A Caricature

 

Daily Dose

From Days Without End, by Sebastian Barry

WE LEARN

"We learn to listen to the house and take our tack from the humours and rapids of particular nights."

From Chapter 11

Daily Dose

From Essays of Joseph Addison, chosen and edited by John Richard Green

WITCHES

"Some years ago I was at the tragedy of Macbeth, and unfortunately placed myself under a woman of quality that is since dead; who, as I found by the noise she made, newly returned from France. A little before the rising of the curtain, she broke out into a loud soliloquy, 'When will the dear witches enter?' and immediately upon their first appearance, asked a lady who sat three boxes from her, on her right hand, if those witches were not charming creatures."

From Fashions from France

A Caricature

Clerihew for a Pursed Playwright

EDWARD ALBEE

Said Edward Albee,
"Damned if I'll be
Described as 'gay'
In any way."

Daily Dose

From Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography, by Eric Idle

ENDED UP

"We ended up with dancing men in top hats and tails, a full Welsh choir, and a British regimental band playing along loudly."

From Chapter 18, Bright Side Returns

Daily Dose

From Jeeves and the Tie That Binds, by P. G. Wodehouse

HUMOR

"If he had supposed that his crude humor would get so much as a simper out of me, he was disappointed. I preserved the cold aloofness of a Wednesday matinee audience, and he proceeded."

From Chapter 8

Daily Dose

From The Habit of Art, by Alan Bennett

WELL

"Well, I agree he's a bit on the big side, but this is theatre, darling.  It's not about appearance."

From Part One

A Caricature

Clerihew of Theatrical Hubris

PETER BROOK

Peter Brook
Took a look
At the box-office data
And decided to mount The Mahabharata.

A Caricature

A Caricature

Daily Dose

From Master of Ceremonies: A Memoir, by Joel Grey

THEATER

“I had never been to the theater, and as soon as I got there I knew I was someplace.”

From Chapter Two

Breakfast at the Bookstore with Brad and Nick #35

Daily Dose

From Joy Ride: Show People and Their Shows, by John Lahr

ODYSSEY

"'The odyssey of the African-American throughout the twentieth century has been one of loss and reclamation,' Wilson told me.  'It's about reclaiming those things which were lost during slavery.'"

From August Wilson

Prologue by Johnson

Quick Review

How I Lost 10 Pounds in 53 Years: A Memoir, by Kaye Ballard (with Jim Hesselmann)

Doing a couple of things I almost never do here: first, here's a picture of the book with the hideous discount sticker still right there on the dust-jacket, and second, I felt obliged to acknowledge the "as told to" coauthor straight from the get.  The book's not new, it was published by Back Stage Books in 2006.  I missed it at the time.  I found it on the discount shelf at Half Price Books, for just $5.99.  I'm a fan of Kaye Ballard, so I don't tell this to embarrass her, but rather because it seems to me typical of this great entertainer's somewhat spotty luck in finding the audience she deserves.  Her nice coauthor I'll get to directly, but first, a quick review of the lady's career and my appreciation thereof.

I remember Kaye Ballard from television; costarring with Eve Arden on the Desilu sitcom, The Mothers-in-Law,  guest appearances on The Lucy Show and the like, singing on variety shows and talk shows like The Mike Douglas Show and Merv.  She was delightful; always funny, a great comedian and raconteur.  She's got great pipes, and she could always belt a show-tune with the best of 'em, but after years in vaudeville, nightclubs and Broadway, she also knew how to break your heart until it fit hers perfectly when she sang a torch-song, and when it came to clever lyrics and patter-songs and the like, there's been no one to touch her save a few of her idols like Bea Lillie and Martha Raye.  As a kid, I found her fascinating; she was a big, warm, noisy and funny lady, not unlike a kid herself -- still, evidently at 88 -- and I would defy anyone to not have fun listening to her tell a story about her beloved Italian grandma, Nana, or workin' all the stops of a Cole Porter tongue-twister.

Next for me as Ms. Ballard fan, came the hit Broadway production of Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance -- or rather a noisy, vulgar travesty of Gilbert & Sullivan, in which Kaye and George Rose were the only bright lights in a sea of very dim bulbs indeed.  I don't even remember who played the principle juveniles, only that they were terrible.  It was the early Eighties, and early days yet for personal microphones and electronic sound in the American musical theater.  The electrified orchestra, the chorus and the leads all sounded uniformly loud and inexplicably unintelligible.  It was ghastly.  The only relief for the audience from out of this hideous cacophony came whenever Rose's crisp and comic Major General made an appearance, and even better, when Kaye Ballard came on as Ruth.  I can close my eyes still and hear her big, beautiful voice telling the story of  "When Fred'ric was a little lad."  Other than the turns by the two ol' pros then, a grave disappointment throughout.

