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.
Wonderful
Town
U S
Television 1958 and YouTube February 2023
This 1953 Tony Award winning musical was recreated for American television in 1958 with the original star. Something has been lost in the transition, but glimpses of the original's power remain.
Semi-autobiographical short stories by Ruth Sherwood were adapted by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Choderov into a successful stage comedy, My Sister Eileen, in 1940, with the pair later rewriting it as a musical to music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green.
All versions follow a pair of sisters who come from Ohio to New York City in search of success as, respectively, writer and actress, despite neither evidencing any particular talent. (We see a couple of Ruth's awful stories acted out, and Eileen gets by entirely on being cute.)
They encounter colourful locals, have adventures and misadventures, meet a pair of nice guys, and live happily ever after.
The stage and TV musicals were vehicles for Rosalind Russell as the elder sister. A film and stage star, Russell was the kind of performer who attacked every role head on, fighting it into submission with brute force.
When the approach fit the character (His Girl Friday, Auntie Mame) stage or screen was filled with energy. When it didn't, you could be more aware of the performer's hard work than of the character.
In Wonderful Town Russell wins a few and loses a few. The musical's big signature number, Conga, has Ruth trying to interview some Brazilian sailors who just want to dance.
As she tries to maintain some control while they push and toss her around, our sense of the actress herself being such a good sport in giving up her dignity is a big part of the fun.
On the other hand, the comic song One Hundred Easy Ways To Lose A Man, not all that strong to begin with, just lies there while you watch Russell fighting to resuscitate it, and wonder if a performer with some sense of comic irony or just good-natured charm might have done better.
And when Ruth gets a job plugging a jazz club in Swing, it is the actress's discomfort at trying to act 'hep' and her good-scout determination to get through it that you feel.
Russell doesn't get a great deal of support from the new cast assembled around her. Jacquelyn McKeever is just cute as a button, but she makes Eileen more of an airhead than is absolutely necessary, while Sydney Chaplin is particularly wooden even by Broadway leading man standards.
Don't come to Bernstein's score expecting West Side Story or Comden and Green for lyrics dripping in urbane wit.
The nearest thing to their familiar sound that the lyricists offer is in the Conga number, a Cole Porter-like list song full of topical references we now need footnotes for ('What do you think about Harold Teen, Mitzi Green, Dizzy Dean?').
It is the plainest songs that work best – the girls' homesick lament Ohio and A Little Bit In Love, an original thought all the more striking for its simplicity of expression.
There is not much that is actually wrong about this production, but perhaps not quite enough that is actually right.
Gerald
Berkowitz
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