Theatreguide.London
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The Theatreguide.London Review
In March 2020 the covid-19 epidemic
forced the closure of all British theatres. Some companies adapted
by putting archive recordings of past productions online, others
by streaming new shows. And we take the opportunity to explore
other vintage productions preserved online. Until things return to
normal we review the experience of watching live theatre onscreen.
45
Minutes From Broadway
Omnibus
1959 and YouTube December 2022
You
find
the most surprising things in the vaults of YouTube. Here is a 1959
recreation of a 1906 Broadway musical, perhaps the first great Broadway
musical. And it's delightful.
George
M. Cohan – producer, director, playwright, composer, lyricist and star –
has some claim to having invented the modern musical.
But
while some of his songs (Mary, Over There, Give My Regards To Broadway,
etc.) remain part of the great American songbook and James Cagney's
portrayal of him in the 1942 film Yankee Doodle Dandy captures some of
his style and spirit, the shows themselves are all-but-forgotten.
Omnibus
was an American television show stuck in the Sunday afternoon culture
slot, and its eclectic collection of performances, interviews and
commentary includes this respectful but never over-reverent recreation
of Cohan's biggest Broadway hit.
The
plot, as you might guess, is paper-thin and silly, but the songs are
lovely, the jokes satisfyingly corny and, under the inventive and
spirited direction of Gower Champion, the production a lot of fun.
We
are in suburban New Rochelle, commuting distance (as the title reminds
us) from Times Square, but as un-hip a small town as you could imagine.
A local young man has just inherited a million dollars, making him
particularly attractive to a gold-digging Broadway chorus girl, her
gorgon mother, and the local conman.
Will
the unlikely pairing of a Broadway playboy and an innocent village
maiden be able to save him?
Who
cares? We're just here for the ride – for the fun of seeing the
jive-talking city slicker laugh at but gradually come under the spell of
the small town, for hearing the girl sing about why she prefers being
called Mary to the more pretentious Marie, and for watching Gower
Champion move a chorus of singers and dancers around in pretty and
evocative patterns.
The
young heir is actually a secondary role, played with attractively goofy
innocence by Russell Nype. The stars are the displaced New Yorker and
the local girl.
Stage
and TV comic actor Larry Blyden has the personality and charm to easily
carry the show, though you sense an impulse in him to dominate even
more, which director Champion wisely controls.
In
contrast, Tammy Grimes,
usually larger than life onstage, here sensitively tamps down some of
her fire to fit the sweet innocent she's playing – though she allows
occasional glimpses of more of a brain inside than a stock ingénue
really requires.
David
Burns, on his way to playing Dolly Levy's prey in Hello Dolly a few
years later, has fun as the baddy, actually getting to loom ominously in
moustache, cape and top hat like an escapee from a nineteenth-century
melodrama.
(The
reference to Hello Dolly is not wholly irrelevant here. In its
city-village contrast and the big song-and dance number So Long Mary, we
can see hints of the later show, and it's not a stretch to sense Gower
Champion trying out dance ideas he'd soon develop further.)
Even in 1959 this sweetly old-fashioned musical would have been too fragile for Broadway, but there were far worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon hour then, or an online hour today.
Gerald
Berkowitz
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