From: adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.theatre
Subject: Re: "Company" in concert
Date: 25 Jan 1993 14:43:21 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: mizar.usc.edu

In article <C1FJFr.IEr@news.udel.edu> 
conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad) writes:
> In article <1k1m5oINNi05@mizar.usc.edu> 
> adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson) writes:
>
> >Merle Louise was replaced by *her* Broadway
> >replacement, Alice Cannon.  
>
> Any reason given?  Last I heard, Merle Louise was still performing.

Not only is she still performing, she's performing right now,
in the London production of "Kiss of the Spider Woman".

> [Pamela Myers]
>
> >I saw her at an AIDS benefit in 1990 where she sang a Brechtian,
> >*chilling* version of "And the World Goes Round".  
>
> Didn't she also do Dot in the first LA production of SUNDAY IN THE PARK
> WITH GEORGE?

It's possible.  I lost interest in Sondheim after "Pacific
Overtures" and haven't bothered to see anything of his on
stage since.  Although I did like "Pacific Overtures" quite
a lot.  I think I was the only person in the 4000-seat Dorothy
Chandler Pavilion who *did* like it. 

> [Me:]
> >> (Sorry, I'm not an admirer of Stritch, though I agree she
> >> was classic in this role.)
>
> >How could you *not* be an admirer of Stritch?  Sheesh.  Don't
> >you even like her early stuff, like "Zip", or "The Heart Is
> >Quicker than the Eye"?
>
> Well ok, the *really* early stuff like that.  Or in Goldilocks, I guess
> she's ok though still not a favorite of mine. 

Oh yes, she's great in Goldilocks.  And I like her quite a lot
in Sail Away (and I still can't quite hear Marlene Dietrich in
that role -- according to Stephen Bach, Noel Coward wrote Sail
Away for Dietrich).

> But from about 1970 (the
> COMPANY year) on, she has struck me as a sloppy, self-indulgent
> performer.  Her rendition of "Broadway Baby" in the FOLLIES concert is
> its low point.

Yes, I agree.  I like her on some of the Ben Bagley records,
though, on songs like "Find Me a Primitive Man" and "When Love
Beckoned on 52nd Street", on one of the Porter volumes.

[Dean Jones:]
> >Well, if
> >you thought he was excruciating then, you certainly won't like
> >him now because he sounds just the same, only more so.  
>
> I guess I won't like him then.  But maybe (hoping for the best) I'd find
> it easier to buy in person, and seeing him at the same time.

He's really quite charming on stage.  He's still boyish and
sort of goofy-handsome, and he really knows how to work a stage.
Did anyone see him in that mega-flop Christian musical he did
on Broadway about 5 years ago?  It was called something like
"The Light" or "Into the Light".  

[Larry Kert:]
> >I never could stand Larry Kert.  He always sounded like a 
> >lounge singer to me.  And he was so *stiff* on stage.
>
> He had the range for Bobby, though.  And in this show he was playing a
> contemporary guy not unlike himself, so he wasn't stiff the way he
> tended to be in period or "characterization" parts.

I suppose.  The one criticism of Kert's Bobby that I keep hearing
is that he was too relaxed and sunny, that there was no subtext
there.  Even though Saturday's performance was a concert version
(although they did do some of the dialogue), Dean Jones' Bobby
was really quite complex.  I wonder what Anthony Perkins would
have been like.  *He* had those A flats. 

> >I wish I *had* seen the original production.  I got to see
> >the national tour.  I can't remember who all was in it, but
> >George Chakiris was not my idea of a fabu Robert.  
>
> Chakiris didn't stay with it long; Gary Krawford took over for him.  I
> think Vivian Blaine did Joanne.  And during a run in one city (I think
> Washington DC) Donna McKechnie joined them to play her original role.)

A friend of mine saw it on Broadway when Jane Russell was doing
Joanne.  I can't quite imagine that.  I don't remember it being
Vivian Blaine here.  I'll have to dig out the program.

> I saw the first summer stock package that made the rounds with it,
> summer of 1972.  Vivian Blaine again, but the real prize (sarcasm) was
> George Maharis as Bobby. 

Oh dear. 

> He couldn't handle the range, but they didn't
> transpose it for him -- he "styled" the music in a semi-sung way.  And
> he went completely up on his lyrics and the alternation of sung/spoken
> sections in "Being Alive," the part where his friends say things to him
> between phrases.  He was so off that finally the cast left the stage to
> him, to finish the number however he could. 

That sounds ghastly.  If you can't sing Bobby, you shouldn't
do the role.  Period.  What were the producers thinking of?
And it's not like George Maharis was any kind of box office 
magic, either.  They'd have done better to get Sergio Franchi.

> I would have to say that
> the high point of Maharis's Bobby was the undressing-for-bed scene. :-)

Knowing what I know about Maharis, I'm sure *he* thought that
was the high point of his performance too.

> >Company
> >was the first musical that made sense to me as a *play*,
> >rather than just a collection of songs and book.
>
> Interesting that you should say that.  Because it was revolutionary in
> being structured as, not a *play* but an alternation of songs and book,
> often (deliberately) not integrated.

I was awfully young (15, I guess), and all the musicals I knew
were of the Rodgers and Hammerstein variety.  You know, there's
a scene, and then there's a song with a great hit tune.  Then
there's some more talking, and another song with a great hit
tune.  Company wasn't like that at all.  Well, in any case, it 
came as a revelation to me at the time.  The only other musical
I flipped for as I did for Company was Follies.

Arne