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

of “wacky” and “zany” do not fully solve the problems of topicality. In the preface to his essay “The Annotated ‘Anything Goes’” that accompanies McGlinn’s reconstructed recording, Kreuger describes the audiences for this and other 1930s shows as a “constricted group of cognoscenti, who went to the same night spots, read the same newspaper columns, and spent weekends at the same estates,” and were therefore “swift to pick up even the most obscure references in all the lyrics.”24 Kreuger goes on to explain the meaning of seven references in the title song and no less than thirty-eight topical references in “You’re the Top.”25

Although this level of topicality is problematic to modern audiences who have neither lived through the 1930s nor had the opportunity to study Kreuger’s annotated guide, it might also be said that Porter’s lyrics presented problems to his British neighbors in his own time. In fact, in preparing for the London opening of June 14, 1935, Porter was asked by producer C. B. Cochran to remove several incomprehensible Americanisms when he took his show across the Atlantic. Eells mentions a few of these changes: “Cole agreed and set about converting the Bendel bonnet into an Ascot bonnet; a dress by Saks into one by Patous; and the eyes of Irene Bordoni into those of Tallulah Bankhead.”26 Nevertheless, in contrast to audiences who attended the 1962 and 1987 productions, most 1930s audiences, both in New York and London, would have recognized the parodistic parallels between Reno Sweeney, the evangelist who became a singer, and the then-famous evangelist Aimée Semple McPherson.27 What about audiences in 1962 or 1987 and beyond? And does it matter?

In a New York Times interview that appeared shortly before the 1987 revival, the younger Crouse and Weidman admit to adding even more “swashbuckling slapstick gags” to their updated version, although they quickly add that none of these new gags were “gratuitous” and that they are “all closely tied to the plot.”28 Crouse and Weidman also express their intention to take their characters “more seriously” and to make them three-dimensional (or “maybe two and two-thirds”).29 In a feature story on Anything Goes that also appeared several days before the premiere of the 1987 revival, director, editor, and dramaturge Jerry Zaks discusses his search for a theme (“people dealing with the ramifications of trying to fall in love”) and explains his intention “to ground everything in a recognizable reality,” that is, to remake the book in a post–Rodgers and Hammerstein image. He continues with a telling example: “In previous versions of the show, Lord Evelyn Oakleigh, with whom Reno Sweeney falls in love, is someone so totally foppish and out of touch with his sexuality that she ends up looking stupid for having fallen for him. Both in the book and the casting we tried to suggest the potential for a real relationship between them.”30

Zaks makes a good point. When Sir Evelyn is introduced in 1934 (scene 2) his masculine identity is immediately called into question:

REPORTER: Sir Oakleigh, you and Miss Harcourt. Right here, please. (SIR EVELYN OAKLEIGHandHOPE HARCOURTare pushed into focus) Society stuff.

CAMERA MAN: What are their names? Who are they?

REPORTER: Sir—what’s your first name?

OAKLEIGH: Evelyn.

1ST CAMERA MAN: Not her first name—your first name!

When in act II, scene 1, Sir Evelyn relates that he “had an unpremeditated roll in the rice and enjoyed it very much” with a Chinese maiden named Plum Blossom, his admission may be taken more as a boast of his full-blooded heterosexuality than the confession of a sin. And Reno, who has experienced chagrin that Evelyn has been treating her every inch a lady and is much relieved by this welcome revelation, immediately responds accordingly: “Brother, I’ve been worried about you but I feel better now.”31 Reno will repeat this sentiment in both 1962 and 1987.

The main reason that the generally stiff and staid Sir Evelyn provides a less-than-perfect match for the exuberant Reno in the original Anything Goes is more substantive than his androgynous first name and questionable heterosexuality: the Englishman is never allowed to sing. Although his sexual identity is eventually resolved to the satisfaction of a 1930s audience, his non-singing status significantly reduces his dramatic identity. In a musical (or opera) a character who does not sing—for example, Parthy before the 1994 Show Boat revival (discussed in chapter 2)—proceeds at his or her own peril.

Apparently, future book doctors saw this as an illness that needed a cure. Thus in the 1962 revival Bolton celebrates Sir Evelyn’s emergence as a regular fellow in act II, scene 1, by letting him sing an innocuously risqué interpolated duet with Reno, “Let’s Misbehave.” In 1987 Sir Evelyn remains musically silent in his stateroom scene with Reno but eventually emerges in act II, scene 3, with his own song for the first time, “The Gypsy in Me,” a song that Hope sang in the 1934 original and no one sang in 1962.32

Extending the premise that a musical comedy character will be denied three-dimensionality or identity if he or she is not allowed to sing, even Billy’s boss, Elisha J. Whitney, is given a brief interpolated song to open act I, scene 4, in 1987. On this occasion he sings “I Want to Row on the Crew,” borrowed not from Broadway but from one of Porter’s fraternity shows at Yale. The ship’s deck becomes even more crowded when Moon’s female accomplice, Bonnie, is given two interpolated numbers in 1962 (“Heaven Hop” in act I and “Let’s Step Out” in act II). In 1987 Crouse and Weidman discard these interpolations and in act II give Bonnie (now named Erma) “Buddie, Beware,” the tune sung briefly by Ethel Merman as Reno in the original Broadway production before she persuaded Porter to give his late-arriving friends an opportunity to hear a reprise of “I Get a Kick Out of You.”

In the 1987 revival words such as “wacky” and “zany” had been replaced, offending ethnic stereotypes were removed, and all the important characters were dramatically enhanced and, more important, allowed