'The Kid From Brooklyn:The Danny Kaye Musical' @ Mercury

 

 
  
 
The Kid From Brooklyn: The Danny Kaye Musical, the critically-acclaimed new musical based on the life of entertainment legend Danny Kaye, is coming to the Mercury Theater, 3745 N. Southport Avenue, Chicago, for a limited engagement previewing May 28, opening June 7 and running through August 24, before making its way to New York City in the spring of 2009.
 
This local engagement follows an unprecedented sell-out run in Los Angeles' El Portal Theatre, where The Kid From Brooklyn now holds the record for the longest-running, highest-grossing show on the mainstage of the El Portal Theatre. The show's engagement was twice extended because of popular demand for tickets.
 
Directed by Peter J. Loewy, with book by Mark Childers and Peter J. Loewy, and musical direction by Charlie Harrison and David Cohen, The Kid From Brooklyn stars Helen Hayes Award Winner, Brian Childers as Danny Kaye and Karin Leone as Sylvia Fine, with Christina Purcell and Adam Lebow. The show was first produced at the Broward Stage Door Theatre in Ft. Lauderdale by Loewy/Leone Productions.
 
Based on the turbulent and triumphant life of Danny Kaye, this intimate musical portrayal chronicles Kaye's career and his relationships on and off the stage as we follow the rise of Danny Kaye from an undisciplined improvisational comic to his success under the guidance of his wife, Sylvia Fine. An amazingly versatile pair of supporting players appears and disappears throughout the performance creating distinct and believable portrayals of a myriad of luminaries who are interwoven with Kaye and Fine: Eve Arden (with whom Kaye was both professionally and romantically linked from the time they first paired on Broadway), Samuel Goldwyn, Kitty Carlisle, Cole Porter, Vivien Leigh, Billy Rose, Laurence Olivier, and handfuls of other fascinating characters.  Backed by a live four-piece ensemble, musical highlights include Tchaikovsky, By Jingo, Minnie the Moocher & Inchworm. The Kid From Brooklyn features the work of musical greats, including Sylvia Fine, Rodgers & Hart, Frank Loesser & Cole Porter, to name a few.
 
About Danny Kaye (b. January 18, 1913, d. March 3, 1987)
 
Danny Kaye's fame began when he became the first man (at least the first in recorded history) to sing a song in which he named 54 Russian composers in 38 seconds. The song was "Tchaikovsky." The place was Broadway's Alvin Theater on January 21, 1941. The show was Moss Hart's musical, Lady in the Dark. Hart had discovered this young mobile-faced, nimble-tongued redhead in a small Manhattan basement nightspot and written him into the play with the now-famous 11-minute part of a temperamental photographer who had developed the art of tongue-twisters. The number brought the second act to a standstill. Danny Kaye never stood still in his profession again.

He was born David Daniel Kaminsky, the son of an immigrant Ukrainian tailor. After having dropped out of school in his teens, he got early experience as a comedian on the Borscht circuit of summer hotels and camps in the Catskills. With the help of his wife, composer-lyricist Sylvia Fine Kaye, who provided much of his musical material, he continued to gain prominence. She wrote many of the songs and gags that brought him to the attention of Samuel Goldwyn in 1944.
 
Starting with the film 'Up In Arms', he was for a decade one of the screen's biggest comedy and musical stars--often as disaster-prone, manic clown with good intentions and a plethora of words flung out haphazardly and at a dizzying rate. Films he made during this period included 'Wonderman', 'The Kid From Brooklyn', 'The Court Jester', 'Merry Andrew', 'Me and the Colonel', and 'The Inspector General'. He also starred in 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty', 'Hans Christian Andersen', 'White Christmas', and 'The Five Pennies' and was the recipient of a special Academy Award in 1954.
 
He took his one-man concert revue to London in 1948, and his success at the Palladium was instant. The Royal Family not only went to see him, but for the first time in history left the royal box and sat in the first row of the orchestra. Life Magazine described England's reaction to Kaye as "worshipful hysteria." Another aspect of his career was conducting major symphony orchestras, even though he claimed he could not read a note of music, and he had been known to conduct with a fly swatter. The music, however, was true to its symphonic form, with no less than Zubin Mehta stating that Kaye "has a very efficient conducting style."  His Live from Lincoln Center: An Evening with Danny Kaye and the New York Philharmonic, broadcast on PBS, was partially responsible for the Peabody Award Kaye received in 1981. The award was presented to him for "his superb and stimulating entertainment efforts" both for that performance and for his serious dramatic role as a Nazi concentration camp survivor that year in the TV movie, Skokie.
 
Kaye was a familiar face on television. He starred in his own musical-variety series, The Danny Kaye Show, for four seasons (1963-67). It won him an Emmy Award in 1963. He also received an Emmy for his 1975 appearance on Danny Kaye's Look-In and the Metropolitan Opera, part of The CBS Festival of Lively Arts for Young People series.
 
When he returned to Broadway in 1970 in Two by Two, he hurt his hip but continued with the show, appearing night after night for 10 months either on crutches or in a wheelchair. Although performing was the backbone of his life, Kaye's heart was also with UNICEF for which he was a permanent ambassador-at-large to the world's children. He was so identified with the United Nations agency that when in 1965 UNICEF received the Nobel Peace Prize, Kaye was selected to accept it. The entertainer logged thousands of miles on his UNICEF jaunts, once visiting 65 cities in five days, and did all the piloting, one of his hobbies. Laughter, however, is what he did best – singing, impersonating and miming, making audiences laugh and cry in the same breath, changing staid adults into grinning children by making faces at them. As a youngster, David Daniel Kaminsky wanted to be a doctor. Indeed he became one, using what is considered "the best medicine."