; make no mistake, it's about sex, and in a refreshingly honest way. But then it bloomed during a brief period (roughly the war years) in which nice girls were allowed to have sex lives onstage, at least with virginal servicemen; and of course its lyrics and book were penned by Adolph Green and the irrepressible Betty Comden (née Basya Cohen), who more than anyone since Fanny Brice imprinted our musical theatre with the perspective of the smart, snappy Jewish-American girl who has been around the block and seen a thing or two.

Not that Comden, Green and Bernstein (who once were a variety act!) ignored the emotional subtexts of their story - indeed, the loneliness of Fancy Free haunts On the Town - it's essentially what the Freed Unit left out of their happy, back-slapping slab of Americana. At the Lyric, however, the piece's wistfulness often comes center stage, in such forgotten Bernstein classics as "Lonely Town" and particularly the poignant "Some Other Time," which has always seemed to hover on the verge of becoming a standard (which it deserves to be).

Michele A. DeLuca knows where she'd like to take Phil Tayler.

Of course balancing these winsome touches are the bold strokes of "Carried Away," "I Can Cook, Too," (lyrics by Bernstein himself) and the classic "New York, New York" - surely one of the catchiest numbers ever concocted. The Lyric version actually gives full  weight to both sides of the musical's emotional coin - although I have to say that on opening night, it hadn't quite coalesced.  I have a hunch it has found its groove by now - this is one of those cases in which artistic director Spiro Veloudos has attempted to shoehorn a big show into an intimate space, and while I can't really fault him for that (who doesn't have a soft spot for On the Town?) a few of the dance numbers feel slightly cramped, and some of his stars are pushed beyond their musical comfort zone (one untrained singer, for instance, often lands about a quarter-step south of where he should be when he's singing harmony).

None of these flaws prove fatal, however, and if a few performers seemed to be operating on technical cues  - well, again,  I'm guessing the emotional essence of what they're doing has sunk in by now. The standouts of the cast are Aimee Doherty and Phil Tayler, by now Boston's go-to duo for musical theatre; Doherty as usual looks like a million bucks, and sounds like a million more; she actually doesn't have too much chemistry with her assigned sailor, the effervescent Zach Eisenstat (who  in general feels like a force of nature, and can pull off a mean back flip to boot), but maybe she doesn't have to when she's got the comic timing she displays here (intriguingly, Doherty actually connects more with the fiancé she throws over in the script, a highly amusing J.T. Turner).  Tayler, like Doherty, was born to do musical comedy, and nails all his bits, even if (again) he hadn't quite found his inner shrinking violet on opening night, nor learned how to open up to the demanding advances of the talented Michele A. DeLuca, whom we really don't see enough of on our local stages, and who brought some real fire to "I Can Cook, Too."

But wait, there's more.  Sometimes local light John Ambrosino strikes me as a little distant, but here his melancholy worked well for the lovestruck Gabey (and his vocal chops were quite welcome on numbers like "Lonely Town"), while radiant newcomer Lauren Gemelli made me forget all about silly old Vera-Ellen as Miss Turnstiles. Local legend Sarah deLima likewise eclipsed the Hollywood incarnation of her character, a daffy artiste who keeps the plot (such as it is) in motion. 

There was even more talent around the edges of the production - Maurice Emmanuel Parent, usually a headliner, essayed a number of supporting and dance-oriented roles, while bass baritone Rishi Basu brought a welcome heft to the vocal lines. Choreographer Ilyse Robbins had clearly studied the dance style of that other Robbins, and often triumphed against the limits of the Lyric's space; Kathleen Doyle's costume design was period-perfect; and Seághan McKay's projections went a long way toward giving the show something of the film version's fluidity and scope (particularly when a subway rumbled by).  All in all, Veloudos has assembled a startling array of talent on the Lyric stage, and we're unlikely to see any local cast do better by the full emotional range of On the Town.

Chorus Pro Musica goes to Chichester

Chorus Pro Musica at a previous performance.

