NYT: Two Helpings of Pie From Broadway’s Fridge
Two Helpings of Pie From Broadway’s Fridge
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
“SOUTH PACIFIC” and “Gypsy,” which both return to Broadway this spring, originally opened 10 years apart, standing neatly as theatrical bookends of the 1950s. The Rodgers and Hammerstein romance set in the Pacific during World War II had its New York premiere in April 1949, on the cusp of that fabled decade of American prosperity and self-confidence. The brassy musical inspired by Gypsy Rose Lee’s memoir first took a bow in May 1959, as the decade drew to a close and only a few shadows of the more fractious era ahead could be discerned on the horizon.
The near-simultaneous return to Broadway of these two landmark shows is essentially a matter of commerce and coincidence. But the opportunity to see them side by side underscores the distance the American musical traveled in the 10 years between them. The 1960s would begin with another Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, the syrupy “Sound of Music,” triumphing over “Gypsy” at the Tony Awards (with an assist from “Fiorello!,” which shared the Tony Award for best musical). Yet it is “Gypsy,” with its haunted heroine and undertow of anger, that would set the tone for the advances in the form that would follow, as the creators of the best musicals of the final decades of the 20th century stripped the gloss off the form and used it to explore darker territory.
The man who virtually symbolizes the transition is of course Stephen Sondheim, the composer and lyricist who began his career as a protégé of Oscar Hammerstein II and was the lyricist for both “Gypsy” and another forward-looking show of the 1950s, “West Side Story.” The differences between these two masters can be described in any number of ways, but one sure if simple indicator can be found in the opposed opinions of blueberry pie expressed by the heroines of the two revivals opening this spring.
In “South Pacific” the plucky heroine, Ensign Nellie Forbush, thoroughly smitten for the first time, sings happily of her inauguration into the commonplace joy of romance. “I’m as corny as Kansas in August,” she exults. “I’m as normal as blueberry pie.” A touch of winning self-mockery perfumes the moist island air, but Nellie’s attitude to the cornfields of Kansas and the staple of the picnic table is undoubtedly complimentary.
Rose, the ungentle giant who bestrides “Gypsy,” takes a rather different view. At the climax of her first great anthem of self-assertion, “Some People,” Rose hits upon the innocuous dessert as a symbol of all she does not want, the arid life she hopes to escape for the plusher pastures of show business success. “Goodbye to blueberry pie!” she all but shrieks.
Only one of these two celebrated heroines has been a frequent visitor to Broadway. Momma Rose has become a prickly, but reliable old friend. Didn’t she come barging back just five years ago, counterintuitively portrayed by a certain curly-haired kewpie doll named Bernadette Peters? This time she returns in the guise of Patti LuPone, the formidable singing actress who has long seemed destined to play the role. “Gypsy,” which opens on Thursday at the St. James Theater, was also revived in 1974 with Angela Lansbury and in 1989 with Tyne Daly.
By contrast Nellie Forbush has been AWOL from Broadway for half a century. Lincoln Center Theater’s production of “South Pacific,” opening on April 3 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater with the radiant Kelli O’Hara as Nellie, is the musical’s first revival in the country’s pre-eminent theatrical marketplace.
This may seem surprising since, statistically speaking, “South Pacific” was initially the more successful show. Its run of 1,925 performances on Broadway was second only to that of “Oklahoma!” In 1950 “South Pacific” won nine Tony awards and the Pulitzer Prize. “Gypsy” was certainly a success, but it had a more modest run of 702 performances and was blanked at the Tony Awards as the yodeling von Trapps and a singing mayor divvied up the spoils.
The reasons for their diverging fates in revival are complicated and plentiful, and tied up, to some degree, in the vagaries of showbiz circumstance. But what you might call the blueberry pie issue surely played a significant role.
“South Pacific” was a quintessential cultural artifact of its era. Summing up its appeal, Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times called it “lively, warm, fresh and beautiful,” as sunny a string of adjectives as you could hope to find. The musical, set during the war that cemented the country’s status as the world’s moral guardian, celebrates the American spirit and the American enterprise.
