Broadway's Most Wanted (21 page)

An evening-long spoof of the days of post-depression live radio broadcasts, this show takes place in a radio studio, and we meet seemingly the entire radio station over the course of the evening. The show’s clever structure includes using the pit band as the studio orchestra, a sound effects man, and actual product jingles and songs from the period. The very funny “Eskimo Pies” commercial is among the most popular audition pieces for actresses.

This legendary 1994 Broadway flop is based on the classic film
Ninotchka.
Composer Jule Styne and author Marsha Norman came up with an adaptation which veered wildly in tone, suffered from too much tampering in production, and couldn’t live up to the legendary film source. Despite effectively choreographed ballet sequences,
The Red Shoes
was D.O.A. when it opened and quickly became the latest in a depressingly long string of high-profile flops.

Very loosely based on striptease queen Gypsy Rose Lee’s autobiographical memoir of her days in burlesque,
Gypsy
is one of the very best musicals ever written. Arthur Laurents’ book concentrates not on Lee and her sister, June Hovic, better known as June Havoc, but rather on their stage mother from hell, Rose.

Rose, as delineated by Laurents, Jule Styne, and Stephen Sondheim (and thrillingly and terrifyingly embodied
by Ethel Merman), was a near-heartless Gorgon living vicariously through her “babies,” pushing them headfirst into show business and not capable of letting go when her babies outgrow her smothering protection.

“New art is true art,” says Whitelaw Savory, patron of the new and fresh. But in
One Touch of Venus,
Savory buys a mysterious ancient statue of Venus, which comes to life via the touch (and engagement ring) of a Manhattan barber. Eventually, the statue vanishes then reappears, spreading her message of pleasure and liberation all over Manhattan island.

S.J. Perelman and Ogden Nash’s libretto sets the witty show in motion, and the Nash-Kurt Weill score takes it from there. Classics like “Speak Low” and “Westwind” jostle for position with private-eye shenanigans and crazy chases in this gorgeous, funny 1944 take on modern art and timeless love.

The Great Waltz
examines the middle age of the Waltz King, Johann Strauss, Sr. and his increasingly volatile relationship with his son, Johann Jr., who later became
his
generation’s Waltz King. Their mutual respect and understanding is finally cemented when Senior conducts the premiere performance of Junior’s “On the Beautiful Blue Danube.”

Cobbled together by Robert Wright and George Forrest for the Long Beach Civic Light Opera,
The Great Waltz
boasts an all-Strauss score, often set to unimaginative lyrics. The silly book often sets these tunes in unfortunately preposterous situations. In all, it’s neither Broadway caliber nor a fitting tribute to either Strauss.

Many parents want their children to step into the family business, but many people in show business wouldn’t wish their careers on anyone, least of all their offspring. Luckily for us, some of the theater’s leading lights let their genes have their way.

Jack Cassidy was a handsome smoothie who turned in a memorable performance as no-goodnik Stephen Kodaly in
She Loves Me.
Jones was a beautiful ingenue who, after making her Broadway debut as a replacement Laurey in
Oklahoma!,
went Hollywood debuting in Fred Zinneman’s film version.

Their three sons have all appeared on Broadway, teen-pop idols David and Shaun appearing together in the musical
Blood Brothers
(as twins) in 1994. Youngest son Patrick made his Broadway debut in 1982 and appeared most recently opposite Cheryl Ladd in the hit revival of
Annie Get Your Gun.

Glynn is the warm, attractive leading lady who won a Tony in 1979 (wisely billed in the “Featured Actress” category, otherwise she would have been steamrolled by Angela Lansbury and the
Sweeney Todd
juggernaut) for her performance as Mona Stangley in
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,
which was co-authored by her husband, Peter Masterson.

Their daughter Mary Stuart, best known for her performances in films like
Fried Green Tomatoes
and
Benny and Joon,
appeared on Broadway in Eva LaGallienne’s adaptation-with-music of
Alice in Wonderland,
and was seen as Luisa in the Roundabout Theater’s recent revival of
Nine.

