Good News: The Best Things In Life

When considering the great Broadway composers and lyricists of the 1920's and '30's, the team of B.G. DeSylva (lyrics), Lew Brown (lyrics) and Ray Henderson (music) are sometimes forgotten, despite having written popular standards such as "Keep Your Sunny Side Up", "It All Depends on You" and "The Birth of the Blues." Today they're remembered more for the Hollywood musicals that featured songs they originally introduced on Broadway in various editions of George White's Scandals and in star vehicles for the likes of Al Jolson and Bert Lahr.

And in 1927 they premiered that decade's longest running Broadway musical, Good News, which racked up 551 performances, an astounding number for that time. The show that introduced the dance craze, "The Varsity Drag" (a modified Charleston) and "The Best Things in Life Are Free" (a song that came in handy during The Great Depression), Good News was filmed for Hollywood twice and saw a substantially re-written Broadway revival that shut down two weeks after opening in 1973.

Musicals Tonight!'s current concert staging of the original 1927 script (the book is by DeSylva and Laurence Schwab) shows the material was pretty good to begin with, despite a few tired jokes and some topical references that fly over contemporary heads.

The action is set on the campus of Tait College, where the students sing how they're "Learning how to sit / Not how to think. / Learning how to mix our gin / Right in the sink." All the coeds swoon over Tom, the football team's star quarterback...

As a lover, the boy's a star.
When he gets on inside a car,
He goes over the course in par.
He's a ladies man.

...but his heart is stuck on sorority girl, Patricia, who intends to marry him, but enjoys stringing him along a little. Patricia has a marriage proposal from Tom in writing, and since he's a man of honor she knows she can accept whenever she's good and ready. But when low grades in astronomy threaten to keep the gridiron hero from playing in the big game, she volunteers her shy cousin, Connie, to help tutor the fella. The quarterback starts falling for the brainy girl, but when her self-centered cousin promises to accept Tom's proposal if he wins the big game, he's stuck with a moral dilemma that only pops up in the world of musical comedy.

Adam MacDonald and Noel Molinelli are especially period in their roles as lovers with stars and planets in their eyes. MacDonald has an appealing, earnest quality to go with a crooning baritone, and Molinelli matches him nicely with a fluttering soprano. Adam Shonkwiler is very funny as the jittery team bench-warmer waiting for his chance to play. Hot in his pursuit is Babe, played with a delicious comic sense by Annie Ramsey, utilizing a voice that sounds like Kristin Chenoweth going through puberty. Sandie Rosa, a little stick of musical comedy dynamite, leads the two big chorus numbers.

Thomas Mills' direction and choreography is freewheeling fun and the singers sound great under musical director Rick Hip-Flores. Good News certainly lives up to its name.

 

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