Although its heroine must struggle to allow herself to love Émile de Becque, who sired two children by a native woman on the island where the musical is largely set, she ultimately triumphs over her own prejudice. “South Pacific” can stand as a symbol of a time when all could agree on the fundamental virtues that the country strove to represent to the world: a can-do spirit, a belief in self-improvement, the courage to fight for the collective good.
An unshakable optimism is also at the heart of the musical’s belief in the edifying power of romantic love, which glows in every bar of its most beloved songs. Earthly paradise, in the vision of “South Pacific,” is not guaranteed, but with a good heart, the right moral attitude and a little luck, it is eminently achievable.
“South Pacific” can be viewed as the apotheosis of the Broadway musical’s - and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s - idealizing impulse. Musicals in the years of Broadway’s golden age were mostly in the business of affirmation, celebration and escapism. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s greatest shows all carry a dark undercurrent acknowledging the possibility of loss, violence and sin (there is a death in four of the “big five”), but good always beats evil.
“Gypsy” can be seen as a harbinger of the darker things to come, a turning point in the history of the American musical that would lead to its growth in tonal complexity and stylistic eclecticism. (I am speaking of artistically venturesome shows, not the eternally present pop confections like, say, 1960’s “Bye Bye Birdie” or latter-day equivalents like “Hairspray.”) It also prefigures a wary cynicism about the American dream that would gather force as the social unrest of the ’60s took hold.
“Gypsy” implicitly asks where the ferocious drive that fueled the prosperous 1950s may lead. The thirst for fame that burns inside Momma Rose is partly the quasi-existential yearning that haunts any soul hungry for more than the world can give, but it is also born of the all-American glorification of success. If the big brass ring is out there for the grabbing, why shouldn’t I get a crack at it?
The answer, in “Gypsy,” is that the struggle itself could destroy you, or at least alienate everyone you love. If “South Pacific” depicts the creation of a nuclear family - that homey symbol of American normalcy - “Gypsy” describes the slow annihilation of another, at the hands of a mother whose real affection for her children is clouded by a need to see them succeed at any cost.
Romantic love - such an integral part of the big Rodgers and Hammerstein shows of the 1940s - tellingly plays almost no role in “Gypsy.” The musical’s most tender love song is sung to a toy lamb. A duet that Rose sings with her would-be husband is musically charming, but the title, “You’ll Never Get Away From Me,” sounds more like a threat than an embrace.
“Gypsy,” with a book by Arthur Laurents perfectly welded to the score by Jule Styne and Mr. Sondheim, is wised-up and dry-eyed. And the musical’s conflicted view of all things classically American - success, mom and blueberry pie - has remained in tune with the temper of the changing times, finally achieving a kind of timelessness. Most of the important musicals that would come after the 1950s would evince a similar disillusioned view.
This is in part, of course, because the scores for many of them were written by - say it with me, folks - Stephen Sondheim. His stature has continued to grow as revivals of his musicals have been prolific if not always profitable on Broadway in the past decade, and his influence on the generations of songwriters who followed him has been immeasurable (if perhaps not always healthy). The unabashed romanticism of “South Pacific,” meanwhile, has been a discredited aesthetic viewpoint for most of the past half-century.
At this point the show is a largely unknown theatrical entity, familiar to most through the original cast album or the bloated Hollywood movie version. Its arrival on Broadway stirs the hope that it will speak to audiences anew. For even the most wised-up among us may retain an affection for the soaring strains of belief in the great love songs of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Romanticism and cynicism are flip sides of a philosophical coin.
And late though “South Pacific” is in coming home, its timing might turn out to be ideal. With young American men and women dying in combat on foreign soil, its setting amid a crew of boisterously innocent soldiers may stir the heart in unexpected ways. The economic storm clouds unleashing so much drenching bad news on us may awaken an old-fashioned taste for escapism too. When the world grows heavy with woe, idealized visions of life can be irresistible, even to the rigorously unsentimental.
In fact, while my affection for the blistering glory of Momma Rose is undimmed, a little sweet escapism sounds pretty appealing to me right now. Failing a quick end to the mortgage crisis or a major turn for the better in the spirit-sapping violence in Iraq, we may all have to settle for a big slice of blueberry pie. Can I have some whipped cream on mine, please?
