Could "Hello, Dolly!", "Gypsy" etc be successfully re-conceptualized?

[MarkZoetrope]

Posted: 8/21/15 at 6:37pm

I don't mean a reverential Bartlett Sher or Diane Paulus production that (largely) honours the original blocking and choreography (supposedly, it's contractual that Jerome Robbins's "Fiddler" dances must always be replicated), but rather like what Sam Mendes's CABARET was to Hal Prince's original, or even David Leveaux's NINE to Tommy Tune's. In other words, a complete overhaul. 

 

(I just said "Dolly" and "Gypsy" as examples - you can think of many other shows that have basically stayed the same over their entire theatrical lives ON BROADWAY: "Mame", "A Chorus Line", "Guys and Dolls", etc.)

 

Just as an aside:

 

Was Mendes' GYPSY - Baby June lighting a cigarette, and a proliferation of on-stage stagehands - really all that different from the countless other revivals? Is Jerry Herman's reticence at deviating from Gower Champion's staging really that well-founded?. (After all, Gene Kelly and Michael Kidd - with millions of dollars - couldn't improve it in the movie.)

Updated On: 8/21/15 at 06:37 PM

[skies]

Posted: 8/21/15 at 6:45pm

Dolly Levi as a female pimp, or a madam (is that term still used?)

Just visual clues with the book more or less intact.... ; )

Updated On: 8/21/15 at 06:45 PM

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 8/21/15 at 7:11pm

Hello, Herbie  

Dolly Rose Gallagher Hovick Levi, a woman who has been widowed and widowed and widowed,  was never able to realize her dream, to successfully match up vaudevillians and dry goods clerks.  She wants desperately for her youngest daughter, June, to becomes the most successful matchmaker at the Yonkers Orpheum Theatre.  Her zeal becomes monomaniacal, leading her to ignore her boyfriend, half a millionaire Herbie Vandergelder, and her older daughter, Louise (later, the celebrated Minnie Rose Lee) and to completely destroy June's dreams of being taken seriously as an accomplished milliner.  

When June runs away to open a hat shop in Union Square with a glamorous widowed tap dancer, Eileen "Tulsa" Malloy, Dolly Rose switches course. Louise, who has no talent for matchmaking, is Dolly's only "clutching at straws" hope for the Yente Hall of Fame.  

When Herbie mistakenly assists Louise in setting up three burlesque queens with three Harmonia Gardens Waiters, and one of the strippers can't make the date, Louise starts taking off her clothes in Union Square Park to unexpected fame and success.

Updated On: 8/21/15 at 07:11 PM

[skies]

Posted: 8/21/15 at 7:17pm

Dare I ask if Louise strips with hats?

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 8/21/15 at 7:38pm

In all seriousness, I've had an idea for Gypsy that might be very hard to pull off onstage, but could work well on film.

 

I seem to recall reading in a biography of Jerome Robbins that one of the early drafts of Gypsy started before the auditions for Uncle Jocko's kiddie show with two women rehearsing a scene presumably from some bad melodrama, a confrontation between an adult woman and her mother about her showbiz past and what her mother sacrificed to get her daughter ahead (apparently she rode the ponies of a few stagehands, so to speak -- yikes), which then gave way to stagehands removing the scenery (surprise!) and the kids auditioning, as they would have done in a real vaudeville house, where melodramas were interspersed with musical numbers. Rose and Louise's confrontation in the dressing room in Act Two would apparently parallel this moment, an "open at the close" kind of thing. They wound up throwing it out because, though Laurents and Sondheim found it "a weird and terribly funny opening," Robbins didn't get it.

 

Well, my idea is somewhat similar, but without the conceit of melodrama. You open with the dressing room scene from Act Two, maybe lightly modified to take out the specifics of the argument that come from seeing the whole show, leading up to Rose saying "What'd I do it for?" and Louise saying "I thought you did it for me... Momma." And then we go all the way back to Uncle Jocko, and the story's essentially told in flashback form until we reach that point again. We see Rose first as the broken woman, and then learn how she "coulda been a contender."

 

Maybe there's no way of making that work, but I think it would be very interesting and really open it up to some different possibilities.

Updated On: 8/21/15 at 07:38 PM

[MarkZoetrope]

Posted: 8/21/15 at 7:45pm

I love that idea - and could totally imagine Julian Fellowes and Richard LaGravenese borrowing it for their Streisand script. I wasn't aware of the actual connection with the writing of the musical in the 1950s, though. Very interesting stuff!