Broadway’s greatest composer rarely made mistakes in his illustrious career, but his daughter Mary said she became interested in composing because the mistakes she made playing the piano were often more intriguing than what had actually been written. She learned her lessons well, composing a superb score at the tender age of 28 for
Once Upon a Mattress.
She now serves as head of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, which licenses the work of her father.

Another spin of the wheel: Her son, Adam Guettel, is one of the handful of the “new breed” of theater composers. He wrote the very successful off-Broadway musical
Floyd Collins
and the popular song cycle
Saturn Returns.

No one has more Tony Awards than Broadway’s own royal, Harold Prince. Prince worked his way up from
assistant stage manager on
Call Me Madam
in 1950 to an unparalleled career as a producer and director of such legendary shows as
West Side Story, Company, Sweeney Todd,
and
The Phantom of the Opera.

One of the few missteps in his career was Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s flop
Merrily We Roll Along
in 1981.
Merrily
featured Prince Hal’s daughter, Daisy Prince, making her Broadway debut as Meg, girlfriend of Franklin Shepard, the show’s antihero. Miss Prince also appeared as Young Phyllis in the legendary
Follies in Concert
and has carved out a career of her own as a successful off-Broadway director of shows like
The Last Five Years
and
Songs for a New World.
In 1994, she appeared at the Public Theater in a fractured fairy tale of a musical called
The Petrified Prince …
directed by her father.

Richard Burton, the immortal Welshman, gave one of the musical theater’s most commanding performances as King Arthur in Lerner and Loewe’s
Camelot.
(Burton was so good as Arthur that, upon reviving it in 1980, one critic wondered why Guinevere ever would have left
him.)

His daughter Kate made her Broadway musical debut three years later as J.J. in the short-lived musical version of Garry Trudeau’s comic strip
Doonesbury,
and later appeared in the high-profile Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s
Company
as karate-fighting Sarah. In 2002, she was nominated for two straight play Tony Awards, for
The Elephant Man
and
Hedda Gabler,
the latter produced by her mother, Sybil Christopher.

Some consider Oscar Hammerstein to be the MVP of the Broadway musical (considering his contributions to two of the linchpin shows,
Show Boat
and
Oklahoma!
as well as his other classics), and his two sons, James and William, had admirable careers of their own on Broadway, and on the road, as producers and directors of renown.

Most famously, James served as co-director of the Broadway incarnation of his father’s
State Fair
in 1996, while William’s most notable project was the well-received major Broadway revival of
Oklahoma!
in 1979, which he directed.

One of the greatest onstage pairings in Broadway history was the teaming of the slick, seductive choreography and direction of Bob Fosse and the performances of his longtime wife and muse, the dazzling redheaded singer/dancer Gwen Verdon. The work of the two shone in shows like
Sweet Charity, Redhead,
and
Chicago,
Verdon oozing talent, class, and sex appeal, all shown off to maximum effect by Fosse’s riveting staging.

Their daughter Nicole made her Broadway debut as a member of the
corps de ballet
of the “Opera Populaire” in
The Phantom of the Opera.
She danced for her father in his 1979 film
All That Jazz
and appeared as Kristine in the movie version of
A Chorus Line.
Both mother and daughter served in consulting positions on
Fosse,
the Tony-winning tribute to the late choreographer.

The late stage and television actor James Broderick made his Broadway debut in 1953 in the musical
Maggie,
loosely based on J.M. Barrie’s play
What Every Woman Knows,
which ran a meager five performances. James’s son Matthew, however, has fared slightly better in his forays into the Broadway musical.

Matthew’s first Broadway musical outing, the 1995 revival
of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,
proved him to be a fine musical farceur and a pretty good singer, winning him his second Tony (his first was for Neil Simon’s play
Brighton Beach Memoirs).
As musical farces go, 2001’s
The Producers
is Grade-A, and Broderick took the role of mousy accountant-turned-crooked-producer Leo Bloom and ran with it, winning raves and audience love letters.

