NEW YORKIt's an inconsequential quirk that Broadway theaters named after famed composers and playwrights rarely feature shows written by the self-same artists on the marquee.
Take, for instance, the upcoming Broadway revival of The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess. Instead of playing at the George Gershwin Theatre (where the blockbuster Wicked has been firmly in place since 2003), Porgy and Bess will play at the Richard Rodgers Theatre (which hasn't hosted a show by its namesake composer in 46 years).
Or look at the current Broadway revival of Follies. This Kennedy Center transfer of Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman's landmark 1971 musical is playing at the Marquis Theatre instead of the Stephen Sondheim Theatre (formerly known as Henry Miller's Theatre, but renamed in 2010 in honor of the gay composer's 80th birthday). The current tenant at the largely below-street-level Stephen Sondheim Theatre is the Roundabout Theatre Company's Tony Award-winning revival of Anything Goes.
I caught both Follies and Anything Goes during a recent trip to New York City. Not only was it interesting to compare and contrast two musical revivals from different eras, but it was fun to find unexpected connections between the two productions.
Looking back for laughs
Anything Goes has long been held as the quintessential 1930s musical. For his 1934 score, gay composer/lyricist Cole Porter knocked out hit after hit song ("I Get a Kick Out of You," "All Through the Night," "You're the Top"), while a breezy and silly script set aboard a transatlantic ocean liner was cobbled together by the likes of P.G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse.
In actuality, though, the current Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of Anything Goes is really a "revisal." Back in 1987, playwrights Timothy Crouse and John Weidman revamped the original dated script for a Lincoln Center Theater revival starring Patti LuPone. The score was also reshuffled to restore songs cut from the original production and to interpolate other songs like "Friendship" and "It's De-Lovely" from other Porter shows.
Purists may grumble, but the 1987 version of Anything Goes is generally accepted as the best version for modern sensibilities. It's also the Tony Award-winning version that picked up even more Tony Awards this past season for star Sutton Foster as the sexy nightclub preacher Reno Sweeney, for director Kathleen Marshall's tap-happy choreography and 2011 musical revival for the Roundabout Theatre Company.
There are few things to quibble about the Roundabout revival. In some ways you can tell it was done on the cheap, since a plush dog is used in place of a real one, while Derek McLane's pushed-to-the-front ocean liner set occasionally wobbles where it shouldn't.
The broad jokester style of the show with cartoon-harmless gangsters and loads of sexual innuendo is also bound to get on the nerves of some audiences. But I personally surrendered to this revamped period show which emphasizes fun, fun, fun above all else.
Foster came across as a sweet Reno Sweeney, but was also appropriately brassy when called for (Foster was also a powerhouse with the choreography). Colin Donnell was a very handsome and funny Billy Crocker, while British actor Adam Godley milked all the verbal and physical humor out of the malapropism-prone Lord Evelyn Oakleigh.
This late into the run there were some notable cast replacements. Tony and Academy Award-winner Joel Grey was sidelined with a foot injury as Moonface Martin, but understudy Robert Creighton made the role his own with a welcome youthful and James Cagney-esque take on the comical New York gangster. Erin Mackey was also vocally and visually ravishing in Martin Pakledinaz's period costumes as the ingénue Hope Harcourt.
Looking back for tears
Garnering loads of laughs as the randy and tipsy codger Elisha Whitney in Anything Goes is the perfectly timed John McMartin. Diehard musical theater fans will know McMartin played Benjamin Stone in the original 1971 Broadway cast of Follies (and that his leading Follies co-stars Alexis Smith, Dorothy Collins, Gene Nelson and Yvonne DeCarlo have all passed away).
Follies is back on the Great White Way thanks to a critically acclaimed Kenney Center revival that transferred largely intact from Washington D.C. It's the second Broadway revival of the show, following a critically drubbed 2001 Roundabout Theatre Company revival (which coincidentally featured choreography by Anything Goes' Kathleen Marshall).
Now some may find it odd that Follies, a musical about a reunion of former showgirls in a soon-to-be-demolished theater, is playing in the fairly new Marquis Theatre built in 1986. However, theater historians will remember that three historic Broadway theaters were demolished to make way for the Marriott hotel skyscraper that houses the Marquis, so there is an added poignancy to Follies playing in this particular theater.
Follies set designer Derek McLane has smartly covered the Marquis' modern interior with gray tarps to make the auditorium look appropriately run down, while the grayness extends to the largely bare stage (until the colorfully floral Loveland set is startlingly revealed in Act II).