I'm quite late with an appreciation of Chorus Pro Musica, and their "Poets and Psalms" program at Old South Church two (!) weekends ago.

I left the program thrilled, frankly, after encountering - in a row - three of the great choral works of the twentieth century: Charles Ives' Psalm 90, Benjamin Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb, and Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms (two of these, btw - the Britten and the Bernstein - were commissioned by the same vicar, Walter Hussey, who therefore has his own niche in the cathedral of choral music). There was also a light opener to the program, Night, Sleep and the Stars, by Daniel Gawthrop, from a text by Walt Whitman, which was lovely in its way, but paled next to its fellows in performance.

Taken together these amounted to some very heavy lifting for Chorus Pro Musica, which I suppose is an "amateur" chorus - if by amateur you mean motivated by love, not lucre, as the original Latin tells us.  Their music director, Betsy Burleigh, is obviously a lady of talent and ambition, with a career that spans several chorales and several American cities (word has it, alas, she's moving on soon), and she drew from her assembled forces and soloists (bass David Godkin did particularly well) clear, vibrant tone and reliably secure intonation, even in the tricky passages of the Ives and Bernstein (alas, one sweet voice got a little lost in an exposed passage, but found a way home again).

Like a lot of large, good choruses, however, Chorus Pro Musica grew a little fuzzy when it came to diction (okay, some of this text was in Hebrew) and more importantly the complicated polyrhythms demanded by Ives and Bernstein, which here sometimes lacked a clean, syncopated edge.

But at what point does "good enough" become "great" despite its shortcomings?  Because Chorus Pro Musica often passed that bar, wherever it is.  And the sad fact is that there is no "professional" chorus dedicated to this repertoire - which contains some of the greatest music of the twentieth century.  For some reason choruses aren't "cool," I suppose, so there's no general clamor for this legacy - an attitude which I wish would change (I mean it happened for cupcakes, didn't it, so why not chorales?).

And to be honest you simply cannot discount the experience of hearing a complex statement on faith like Ives's Psalm 90 in an actual church, particularly one as spectacular as Old South.  Legend has it this is the voice of Moses himself, which Ives honors with a musical statement shaped into stern, muscular metaphors - a deep "C," for instance, sounds throughout the piece from the organ (skillfully played by Jacob Street) as a reminder of God's continual presence, and at times, to conjure the many confusing facets of our relationship to the divine, the composer splits his chorus up into as many as 22 separate voices.  Psalm 90 closes with one of Ives' greatest conceits: church bells ring against the dying sound of the chorus, but they're dissonant - a poignant reminder of the flaws of the faithful.

In contrast, Benjamin Britten limns the line between confidence and madness in Rejoice in the Lamb, which is set to a remarkable, and disturbing, text by one Christopher Smart, who wrote it from within the walls of an eighteenth century asylum.  Thus it's no surprise the piece swings from ecstasy ("Hallelujah . . . from the heavenly harp in sweetness and magnifical and mighty!") to crackpot whimsy ("For I will consider my cat Jeoffry . . . for he knows that God is his Saviour,") to piercing cries for salvation from the madhouse ("For I am under the same accusation as my Savior - for they said, he is beside himself . . . and the watchman smites me with his staff!").  Britten loved this text (you can feel it in his attentive settings) - he even asked that parts be read at his memorial service - and it's easy to see why; rarely have essential questions of sanity and faith been probed so naively, yet so powerfully.

Finally there was Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, which has a claim to being the most gorgeous thing this great composer ever wrote.  Perhaps tellingly, its loveliest passages were drawn from melodies he had composed, but discarded, for West Side Story (or the unrealized musical The Skin of Our Teeth); and the text of course is a mosaic of psalms set in juxtaposition - sometimes simplistic juxtaposition, to be honest, but the music always carries us over that bump (below is a rendition of the incredibly beautiful Psalm 23/Psalm 2 "second movement," featuring countertenor Lawrence Zazzo).  The work is famously ravishing throughout, and closes with a hushed fade on the word "unity," as the talented accompanying musicians (not only Street on organ, but Judy Saiki Couture on harp and Craig McNutt on percussion) resolved to a peaceful major chord.  It made a haunting, memorable close to what had been quite a moving concert.  You can hear Chorus Pro Musica next in "A Victorian Christmas," again at Old South Church on December 21.