Ms. Ballard's had a lot of those; personal, professional and romantic.  She's been, more often than not, the best thing in bad shows, the star of good shows that didn't run, or the instigator of projects that just missed the right moment.  (A musical album based of Charlie Brown cartoons?  A Fanny Brice musical?  Anyone?  Oh, no, you go on.) She's never really been alone -- always surrounded, it seems by friends -- but that's the way she's had to go.  Which brings me to my other, best Kaye Ballard memories: the Ben Bagley records I collected with the devotion of a convert and fanatic when they were reissued on CD back in the day, and specifically the Cole Porter recordings, and Kaye Ballard's contributions to same, which taught me that one need not be Mabel Mercer to slay the people with Cole.  It's still Kaye Ballard's voice I hear when I warble to myself, "Tale of the Oyster," and when I want to break my own heart with a smile, I hear her singing "I Loved Him But He Didn't Love Me."  Those records made me the queen I am, people. "When I Was a Little Cuckoo," indeed.  (Those records were also where I first heard Blossom Dearie and Bobby Short, among others.  Nobody, I learn from Ms. Ballard's book, made a dime, but, oh, how grateful I am to the memory of the producer, Ben Bagley.)

And now I'm grateful to yet another theater queen I might otherwise never have known, Ballard's coauthor, one Jim Hesselman (cute) who managed somehow to tether the then just cresting octogenarian tornado that is Ms. Ballard long enough to get her story down in print.  My sincerest thanks, Mr. Hesselman, wherever you are now.  This book was like spending a wonderful, long, cool afternoon with the great lady, by the pool in her Palm Springs retreat, listening to stories about her Nana, and pals like Noel Coward, Judy Garland and Fred Ebb, etc.

If Kaye Ballard never quite had the luck, what she did have was an undeniable talent, or rather a whole collection of 'em: for comedy, singing, acting, friendship, cooking and life.  It's clear it must be a great pleasure to know the lady better.  It's certainly been a pleasure spending time with her autobiography.  Glad to know you, Kaye!  Love you.

Daily Dose

From Collected Plays & Writings on the Theater, by Thornton Wilder

WE HAVE ALL

"We have all murdered, in thought; and been murdered.  We have all seen the ridiculous in estimable persons and in ourselves.  We have all known terror as well as enchantment."

From Preface to Three Plays: Our town, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Matchmaker

Quick Review

It is just so easy to make fun of Nascar; the noise, the crowds, the meaningless devotion to speed.  Then there's the bloodthirsty anticipation of flame-outs and fiery crashes.  It's all just so awful, isn't it?  Beneath contempt.

 Now, admit it, queen. Much as we thrill to the perfection of the overture to Carousel, however unforgettable the night Tyne Daly opened in Gypsy, much as we treasure our rare Barbara Cook vinyl, for all of us who love musical theater unreservedly, there is also, always. a secret, blushing fascination with the flop.  How can one resist the tales of what might have been, or better yet, what should never have happened?

Who among us hasn't paused to study the carnage of some unnatural disaster, stared spellbound at the collapse of some grand folly, marvelled at the waste and devastation of some truly spectacular mistake?

Among my theater books and Broadway memoirs, hard-by the wonderful Ethan Mordden histories, and my James Agate Egos, and the rest, I still treasure Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops, by Ken Mandelbaum as a special favorite.  (If you've not read it, do. The horror, the horror.)  That book inspired a long and satisfying, if largely fruitless search for the original cast recordings of many an otherwise lost and unknowable show.  It also gave me a taste not just for the neglected little gem, but also a new appreciation for the really Big, Bad Idea.

 Just above, nine blue-thighed beauties at the Tony Awards.  This photograph represents perhaps the only truly happy moment anyone connected with the show these boys were in ever experienced that night.  Please note the obvious, healthy vigour, the pure, youthful innocence on those handsome faces, because this may also have been one of the few evenings when no one in this cast was not in a cast.  Still, aren't they pretty?

When I saw the new book by the co-writer of one of the most notorious shows in recent Broadway history, I knew it was something I had to read.  Truth be told, I've been waiting for this book for years, at least since I read some of the original press coverage, certainly since I first saw the hyphen in the title, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, and knew there was something very, very wrong.  Too true.  Since I read the book, it's been announced that the show is closing on Broadway, and moving to Vegas.  And there we are.

