Seesaw...My new favorite musical.

[Chrysanthemum62001]

Posted: 4/11/07 at 2:10pm

Alright, I know it may be a little dated, but why hasn't anyone revived this musical. The music is...really fun and catchy. It's my new obsession. "Welcome to Holiday Inn" and "Nobody Does it Like Me" are fun comedic songs. Why on earth aren't they sung more often. (Not that I'm complaining, I've just stumbled on two more gems to add to my repetoire.)

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 4/11/07 at 2:16pm

It's always great to find another SEESAW fan. This is definitely one of my favorite shows, never seen it live so I guess I should say one of my favorite Broadway scores.
Isn't Michele Lee one of the best belters? I simply love her voice, the emotion she puts into it, her great comedic timing, the pathos in songs like "I'm Way Ahead," I mean she did it all in that show.
I'm surprised Encores! hasn't tackled this show yet, it's a great turn for a female star (with about 4 or 5 solos I believe), great turn for the male star, and also the Tommy Tune character (blanking out on his name) leads the law tap number and "It's Not Where You Start."
If you like the score, Joely Fisher does a hilarous and showstopping rendition of "Welcome to Holiday Inn" in the concert tribute to Richard Adler, Jerry Bock, and Cy Coleman album readily available on iTunes.
SEESAW love makes my day.
"If there's a wrong way to say, a wrong way to play it..."

[Pippin]

Posted: 4/11/07 at 2:22pm

I'm also a huge fan of this score, but have no idea what the show is about. Not a bad song in the show. what is the subject matter? Is there a good reason that it has not been revived?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 4/11/07 at 2:24pm

It was a highlight of my teenage years, even though I knew it was not great like Sondheim.

I wanted to be tough and sing like Michelle Lee and laugh and dance like Tommy Tune. And I wanted Ken Howard to rescue me from my neuroses. None of which happened because...nobody did it like me.

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 4/11/07 at 2:26pm

It's basically the love story between on-and-off-on-and-off Jerry and Gittel. He just moved to NY to work as a lawyer, I believe, and she works at a dance studio (I barely remember the book). It's a nice romantic relationship until the end when he decides to go back to his ex-wife/ex-lover.

[WOSQ]

Posted: 4/11/07 at 2:26pm

An old friend of mine, the late Thea Ramsay, opened her club act with "Welcome to Holiday Inn".

Thea had very fine blonde hair that wouldn't hold a curl for very long. She solved this by setting her hair in hot rollers and made her entrance wearing them. As she sang the song she took her rollers out finishing in time for a Big Finish. Her curls lasted about the length of her act.

Also, don't forget Gittel's last song "I'm Way Ahead/Seesaw reprise". This is a star eleven o'clock number.

If you look closely with a magnifying glass at the cd photos you will see a picture of Michael Bennett and then-Mayor John Lindsay who looked more than a lot like leading man Ken Howard. It is a nice little in-joke.

[Chrysanthemum62001]

Posted: 4/11/07 at 2:32pm

LOL! Oh man, that sounds like one hell of a club act. Sometimes I hate being so young cause I feel like I miss out on so much.

[BrodyFosse123]

Posted: 4/11/07 at 2:38pm

SEESAW page on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Seesaw_%28musical%29&oldid=120050094

Seesaw is a musical with a book by Michael Bennett, music by Cy Coleman, and lyrics by Dorothy Fields.

Based on the William Gibson play Two for the Seesaw, the plot focuses on a brief affair between Jerry Ryan, a young lawyer from Nebraska, and Gittel Mosca, a kooky, streetwise dancer from the Bronx. The musical numbers evoke colorful aspects of New York City life but have relatively little to do with the story. The most notable feature of the score's original orchestrations was their wide use of brass instruments.

A stormy tryout period resulted in the departure of original director Ned Sherin (to make room for director/choreographer Bennett) and female lead Lainie Kazan. After 25 previews, the Broadway production, directed and choreographed by Bennett, opened on March 18, 1973 at the Uris Theatre. It later transferred to the Mark Hellinger; between the two venues, it ran a total of 296 performances.

The opening night cast included Ken Howard, Michele Lee (ironically, a close friend of Kazan, whom she replaced), Giancarlo Esposito, and Tommy Tune.

[Jon]

Posted: 4/11/07 at 2:59pm

The show is based on the play "Two for the Seesaw", which starred Henry Fonda and Anne Bancroft. The movie version was Robert Mitchum and Shirley Maclaine.