The most gorgeous thing Bernstein ever wrote?  Possibly.

The best of all possible Candides

Geoff Packard and Lauren Molina in a touching reunion from Candide.

Sometimes the theatrical gods smile upon folly, and they're all but beaming right now at the Huntington, where Mary Zimmerman's improbable renovation of Candide is unfurling in a surprising burst of glory.  For the history of this musical has, in fact, been almost a mirror of the tale it tells; the adaptation of Voltaire's classic for the Broadway stage has been a long peregrination beset by disaster more often than triumph.

In its first incarnation, this spry satire of faith in "the best of all possible worlds" was sunk by Lillian Hellman's leaden book, although Leonard Bernstein's music (and Richard Wilbur's lyrics) were immediately acclaimed; indeed, the score was soon legend, and "fixing" Candide became an ongoing project of the Broadway smart set (even Stephen Sondheim lent a hand at one point).  Hugh Wheeler and Harold Prince condensed the musical by half in the 70's, and gave the whole thing a carnival spin that made it a hit (something like this version is still in the City Opera repertory, if the City Opera still exists, that is).  Bernstein wasn't so thrilled by this truncation, however - even after Prince and Wheeler later expanded it - and countered with a "definitive" symphonic version that attempted to recall from the bathos of farce the sense of romantic satire that had been his original aim.

Since then, Candide has bounced about in form and format, with everyone usually agreeing that the score hadn't yet been done justice (the crass New York concert revival in 2005 was a particular low).   But how to adapt Voltaire's rambling pamphlet without condensing it into farce remained a mystery - as did a method for reconciling the script's singularly skeptical tone with the lush panoply provided by its musical genius, Bernstein.  At its core, Candide was a contradiction.  Yet rather like Voltaire's deluded characters, people remained stubbornly optimistic that somehow, someday, the dream of uniting its two creative pole-stars could come true.

Well, now the Midwestern MacArthur "genius" Mary Zimmerman has turned her prodigious talents to this long-standing challenge.  And to my mind, she has indeed come up with the best of all possible Candides.  Or at least the best one we are likely to see in our lifetimes.  Yet suitably enough, the path of her production has been a wayward one.  It endured mysteriously mixed reviews at its Chicago opening, but as it has toured the country it has garnered awards, and its reputation has steadily built; I hear it has been tightened slightly, and surely the lead performances (Geoff Packard, Lauren Molina, and Larry Yando have been with it from the start) have all deepened.  Still, those initial notices seem bizarre at this point; this is one of those productions whose greatness you feel in your bones; and I don't think I'm alone in feeling that way - at the curtain call some of the people around me were all but screaming their approval, and my partner shouted himself hoarse.  The last time I felt this way at the Huntington was at All My Sons; and as I did with that production, I'm telling you if you miss this one, you will be missing a legend.

Packard and Molina  - one great performance, and one for the history books.  Photos: T. Charles Erickson

But musical purists, take note: the score may be the reason Candide has lasted, but ironically enough, Zimmerman has structured her version around Voltaire, not Bernstein (and she has cut one or two songs, while emphasizing others); the original orchestral forces have been reduced, and she has pulled the vocals back from the opera house and into the music hall (her leads have great pop voices, but they're not opera singers - not even Cunegonde).  So this Candide is no longer a great score with a musical attached; it's now back to being a musical with a great score attached.