Glen Berger's new book is the story of one Big, Bad Idea after another, but the one that seems clearly to have led to all the others is right there. on just page twenty-three.  It's the Spring of 2005.  The author's just been hired on to write the thing, based on one rough scene, which even he admits he wrote on spec, in one night, as something of a lark.  The producers liked it.  He was in. Berger's long collaboration with the director and co-writer, Julie Taymor has barely begun.  There is, as yet, no show.  Berger has just met for the first time with the composers Bono and "The Edge" of U2, and as Taymor & Berger walk away from that rather heady encounter, Berger offers the following:

"Finally, I blurted out, 'You know, Julie, in a certain light, Spider-Man the Musical is kind of a ridiculous idea.'

Julie frowned, furrowed her brow, and said, 'Ridiculous?  I don't think so.  No.'

She wasn't just serious, she was solemn.  I stammered out a 'Oh -- but I'm certain -- well, no, I didn't really think that either.'  But now I was scared.  I just assumed everyone thought this project was potentially ridiculous.  Obviously it wouldn't be ridiculous by opening night, because Julie Taymor would make sure of that.  But -- hoo -- was I really working with someone who hadn't once entertained the notion that perhaps a musical about Spider-Man was... just... you know... ludicrous?"

There it is.  There's the show, the book, the whole sad story, as it were, in roughly one hundred words.  Note the italics -- the dashes -- the ellipses...

To quote Glen Berger again, "hoo." 

Millions of dollars and much, much later, on the very edge of Taymor being fired and Berger among others being sued by her, at least according to the author, the director herself will finally say something of the kind to her erstwhile collaborator; ridiculous indeed.

In his book at least, Berger is at some pains to give the lady, always, her due.  If anything, he's surprisingly kind, even affectionate, if not obsequious, in his respectful portrayal of her here.  Remember, by his own confession, he was an active participant in getting Taymor the boot.  It's frankly a fascinating, perhaps unintentionally disquieting thing to read; all that kow-towing before, during and now after the fact to the genius of Julie Taymor.

What, if anything, Julie Taymor will ever say or write about this show, in Berger's book we have at least one side of a surprisingly complicated story.  Complicated and no.  It's true, there were entirely too many moving parts in this contraption, too many people with a stake in the show, and an opinion of it.  Just moving all the dramatis personae on and off, even in just Berger's book, can be a bit of a chore.  Nevertheless, from it's inception, the fatal flaw in this show would seem to have been in the collaborator's making of it in the first place.

It was, frankly, a dumb idea.  Good shows have been made from less, and worse, it's true.  As this book shows, if anyone might have made something from this particular nothing, it ought to have been Taymor.  This, after all, is the woman who made The Lion King into a Broadway Behemoth, the great cash-machine that it is still.  That was clearly the problem here, ironically enough.  (Any discussion of that show, which I've seen and enjoyed royally, always reminds me of something another of Taymor's former collaborators, the actor and comedian, Mario Cantone said about it in his one man show on Broadway.  The actor hilariously explained at some length why he turned down the chance to play Timon on Broadway, after creating the role in an earlier workshop.  When his audience clearly expressed some shock at his bitchiness about this now beloved Broadway institution, Cantone, devastatingly, shrieks, "It's a PUPPET SHOW!")  Perhaps then the Big, Bad Idea here, the point of departure for all the years of bad ideas to come, was not Spider-Man The Musical, while that is certainly bad enough, but trying to make of such a thing another Taymor spectacle; another inflated children's cartoon, decked in pennants and masks, and weighted with adult metaphor, in other words, another Lion King.  What this show was perhaps always destined to be was what it will shortly become when it transfers to Las Vegas: Cirque de Spider-Man.

Berger bears a larger share in that than almost anyone else on "the creative team."  He wrote the version that cut most of Taymor's more labored metaphysics and unworkable production numbers from the final show.  Even he seems to find this betrayal almost as unforgivable as Taymor did.  But then, unlike the lady genius, poor little Glen wasn't making Lion King money, or really any money at all until and unless this Spider-Man made it onto the stage and into the black.  His ultimate justification for sticking it out and sticking it to Julie Taymor?  His kids gotta eat.  As arguments go, his is not without an obvious merit.

And now he's written his revenge, after a rather cringing fashion.  For me at least, this last little betrayal was more fun than I might admit without blushing.  Hope he's made some money at last.  Hope Taymor does something more worthy of her talents hereafter.  Hope all those adorable Spider-Boys can stay out of the hospital.

Hope the next guy to collaborate in a major Broadway debacle keeps such careful notes of the process.

Not that I'm hoping for a crash again, or anything.

Break a leg, everybody.

Daily Dose

From One Half of Robertson Davies

THE THEATRE

"We know from countless records that anyone in the Gallery who recognized a friend in the Pit gained his attention either by shouting or, if that failed, by spitting deftly on his hat."

From The Devil's Burning Throne