Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber Block, Geoffrey (large ebook reader .txt) 📖

Franklin P. Adams, lambasted the songs from Anything Goes (because they were difficult to remember or whistle), but offered no negative remarks about the book.17

Like Atkinson’s newfound distaste for On Your Toes upon its ill-fated 1954 revival (discussed in chapter 5), the New York Times review of the 1962 Off-Broadway revival, twenty-eight years after Anything Goes made its debut, demonstrates that a new standard for musical theater had evolved during the intervening years. In contrast to Atkinson’s appreciation of the original book, Lewis Funke wrote that “if you can get by the deserts that lurk in the libretto, knowing that there always will be that oasis of a Cole Porter tune waiting at the end of each rugged journey, you may find yourself enjoying the revival of Anything Goes.”18 In Funke’s account, “only some of the lines retain their mirth” and the encapsulated plot summary that he offers serves merely to remind sophisticated 1960s audiences that “those were simple days in musical comedy.”19 What Funke neglects to report is that the book he is criticizing is not the 1934 book by Lindsay and Crouse but a version rewritten in 1962 by Bolton.

In his autobiography, director and librettist George Abbott (1887–1995), who authored or co-authored books for an impressive array of musicals, including On Your Toes, The Boys from Syracuse, Where’s Charley?, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, and Fiorello!, discusses a review of a 1963 Off-Broadway revival directed by Richard York of the 1938 Rodgers and Hart classic The Boys from Syracuse:

I was delighted to read of its outstanding success, and distressed that some of the reviewers referred to the old-fashioned jokes in the book. But I was puzzled when one of the reviewers cited one of these jokes, a corny pun: “Dozens of men are at my feet.” “Yes, I know, chiropodists.” This kind of humor is so alien to me that I knew I could never have written it; and when I got back to New York I found that the “old jokes” in the revival were new jokes inserted by Mr. [Richard] York to “modernize” the script. I took out some of these gags, but because the production as a whole was so delightful, I couldn’t get very angry.20

It has become a commonplace almost universally shared by writers on Broadway musicals—along with directors and producers—that weak books are the main reason for the neglect of most musicals before Oklahoma! and Carousel. For this reason, after Rodgers and Hammerstein began an irreversible vogue for integrated book musicals, revivals of musicals were almost invariably accompanied by a team of doctors performing major surgery that included the reordering of songs and interpolations from other musicals of the same composer.

This type of surgical procedure begs several questions that merit further exploration. Is the idea of the so-called integrated musical heralded by Rodgers and Hammerstein in the 1940s intrinsically superior to a musical with an anachronistic book and timeless songs? Are the books of the 1930s as weak as later critics make them out to be? Can some of the alleged weaknesses be attributed to the modernized books rather than to the originals? If the books of 1930s musicals are weak, why are they weak, and can they be salvaged by revisions and interpolations? Is it really a good idea to strip the original books down to their underwear and then dress them up again with as many songs as possible from other shows? Or can reasonable men and women provide an acceptable modern alternative? Are modern actors unable to successfully recapture and convey an older brand of comedy? Might the problem with Anything Goes stem more from an incongruity between music and text than from a diseased book?

Part of the answer to these questions might be traced to evolving social concerns rather than aesthetic considerations. Our current sensitivities and our understanding of topical issues are no longer what they were in 1934. As Porter would say, “times have changed.” The following chapter will suggest that much of the criticism of Porgy and Bess, which followed the Porter hit one year later, was due (especially after the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s) less to its artistic qualities than to its perceived perpetuation of negative black stereotypes and Heyward’s and Gershwin’s presumption to speak for blacks. In Show Boat, changing sensitivities made it necessary for Hammerstein to alter offending references, and later versions, especially the 1951 MGM film and the 1966 Lincoln Center production, tried to deflect criticism by minimizing the miscegenation scene and the role of blacks in general. Most musicals suffer, some irreparably, when their depiction of women is judged by feminist standards that emerged in the 1970s (see the discussion of Kiss Me, Kate in chapter 10).

Although increasing sensitivity to ethnic minority groups or to women is probably not the major obstacle to the revivability of Anything Goes, the stereotypic depiction of Reverend Dobson’s Chinese converts to Christianity, Ching and Ling (and the pidgin English adopted by Billy and Reno when they put on Ching’s and Ling’s costumes), were subsequently considered to be racially insensitive. In act I, scene 6, of the 1934 libretto, Moon refers to the converts as “Chinamen”; in the analogous place in 1962 he refers to them as Chinese.21 In 1987 Reverend Dobson was still accompanied by two Chinese converts, but their names have been changed to the more biblical John and Luke. The new authors also took care “to give them independent comic personas and not base the humor on the fact that they’re Chinese.”22

In response to dated slang, Crouse (the younger) and Weidman removed some “terrible words in the language like, ‘wacky’ and ‘zany’” and other topical words and phrases that required a 1930s cultural literacy alien to later audiences.23 But since the lyrics to the musical numbers were considered untouchable onstage, if not the screen (see the discussion of the Anything Goes and Kiss Me, Kate film adaptations in chapters 8 and 14, respectively), the removal