"Nobody Does It Like Me" was one of the most overdone "belt" songs at auditions in the 70's and 80's. It was then replaced by the very similar "You Can Always Count On Me" from City of Angels.

[WOSQ]

Posted: 4/11/07 at 3:10pm

The director was Ed Sherin, husband of Jane Alexander. He is the director of Law and Order now or some NY based series.

He was nominated for at least one Tony for Find Your Way Home and maybe more. His other musical was Rex, Richard Rodgers' penultimate show. That show was doctored by Hal Prince, but Sherin held onto billing for dear life since he didn't want to be fired from another show.

Seesaw ran about 7-8 months on a week-to-week basis barely breaking even with rental and royalty waivers. Plus a few other cost saving things...(See below).

Finally the IRS showed up because they had been 'saving' money by not paying the payroll taxes to the feds, and the IRS scooped up all the cash at the Hellinger window, and that was that. This was a Tuesday and Seesaw closed the following weekend losing all of its capitalization and then some.

It was revised a bit and had a reasonably successful tour with John Gavin and Lucie Arnaz (This tour is what gave Lucie industry cred), and there was a bus and truck that starred John Raitt. Not a bad after-life for a 7 month flop.

[bingbong]

Posted: 4/11/07 at 3:32pm

"Nobody Does It Like Me" is still really overdone, and one which is even more so, is the "co-dependency duet" which is a mix of "Nobody Does It Like Me" and "You Can Always Count On Me"
for some reason i find that slightly bizzarre - hearing people at school doing one version or another of what i think of as pretty much the same song - i find it rather confusing lol.
xx

P.S I'm quite tired so excuse me if i don't make too much sense xx

[junkyard]

Posted: 4/11/07 at 3:42pm

very few people ever heard of Tommy Tune before "See Saw".....thought he was great

[BrodyFosse123]

Posted: 4/11/07 at 3:48pm

Who is Tommy Tune?

Posted: 4/11/07 at 6:30pm

This was the first show Michaell Bennett got full directing credit for, right?

Anyway there's a bit about the troubles with this show in a thread I started on Michael Bennett and Seesaw (https://forum.broadwayworld.com/readmessage.cfm?boardname=bway&thread=930910#2926848) and sinc ethen I got the cd--and love it too. Perthaps it has a few too many similarities with Sweet Charity (the only other score sadly, Coleman and Dorothy Fields did together before her death) but that hardly seems a crime. However--it's based on a 2 person drama and was opened up *huge*. I think that may be the big problem with the piece--in the end apparantly there were so many rewrites (out of town when Bennett came to fix it the cast would perform the old versiona dn meanwhile rehearse Bennett's version which was nearly completely redone daily) that in the end no one was sure who wrote the book (michael Stewart wrote the original, Neil Simon helped with some rewrites, Michael Bennett took all the credit). Of course Michele Lee was one of the people who came in whith Bennett so that's a good thing, even if she was probably all wrong for the role (most say).

I wish there were some clips of this--there's a performance by Lee in 1975 singing on the Dinah Shore show, there're the dancers of Seesaw (including Tune) dresed as Hippies doing a number from Mame (!) with Carol Channin (!!) on youtube, and there's Shirley Bassey singing Nobody DOes it Like Me which is hysterical to me cuz Shirley sings it with all the modesty of the Queen of Sheba.

I get the impression that it has a great score (it does) and the production lasted even as long as it did largely thanks to Bennett's often ingenius staging which was largely just to throw as many production numbers at the piece as possible. Which doesn't make it all that revivable unless you can do those production numbers--but an Encore staging would be great. Mordden in his book on 70s musicals (where he devotes a chapter comparing this to Pippin and how each were changed so much in rehearsals) also says that John Gavin, who did the Broadway production before the tour, coming in and having a shirtless scnee which brought in tons of gays probably helped too... lol (though having seen Gavin shirtlessin Psycho I have to say I woulda bought a ticket...)

E

Posted: 4/24/07 at 12:16am

Bumpign this thread now that I've had the cast album on and off for the past few weeks...

Is there anywhere with a good plot synopsis? I know the basic Two for the Seesaw source play (from the Shirley MacLaine/Robert Mitchum movie) but can't figure out where and when all the big production numbers like Ride Out the Storm come in for the musical--or songs like Welcome to Holiday Inn.