Perhaps that new emphasis was the key to unlocking the tricky heart of the script; I don't know - but the irony is that while Zimmerman has put the spotlight back on Voltaire, she has found a supple emotional tone that matches Bernstein's score, too.  The book is still credited to Hugh Wheeler, but Zimmerman lists herself as adapter - and while this version has something of Wheeler's circusy touch, and more than a few broad jokes, Zimmerman's take is nevertheless deeper, longer, and richer than Wheeler's.  And her script no longer ridicules poor Candide and Cunegonde for their folly - a good choice, I think, for Voltaire's ultimate aim was to hold the mirror up to us all, not just Liebniz; thus Zimmerman has dispensed with a single, Voltairian narrator (instead the whole cast fills us in on background), and the musical's famously arch last line ("Any questions?") has gone missing.  Perhaps as a result, this is the only Candide I've ever seen that brought me close to tears (Molina and Packard had a lot to do with this, too).  Zimmerman even pulls off the novel trick of hanging onto some sense of unity as the action wanders back and forth across the globe.  Perhaps most importantly, she taps into the feeling, as one character puts it, that despite everything, we nevertheless "love life!"  That strange optimism which survives the death of "optimism" is, in the end, what powers the buoyant Candide.

And Zimmerman's direction, if anything, is even more inspired than her adaptation.  This Candide is studded with images that you'll never forget - chief among them the shocking moment when the comforting canvas of the ancien régime collapses, and poor Candide is left in a giant, empty room: Voltaire's godless universe in a paneled nutshell (the endlessly inventive scenic design is by Daniel Ostling). Elsewhere clever story-theatre tricks convey an earthquake, a battle at sea, and even the Seven Years' War (done up in a slow-motion ballet, with cannonballs whizzing by on fishing poles).  There are other wonders - the re-discovery of Cunegonde, for instance, (at top) is a small marvel of emotional choreography, and the final tableau of "Make Our Garden Grow" - with flowers pushing their way up from the stage floor - is a masterstroke.

Cheryl Stern, in a classic phrase, is "easily assimilated" as the Old Lady in Candide.

Still, none of this could work without a startlingly strong ensemble.  Again, Zimmerman's central trio - Geoff Packard (Candide), Lauren Molina (Cunegonde), and Larry Yando (Pangloss) - are all triple threats who have been perfectly cast.  Perhaps musical purists will note Molina isn't utterly secure pitch-wise at the top of her (enormous) range - but it's impossible to remember that when you're faced with the triumph of her portrayal; "Glitter and Be Gay" (again with brilliant help from Zimmerman) is a comic masterpiece, yet Molina also leaves the goofiness behind to bring off Cunegonde's ruin with the nuanced assurance of a tragedian; this is a performance for the history books.  And the handsome Packard, who has not only the looks for the part but also a beautifully light, fluid tenor, is convincingly sweet and undefiled to the end - while subtly insinuating a deepening world-weariness into Candide's picaresque profile.

Meanwhile Larry Yando makes a delightful Pangloss - again, the vocals are strong if not distinctive, but I could just watch this crafty talent all day, he tickles me so.  And I also can't forget Erik Lochtefeld's hilariously too-gay Maximilian, or Cheryl Stern's battered but worldly-wise Old Lady (Stern wasn't in strong voice on opening night, but made up for it with smoldering attitude).  Other stand-outs in the wide cast were Tom Aulino, Jesse J. Perez, Rebecca Finnegan, and our own McCaela Donovan and Timothy John Smith (who perhaps via his Huntington performances may be about to jump onto a larger theatrical wheel, as Nancy Carroll did before him).  But then praise is due to the entire cast, who all but leap through the many set-pieces Zimmerman and choreographer Daniel Pelzig have dreamt up for them, singing their hearts out all the while.

A few more musical caveats.  I wasn't always sold on music director Doug Peck's tempi, and the woodwinds' entrances were occasionally ragged during the brilliant overture on opening night.  They warmed up, though, and once I got used to the instrumental reduction here (the strings sounded slightly boosted by amplification to even things out), I appreciated its resourcefulness; you leave the production feeling you have indeed heard Candide.  I only sighed, I confess, at the a cappella finale of "Make Our Garden Grow," which can only be done full justice, I think, by a full chorus.  But perhaps even in the best of all possible productions you can't have absolutely everything.


(This animation to the famous overture isn't in the Huntington production, but it's so great I had to share it with you.)