The legendary comic pairing of Lucy and Desi yielded a great television series, but the beloved performers had only one Broadway musical apiece, his being Rodgers and Hart’s
Too Many Girls
in 1939, hers being Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh’s
Wildcat
in 1960, when she was at the height of her TV popularity (and, incidentally, the end of her marriage to Arnaz).

Daughter Lucie shot to stardom in 1979 in her Broadway debut, the Neil Simon/Carole Bayer Sager/Marvin Hamlisch musical
a clef They’re Playing Our Song.
It won her a Tony nomination for her performance as Sager’s alter ego, a lovably ditzy lyricist.

One of the legendary clowns (a “superclown,” as critic Marilyn Stasio described him), Zero Mostel’s immense
talent, appetite, and ego made him one of the American theater’s true characters. A three-time Tony winner, two of those awards were for memorable musical creations: Pseudolus, the wily slave in
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,
and his remarkable Tevye in
Fiddler on the Roof.

Following an unfortunate experience working with his father on a television show while in college, Josh Mostel struck out on a successful career of his own, albeit mostly in “fat clown” roles like those played by his father. Also like his father, Josh appeared in two Broadway musicals: the 1990 revival of 3
Penny Opera,
and as Sy Benson in the short-lived
My Favorite Year. U
nlike his father, who was often considered too “outsized” for the movies, Josh has had a long and successful film career, one of his most memorable performances coming in his movie debut as the libertine King Herod in
Jesus Christ Superstar.

The musical theater is created, performed, and attended by an overwhelming number of gay men and women. Odd, then, that so much of the gay content in earlier musicals was completely coded (just look at almost any Cole Porter lyric, for example). There still aren’t many gay-themed shows with gay characters in them. Here are ten shows with important homosexual content.

A masterpiece of storytelling as well as subtext,
Lady in the Dark
is a supremely innovative and heavily sexually coded musical about inner crises and personal triumph. It also featured one of the first sympathetic gay characters in Broadway history.

Lady in the Dark’s
libretto was written by Moss Hart, a gay man who was, at the time, married to a woman. His heroine is Liza Elliott, a magazine editor in personal and professional crises, afraid of her inner demons. While this is obvious subtext for a gay man’s
self-loathing, the only openly gay character in the show, photographer Russell Paxton, is a trusted confidante to Liza (he also gets a lot of great music, like the tongue-twisting “Tschaikowsky”).

This one is, as the title suggests, a plotless revue. But come on, that’s one of the funniest show titles you’ll ever see, so here it is in this book.
Whoop-Dee-Doo!
was mainly the brainchild of the aforementioned Howard Crabtree, who wrote a bit, performed a bit, produced a bit, and designed all of the costumes.

The show itself was a teeny Follies-style revue on gay themes, with songs like “Tough to Be a Fairy,” “I Was Born This Way,” and “Nancy, the Unauthorized Musical.” (Wonder who
that’s
about.) Crabtree’s costumes, which often defied description and were worth the price of admission alone, stole the show.

Manuel Puig’s political play had been adapted into a 1985 film by Hector Babenco which won William Hurt an Academy Award. Hurt played Molina, a gay window dresser imprisoned for lewd acts, who is confined with Valentin, a political dissident, in a hellish South American prison.

The great songwriting team of Kander and Ebb, along with librettist Terrence McNally, adapted
Spider Woman
into a musical in 1990, and it finally hit Broadway in the Spring of 1993. Molina, played movingly by Tony winner Brent Carver, must get close to Valentin for reasons of survival, but their bond eventually becomes genuine. Molina’s relationships with Valentin and, especially, his own mother (epitomized in the
song “You Could Never Shame Me”), are heartbreakingly real and touching.