I tracked down the 10 or so pages on it in a book on Bennett and it said that the only piece of the original choreogrpahy kept not by Bennett, Grover Bales original My City was also still one of the highlights of the staging (I guess Bennett knew to leave well enough alone) - it's fascinating how outa town they performed the original pre Bennett show at night (which had different more literal sets by tony Wagner, a different lead, different choreography, and literally about HALF different songs) and would be rehearsing the utterly different new version by day. The fired lead, who Cy Coleman apparantly wrote the score for and she saw this as her big break (tho she agreed to lose 40 pounds to look more liek a dancer) still takes how cruel Bennett was when he fired her very personally--apparantly she had a breakdown that lasted almost 2 years :S

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 4/24/07 at 12:18am

As a sidenote, the fired lead was Lainie Kazan who went on to have a more successful life in Hollywood and later starred in MY FAVORITE YEAR on Broadway. The most heart-breaking part of the story was that she knew that Bennett was rehearsing her good friend Michele Lee in the mornings while she was performing the show at night.

Posted: 4/24/07 at 12:26am

Right I meant to look her up (in the mini interview she does bitterly mention the final irony that Lee wasn't a dancer either which was the big explanation given for her being cut...)

It sounds liek Bennett made the right move in cutting her even though I don't buy into his belief that you have to be so heartless about how you do it (and she did get a sizeable check, that apparantly helped lead to the show's early closure--for much of the run).

It also says that Bennett revised the show for the better for the tour--I wonder if it was just basic staging or anything more? I know Poor Everybody Else was written for Charity (but replaced by I'm a Brass Band which an outa breath Verdon could sing much better due to none of those crazy held notes) but one cut song from Seesaw--Poor Fat Heart I think, I swear was also written for Charity...

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 4/24/07 at 12:34am

It seems like cutting "Poor Everybody Else" from CHARITY was a good decision, Verdon already cut some of her numbers during the run of the show, I can't imagine her being able to do this number. I'm always surprised to hear Lee doing it so effortlessly on the recording, she was a true belter, her performance of this one song is quite exhilarating.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 4/24/07 at 12:37am

My Friend, the late great Judy Gibson was in the OBC.
By opening a two hander (old school I know)
They tried to bring New York Flavor to the show.
SPANGLISH?
But the Original TWO FOR THE SEESAW was about a Jewish girl and a WASP, so Lanie was the obvious choice (though she's greek or something)
I still think Michelle Lee would make a great MAME (off topic I know)

Posted: 4/24/07 at 12:40am

Yeah I guess, for her sake, Bennett staged it with, if there was dancing, others dancing behind her, not her. I wonder if Fosse got as far as staging the original and what it looked like?

I particularly love the reprise/counterpart in the tap/lawyer number

One small complaint--the DRG CD isn't very good quality. I assume it's one of their older releases and so no remastering was done like their newer ones--the source, when you listen to it on headphones especially, sounds a bit like a low quality tape with lotsa "echoes" when a cut fades out etc. And of course useless "linear notes" if you can call them that. Still for a fairly obscure, one year run of a show I shouldn't complain so I'll quit (oh and I woulda loved to have heard what John Gavin sounded like in the male lead replacement cast and tour just cuz he's one of my big oldtime movie star crushes but oh well :) (apparantly him being in the show brought in a large influx of gay audience members interested to see his shirtless scene--somethings with Broadway audiences never change I guess)

E

Posted: 4/24/07 at 5:19pm

So who sings Ride out the Storm at least? :P

Posted: 4/24/07 at 11:46pm

OK Mandelbaum's book on Bennett says that Michele Lee sang her 11 O clock finale number at the '74 Tonys--Brody or anyone have a copy?

Posted: 4/26/07 at 7:34pm

OK sorry to bump my own post but I alwaso was curious about the new Act 1 finale/song that replaced RIde out the Storm (which feels kinda weak to me) for the tour and apparantly improved on it a lot. Was it recroded? Interesting that Spanglish, which was made basically just to give its performer something to do, was also dropped nd seems to have improved the flow of the show too--it's a song I pretty much always skip (particularly as it's hard to make out even half the lyrics...)

E

[InfiniteTheaterFrenzy]

Posted: 6/30/07 at 8:43pm

The "Who is Tommy Tune?" was very obviously sarcasm.

I <3 Seesaw. Anyone heard the two cut songs on Lost in Boston?

[bingbong]

Posted: 7/14/07 at 1:35pm

lol, fair play