BWW Reviews: BERNSTEIN MEETS BROADWAY: Collaborative Art in a Time of War by Carol J Oja

Broadway revivals are greeted with two simple questions, "Why this show," and "Why now?" The ability to answer these questions properly by theatre producers has, at times, lead revivals to financial and artistic gain which far surpass their Broadway premieres. With a blockbuster revival of On the Town presently being performed on Broadway, Harvard music scholar Carol J. Oja excavates the musical's artistic development and original Broadway run. Bernstein Meets Broadway brings to high relief the nuanced layers of political ambition within the site-specific machinations of the work's original Broadway run.

Choreographer Jerome Robbins and composer Leonard Bernstein, although now synonymous with American theater, were unknown when they premiered their first major collaboration. The piece, Fancy Free, premiered at the Old Metropolitan Opera House in 1944. Based on Paul Cadmus' controversial painting The Fleet's In!, Fancy Free introduces three sailors as they each attempt to court two ladies at a bar. The painting, removed from the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1934, depicts sailors on shore leave carousing in Cadmus' fanciful yet grotesque aesthetic. The piece depicts a gay pick up in one of its panels, rendering it too controversial for public view. This is a thematic core of the painting and one which Oja attests is maintained in Fancy Free. The dichotomy of blatant public heterosexual advances and latent homosexual desires are well exhumed by the author both in the ballet and the collaborators' personal lives. Unlike its painting counterpart however, Fancy Free bypassed the censors to become an overnight sensation and an Americana hit that catapulted Robbins and Bernstein into the national artistic spotlight.

With the catalyst for On the Town's conceptual development established, Oja turns to the writers and lyricists, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and their artistic development. Special attention is paid to their comedy group, The Revuers, which included actor Judy Holliday and musical collaborator Leonard Bernstein. The group started in New York City's cabaret scene, performing prominently at the Village Vanguard. After critical and commercial success, they transitioned to radio and Hollywood where they ultimately disbanded in 1944. Comden and Green then returned to New York where they began to collaborate with their friend and former accompanist Leonard Bernstein. With the inclusion of legendary theatre director George Abbot, they formed On the Town's artistic collaboration. The artists unanimously exalted their collaboration period as a joyous affair.

On paper, On the Town can be appreciated simply as a high culinary theatrical event. It features beautiful dancing, genre-bending music, and riotous dialogue and lyricism. Oja carefully examines Bernstein's musical development from Fancy Free to On the Town. She notes a distinct shift in influence from the more symphonic folk style of Copland to the political musical heritage of Blitzstein, Weill, and Gershwin. On the Town exemplifies Bernstein's early experimentation with adapting populist forms with high artistic ambition. This aesthetic of "high and low" would grow throughout the collaboration and come to define the American aesthetic. This marriage of popular and classic music also meant integrating foreign and colloquial movement with balletic style. These high art traditions embedded in the score and choreography along with the satirical wit of Comden and Green enforced Broadway's demand for a grounded artistic integrity, equal to that of The Metropolitan Opera or Ballet Theatre.

These codified aspects of On the Town are undoubtedly integral to the work's continuing popularity. Yet, Oja's eye for historical context and the intrinsic, site-specific nature of theatre exhumes an integral progressivist purpose to the piece's Broadway run. The production's creative collaborators staunchly practiced racial integration. They performed in integrated clubs, left-leaning benefits, and experimented with racial themes. These ideals were not abandoned for their Broadway premiere. The most tactile of the racially conspicuous casting is perhaps Sono Osato, a woman of both Japanese and European heritage, who portrayed one of the leading roles, Ivy Smith. Osato's father was placed in Japanese internment camps and, while on tour, Osato was barred from touring the western United States and Mexico. In the musical, Ivy Smith is a featured dancer and a "Miss Turnstiles" beauty contest winner. This "Miss Turnstiles" contest is in direct reference to the monthly "Miss Subway" contest which occurred in New York during the war. Each winner for said contest was decisively of Western European descent. The Broadway run coincided with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to mention the destruction of Dresden. To have Osato perform the role of a beauty pageant winner and love interest to American military was certainly a potent choice. The depth of the political strain hoisted upon Sono Osato during her performance history as well as her personal struggles are well catalogued and given appropriate focus by Oja.

The musical's ensemble also included performers of African descent. Oja has an astonishing insight of the minutiae of institutionalized racism in the North. These racial lines, while not as immobile as the southern institutions, deterred legitimate depictions of a black population in society. Nearly all depictions of black culture on the American stage, including Broadway, were thoroughly grounded in minstrel shows. On the Town included black cast members in its city life equally to their white counterparts without dehumanizing theatricalization. The production also practiced this ideal through desegregated dressing rooms and equal treatment by staff. Oja focuses extensively on the forward momentum of the black cast members following this production as well as articles and criticisms in black journals and racially-minded programming. Unlike West Side Story, On the Town doesn't form a concrete discussion of race, but the performance's practice of integration in a once high and populist medium turned the production into a statement. Other major progressive pushes made during On the Town's 1940s production history include Broadway's first ever black conductor, Everett Lee, and first ever female stage manager, Peggy Clark.

Carol J. Oja's sense of collaborative influence is excellent. The lines between Comden and Green's rich humor, Robbins' balletic yet culturally grounded choreographic style, and Bernstein's shifting influence between "high and low" popular art brings to it the understanding of the politics shaping World War II Broadway. Her references are certainly reputable with what one should expect from Oxford University Press; and in terms of content she fills this world so completely that the reader need never have heard the names Robbins or Bernstein before in order to appreciate their accomplishments. Of course, however, firsthand knowledge of the music is naturally necessary to appreciate her expert analysis.

Oja is extremely knowledgable of the period's social climate and understands the importance of the everyday minutiae that shape our society and their effect on the site-specific art of theatre. The revival of On the Town, now running at the renovated Lyric Theatre in Times Square, is mammoth even by Broadway standards. It features a cast of over 30 performers and by most accounts will be a polished machine of nostalgic adrenaline. World class performance quality can be expected through the casting of Tony winning actors, comedic legends, and classically trained dancers. Oja's analysis, however weighs something of a burden on the blockbuster revival. She enforces recognition that On the Town was a production speaking to its time and that more than just water must be added if one hopes to see the work accomplish its original utility.