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
“SOUTH PACIFIC” and “Gypsy,” which both return to Broadway this spring, originally opened 10 years apart, standing neatly as theatrical bookends of the 1950s. The Rodgers and Hammerstein romance set in the Pacific during World War II had its New York premiere in April 1949, on the cusp of that fabled decade of American prosperity and self-confidence. The brassy musical inspired by Gypsy Rose Lee’s memoir first took a bow in May 1959, as the decade drew to a close and only a few shadows of the more fractious era ahead could be discerned on the horizon.
The near-simultaneous return to Broadway of these two landmark shows is essentially a matter of commerce and coincidence. But the opportunity to see them side by side underscores the distance the American musical traveled in the 10 years between them. The 1960s would begin with another Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, the syrupy “Sound of Music,” triumphing over “Gypsy” at the Tony Awards (with an assist from “Fiorello!,” which shared the Tony Award for best musical). Yet it is “Gypsy,” with its haunted heroine and undertow of anger, that would set the tone for the advances in the form that would follow, as the creators of the best musicals of the final decades of the 20th century stripped the gloss off the form and used it to explore darker territory.
The man who virtually symbolizes the transition is of course Stephen Sondheim, the composer and lyricist who began his career as a protégé of Oscar Hammerstein II and was the lyricist for both “Gypsy” and another forward-looking show of the 1950s, “West Side Story.” The differences between these two masters can be described in any number of ways, but one sure if simple indicator can be found in the opposed opinions of blueberry pie expressed by the heroines of the two revivals opening this spring.
In “South Pacific” the plucky heroine, Ensign Nellie Forbush, thoroughly smitten for the first time, sings happily of her inauguration into the commonplace joy of romance. “I’m as corny as Kansas in August,” she exults. “I’m as normal as blueberry pie.” A touch of winning self-mockery perfumes the moist island air, but Nellie’s attitude to the cornfields of Kansas and the staple of the picnic table is undoubtedly complimentary.
Rose, the ungentle giant who bestrides “Gypsy,” takes a rather different view. At the climax of her first great anthem of self-assertion, “Some People,” Rose hits upon the innocuous dessert as a symbol of all she does not want, the arid life she hopes to escape for the plusher pastures of show business success. “Goodbye to blueberry pie!” she all but shrieks.
Only one of these two celebrated heroines has been a frequent visitor to Broadway. Momma Rose has become a prickly, but reliable old friend. Didn’t she come barging back just five years ago, counterintuitively portrayed by a certain curly-haired kewpie doll named Bernadette Peters? This time she returns in the guise of Patti LuPone, the formidable singing actress who has long seemed destined to play the role. “Gypsy,” which opens on Thursday at the St. James Theater, was also revived in 1974 with Angela Lansbury and in 1989 with Tyne Daly.
By contrast Nellie Forbush has been AWOL from Broadway for half a century. Lincoln Center Theater’s production of “South Pacific,” opening on April 3 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater with the radiant Kelli O’Hara as Nellie, is the musical’s first revival in the country’s pre-eminent theatrical marketplace.
This may seem surprising since, statistically speaking, “South Pacific” was initially the more successful show. Its run of 1,925 performances on Broadway was second only to that of “Oklahoma!” In 1950 “South Pacific” won nine Tony awards and the Pulitzer Prize. “Gypsy” was certainly a success, but it had a more modest run of 702 performances and was blanked at the Tony Awards as the yodeling von Trapps and a singing mayor divvied up the spoils.
The reasons for their diverging fates in revival are complicated and plentiful, and tied up, to some degree, in the vagaries of showbiz circumstance. But what you might call the blueberry pie issue surely played a significant role.
“South Pacific” was a quintessential cultural artifact of its era. Summing up its appeal, Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times called it “lively, warm, fresh and beautiful,” as sunny a string of adjectives as you could hope to find. The musical, set during the war that cemented the country’s status as the world’s moral guardian, celebrates the American spirit and the American enterprise.