 

I always thought showing more of that vaudeville history in "Gypsy" would be a good idea - even going to the extent of a staged overture. But, as we all know, that can come across as very laboured - and shows off every flaw of the piece (a la Mendes, 2003)

Updated On: 8/21/15 at 07:45 PM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/21/15 at 10:23pm

These are all terrible. Just write new musicals and leave the old ones alone.

[haterobics]

Posted: 8/21/15 at 10:34pm

Not to mention Philly's planned reinvention of Fiddler...

[HorseTears]

Posted: 8/22/15 at 3:16am

PalJoey said: "These are all terrible. Just write new musicals and leave the old ones alone."

 

QFT

 

[Mr. Nowack]

Posted: 8/22/15 at 3:24am

One could.

 

But should one????

[binau]

Posted: 8/22/15 at 3:48am

"I always thought showing more of that vaudeville history in "Gypsy" would be a good idea - even going to the extent of a staged overture. But, as we all know, that can come across as very laboured - and shows off every flaw of the piece (a la Mendes, 2003)"

Not sure I get the comparison. Pretty sure 2003 overture was with the curtain down?

[gypsy101]

Posted: 8/22/15 at 12:19pm

"One could. But should one????"

Nice Parks & Rec reference, Nowack!

 

I think Gypsy starting at the end is the exact thing they should do with Barbra Streisand, if that movie ever ends up getting made.

And a gritty Hello Dolly in which she is a pimp is genius.

Updated On: 8/22/15 at 12:19 PM

[Mr. Nowack]

Posted: 8/22/15 at 1:06pm

That comment is relevant so often I can't help but borrow Leslie Knope's words!

[MikeHuckabae]

Posted: 8/23/15 at 12:51pm

I would like to see an all male version of Gypsy.

All male, old and white.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/23/15 at 10:14pm

 

You've already become tiresome, Huckabee Troll. Your Huckabee "joke" is just not funny.

[theatregeek6]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 1:49pm

I would love to see a version of "A Chorus Line" with the lead being a male.  Not that that would change the story significantly, but I would love to see Robbie Fairchild or Ryan Steele dancing "the Music and the Mirror"

 

 

[Mr. Nowack]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 4:15pm

theatregeek6 are you aware of the Canadian production that's doing just that?

[theatregeek6]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 4:29pm

Did not know that!

[Fantod]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 4:33pm

I think all productions of Hello, Dolly should use the exact same staging. It's perfect. 

Gypsy actually kind of has been redone. The original has a very comedic slant and has a hopeful ending. The 2008 production was loud and aggressive and ended pretty depressingly. I think you should stick with the former.

Why not just write a new musical? That way you don't have to reconceptualize, you can just conceptualize! What a thought!

 

And Leslie Knope is always relevant.

Updated On: 8/24/15 at 04:33 PM

[Mr. Wormwood]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 4:45pm

I would love to see Hello Dolly re-conceptualized in a way that still honors the original. Though the music is deservedly classic, I don't feel like that show has aged as well as some other all-time classics.

[Fantod]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 4:51pm

Ridiculous. The show is enormous fun and seeks to do nothing but put you in a good mood.

[Mr. Nowack]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 11:34pm

theatregeek6 said: "Did not know that!"

 

Yep they are calling him "Casey." It was talked about white a bit on here when it was first announced.

[gypsy101]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 11:40pm

Mr. Nowack said: "theatregeek6 are you aware of the Canadian production that's doing just that?"

 

I was gonna mention it but I thought theatregeek6 was being facetious

[Wilmingtom]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 11:52pm

"I think Gypsy starting at the end is the exact thing they should do with Barbra Streisand."

Either that or open at Rose's funeral.  They'd have to do something to acknowledge Streisand's age.  The problem with starting at the end is that it kind of takes the wind out of the sails of that last scene when you get to it.  As for Dolly, you could reconceive the physical production but the story and material are what they are and don't invite reconception.  

Updated On: 8/25/15 at 11:52 PM

[orangeskittles]

Posted: 8/25/15 at 12:19am

I want to see Gypsy with Kris Jenner playing Rose. Or possibly Abby Lee Miller from Dance Moms with Maddie Ziegler as Baby Louise. Wouldn't have to change a word of dialogue, but the social commentary is right there.