From: adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.theatre
Subject: Re: "Company" in concert
Date: 25 Jan 1993 16:56:57 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: mizar.usc.edu

In article <C1FnxH.Itq@news.udel.edu> 
conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad) writes:
> Hey folks, this wasn't intended to be a duolog -- anybody can feel free
> to jump in!  Arne and I share an interest in this show, but I hope
> others are interested in the info too.

I second you on that, Jon.  Did anyone out there see 
Company on Broadway?  On tour?  The London production?

> In article <1k1qe9INNkfv@mizar.usc.edu> 
> adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson) writes:
> >I lost interest in Sondheim after "Pacific
> >Overtures" and haven't bothered to see anything of his on
> >stage since.  
>
> Hm.  No accounting for tastes....

I know, I know.  What can I tell you?

> More precisely: I can certainly imagine being uninterested in the
> direction he pursued in the shows with Lapine (not to mention bored by
> Merrily We Roll Along).  But finding Sweeney Todd uninteresting?  And
> you an opera fan?  Oh well....

I've seen the video of Sweeney Todd about a dozen times,
and it doesn't really convince me.  The Seurat show (blue,
green, yellow, art isn't easy -- blech) is insufferably 
pretentious, I think.  I absolutely loathe it.  (This from 
listening to it a dozen times and watching the video twice.)  
Into the Woods is dull, dull, dull.  Assassins I haven't even 
bothered with.  I just happen to prefer the pre-Pacific Overtures 
Sondheim.

> >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. 
>
> Gack.  That show, in the Chandler?  The mind reels.  (Though I saw it in
> NY at the Winter Garden, I think the biggest of the old-time houses.)

Yes, Pacific Overtures was done at Dot's Place.  I managed to
get a good seat (about 15th row center), but the theater is
just too large.  I also saw Mack and Mabel there, and it just
*disappeared* on that huge stage.  At least I got to see Lisa
Kirk on stage in a fairly good role in a fairly good musical.

> [Dean Jones]
> >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".  
>
> Into the Light.  What an amazing occurrence that was.  As Ken Mandelbaum
> aptly put it in "Not Since Carrie," the only musical ever, past or
> future, about the Turin Shroud.

Did anyone actually *see* Into the Light?

[About Anthony Perkins:]

> This is one of my major self-congratulatory coups.  After seeing the
> show (Kert) and buying the album when it came out (Jones), and finding
> the former vocally capable but not quite interesting enough, and the
> latter unacceptable aurally, I started asking myself, "Well, who WOULD
> be a good Bobby?"  And came up with Anthony Perkins, who was the right
> age and persona, a good actor, a sufficient singer,

Sufficient?  Good heavens, Jon, what do you look for in a 
Broadway singer?  So Perkins wasn't a Melchior, but I think
he's really quite good in Greenwillow.  His pop albums are
sort of hit and miss, but that has as much to do with the
sappy arrangements as anything else.

> a box office name,
> and known to be a friend of Sondheim's.  Only a year later did I
> discover that he had actually been the initial casting for the role!  I
> still wish he'd done it.  Or that they had done a video version after it
> closed, on the stage set, bringing back the original cast but
> substituting him in the role.

Why did Perkins back out?  (I suppose I could look it up 
for myself in Craig Zadan's book, but I'm lazy today.)

[Jane Russell as Joanne:]

> Actually Jane Russell wasn't bad.  Very cool and remote, not bitchy like
> Stritch but a valid interpretation, and with the needed wry edge.  

Ah.  Yes, I can see her doing it that way.

> Two
> innovations adopted by several later Joannes (Vivian Blaine for one,
> when I saw her) began with Russell.  Both were in "The Little Things You
> Do Together":  She took up the very lowest notes an octave (just 2 of
> them: "When two maneuver [as one}" -- low D# and C# if I recall).

I don't think I'd like that very much.

> And
> she wouldn't use "Jesus Christ" as an oath; instead she sang "And my oh
> my is it fun."  I guess Sondheim authorized the change, however
> unwillingly, in order to get her.

This reminds me: in "You Could Drive a Person Crazy", Susan Browning
didn't shout out "You son of a bitch!", but rather something like
"You goddamned bastard!"  

> Barbara Barrie's replacement was Cynthia O'Neal, by the way.  People may
> know her from various tv appearances.

Cynthia O'Neal.  That name is really familiar.

> [George Maharis as Bobby]
> >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 like the idea of Sergio Franchi as Bobby.

> At least back then, in any given summer, there would be a few tv
> ex-names that would let it be known to stock packagers that they were
> "willing" to appear in a show (i.e., not getting much other work). 

This still happens.  And not just in stock.  The Long Beach Civic
Light Opera will be doing Into the Woods in March, starring Leslie
Uggams.  They're also doing Dreamgirls, with an as yet unannounced
cast.  I'm hoping it'll be an all-white cast, with Ricki Lake or
Mindy Cohen in the Jennifer Holliday role.

> And
> the packagers would try to figure out which names would still bring in
> the $$ from the summer crowd, and what vehicle would be right for them.
> Let's face it, most "stars" on that kind of circuit are slightly over
> the hill, or else never quite made it. 

I'm thinking back on all this kind of casting in LA.  Lots of washed 
up has-beens or never-weres.  Priscilla Lopez in Irma la Douce!  There's 
magic!  You like Shakespeare?  How about Macbeth, with Charleton Heston 
and Vanessa Redgrave?  Or Long Day's Journey Into Night, with Charleton 
Heston and Deborah Kerr?  Or Night of the Iguana, with Dorothy Malone in
the Bette Davis part?  The Long Beach Civic Light Opera did a first
rate production of Follies a couple of years ago, though, with Shani
Wallace, Juliet Prowse, Yma Sumac, Dorothy Lamour, oh, all sorts of
people like that.

> >I was awfully young (15, I guess)
>
> Good lord, I'm 7 years older than you, and hitherto I've been thinking
> how wise you were?....  :-)

<Blush>  I'm just precocious, I guess.

> >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.
>
> Same here.  The two of them seemed to portend a revolution that never
> quite happened.  (Though they DID influence shows as different as Chorus
> Line and Baby.)

Oh yes.  Chorus Line, in particular.  I didn't like Chorus Line,
if you want to know the truth.  The LA cast was almost exactly
the original NY cast, and it just didn't do it for me.  And I
though Sammy what's his name, who won the Tony, was dreadful.

Arne