Although its heroine must struggle to allow herself to love Émile de Becque, who sired two children by a native woman on the island where the musical is largely set, she ultimately triumphs over her own prejudice. “South Pacific” can stand as a symbol of a time when all could agree on the fundamental virtues that the country strove to represent to the world: a can-do spirit, a belief in self-improvement, the courage to fight for the collective good.
An unshakable optimism is also at the heart of the musical’s belief in the edifying power of romantic love, which glows in every bar of its most beloved songs. Earthly paradise, in the vision of “South Pacific,” is not guaranteed, but with a good heart, the right moral attitude and a little luck, it is eminently achievable.
“South Pacific” can be viewed as the apotheosis of the Broadway musical’s - and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s - idealizing impulse. Musicals in the years of Broadway’s golden age were mostly in the business of affirmation, celebration and escapism. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s greatest shows all carry a dark undercurrent acknowledging the possibility of loss, violence and sin (there is a death in four of the “big five”), but good always beats evil.
“Gypsy” can be seen as a harbinger of the darker things to come, a turning point in the history of the American musical that would lead to its growth in tonal complexity and stylistic eclecticism. (I am speaking of artistically venturesome shows, not the eternally present pop confections like, say, 1960’s “Bye Bye Birdie” or latter-day equivalents like “Hairspray.”) It also prefigures a wary cynicism about the American dream that would gather force as the social unrest of the ’60s took hold.
“Gypsy” implicitly asks where the ferocious drive that fueled the prosperous 1950s may lead. The thirst for fame that burns inside Momma Rose is partly the quasi-existential yearning that haunts any soul hungry for more than the world can give, but it is also born of the all-American glorification of success. If the big brass ring is out there for the grabbing, why shouldn’t I get a crack at it?
The answer, in “Gypsy,” is that the struggle itself could destroy you, or at least alienate everyone you love. If “South Pacific” depicts the creation of a nuclear family - that homey symbol of American normalcy - “Gypsy” describes the slow annihilation of another, at the hands of a mother whose real affection for her children is clouded by a need to see them succeed at any cost.
Romantic love - such an integral part of the big Rodgers and Hammerstein shows of the 1940s - tellingly plays almost no role in “Gypsy.” The musical’s most tender love song is sung to a toy lamb. A duet that Rose sings with her would-be husband is musically charming, but the title, “You’ll Never Get Away From Me,” sounds more like a threat than an embrace.
“Gypsy,” with a book by Arthur Laurents perfectly welded to the score by Jule Styne and Mr. Sondheim, is wised-up and dry-eyed. And the musical’s conflicted view of all things classically American - success, mom and blueberry pie - has remained in tune with the temper of the changing times, finally achieving a kind of timelessness. Most of the important musicals that would come after the 1950s would evince a similar disillusioned view.
This is in part, of course, because the scores for many of them were written by - say it with me, folks - Stephen Sondheim. His stature has continued to grow as revivals of his musicals have been prolific if not always profitable on Broadway in the past decade, and his influence on the generations of songwriters who followed him has been immeasurable (if perhaps not always healthy). The unabashed romanticism of “South Pacific,” meanwhile, has been a discredited aesthetic viewpoint for most of the past half-century.
At this point the show is a largely unknown theatrical entity, familiar to most through the original cast album or the bloated Hollywood movie version. Its arrival on Broadway stirs the hope that it will speak to audiences anew. For even the most wised-up among us may retain an affection for the soaring strains of belief in the great love songs of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Romanticism and cynicism are flip sides of a philosophical coin.
And late though “South Pacific” is in coming home, its timing might turn out to be ideal. With young American men and women dying in combat on foreign soil, its setting amid a crew of boisterously innocent soldiers may stir the heart in unexpected ways. The economic storm clouds unleashing so much drenching bad news on us may awaken an old-fashioned taste for escapism too. When the world grows heavy with woe, idealized visions of life can be irresistible, even to the rigorously unsentimental.
In fact, while my affection for the blistering glory of Momma Rose is undimmed, a little sweet escapism sounds pretty appealing to me right now. Failing a quick end to the mortgage crisis or a major turn for the better in the spirit-sapping violence in Iraq, we may all have to settle for a big slice of blueberry pie. Can I have some whipped cream on mine, please?