A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: A Score to Savour

There are times when, in order to have the most enriching experience possible, you must go to the theatre with the same sense of history as if you're spending a few hours at a museum. Not every work in every gallery is a masterpiece and yet they are put on display in order for us to appreciate how a form develops and to put us in touch with the culture of another time. Entertainment is a grand accomplishment and nothing entertains more than a smashing Broadway musical. But there is still value in re-visiting imperfections from the past, especially when they come from the pens of accomplished show people, and the Encores! noble mounting of the 1951 moderate success, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, was a rare opportunity to hear that lovely Arthur Schwartz music, the blue-collar charm of Dorothy Fields' lyrics and what remains of orchestrations by one of the greats, Robert Russell Bennett, played by a full orchestra and sung by some impressive musical theatre voices.

Yes, the show has book problems and no, David Ives' concert condensation of George Abbott and novelist Betty Smith's script did not solve them. Normally, nobody demands a strong book from a musical more than I do, but these concerts can be considered a different matter and sitting through a patchwork libretto light on depth, is a reasonable price to pay for the sake of hearing some select musical gems of the past performed in their proper context.

George Abbott was a master craftsman of the musical book as both a writer and director. He demanded clarity and would not stand for humor that did not come from within the character. But A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was a nearly impossible situation. Smith's novel had no linear plot. It was observations of early 1900's Williamsburg tenement life from the point of view of 10-year-old Francie, daughter of Johnny, a charming, though alcoholic singing waiter, and Katie, who married him as a romantic young girl and has been hardened by their difficult life together.

Not wanting to put the weight of the show on a child actress, Abbott recruitEd Smith, who wrote the original novel published in 1943, to help him write a book driven by the Johnny, a fellow with big dreams and a fatal flaw; certainly the type of character more suited to carry a musical. To make him more empathetic, Act I covered his courtship with Katie before his drinking problems became evident, and to give the story comic relief, a secondary couple was created using Katie's sister Cissy, a minor character in the novel, and her man of the moment.

The casting of Shirley Booth as Cissy must have seemed like a great idea at first. She was a popular Broadway performer fresh off a Best Actress Tony for Come Back, Little Sheeba and was a perfect choice for the kind of brash, outer-borough comedy required. But as any musical theatre historian will tell you, Booth's appeal to out-of-town preview audiences resulted in her role being built up to the dramatic detriment of the whole, and instead of finding ways to further explore Johnny and Katie's relationship, the book-writers wound up writing gags for a scene where Cissy fakes a pregnancy while Fields was writing two encore lyrics for a nice-enough charm song that really didn't require one. The resulting show was welcome on Broadway for roughly eight months before going on a brief tour and has rarely been revived.

One revival, the 2003 Goodspeed Opera House production utilized a new book adaptation by Elinor Renfield which toned down Cissy's role and placed focus on Katie. Encores! considered mounting this adaptation, but the score had been revised to the point where it didn't coincide with the newly-discovered Broadway orchestrations, which were thought to be lost until 2001. These orchestrations have their own patchwork history, as Robert Russell Bennett was called away from the task to begin work on The King and I, leaving much of the remaining work to partner Joe Glover, who in turn divvied out assignments to other orchestrators when the demand for changes and revisions came too quickly. The resulting scores, put together hastily in several different handwritings, were changed again when the original cast album was recorded.

So to briefly sum up, this was not a simple case of another weak book/good score musical and Encores! should be congratulated for attempting to piece together such a non-commercial, incomplete, yet historically fascinating piece. David Ives' book adaptation was swift and painless and the combination of existing score books with a few educated guesses combined for an evening centered around underappreciated music and lyrics.

Not to be confused with the artistry and maturity of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical dramas that were dominating Broadway by 1951, the Schwartz/Fields score is one of knockabout urban moxie and lowbrow poetry. This is a robust score that carries every emotion on its sleeve. The opening "Mine 'til Monday" celebrates the unique cycle of pawning one's valuables every Monday morning, then buying them back every Friday payday for temporary weekend ownership. Lovingly catchy tunes like "I'm Like a New Broom" and "Look Who's Dancing" evoke the period and are lively vehicles for showmanship. Two glorious ballads, "Make the Man Love Me" and "I'll Buy You a Star" utilize simple imagery with sweetness that never stoops to cliche' and the comic "He Had Refinement" has a string of boffo yuks still funny today.

Director Gary Griffin assembled a fine cast to do the score justice. As the hapless couple, Jason Danieley's rich, full leading-man baritone had a beautiful muscularity to it, matched by and Sally Murphy's sterling soprano. Emily Skinner, as Cissy, had the difficult task of playing a character with too much unjustified stage time, even in this cut-down text. But a performer with Skinner's gusto and comic pep is always a welcome sight, even when the reason for the bit she's doing isn't quite clear.

Nancy Anderson and John Ellison Conlee contributed a pair of fine supporting turns, as did young Katherine Faye Berry as Francie, and Sergio Trujillo's dances were frequently snazzy, in an old-fashioned sense.

In a season full of new musicals featuring, shall we say "problematic" books, the flaws of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn seem minuscule by comparison. Yet this is a show that will most likely never see a Broadway revival, despite its endearing score. Next up for Encores! is Purlie with a score by Gary Geld and Peter Udell, followed by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick's The Apple Tree; two more imperfect musicals unlikely to be revived on Broadway which also stand a pretty good chance of putting the current crop to shame.

 

Photos by Joan Marcus: Top: (l-r) Jason Danieley and Katherine Faye Barry
Center: (l-r) Sally Murphy, Jason Danieley and Katherine Faye Barry
Bottom: (l-r) Emily Skinner and John Ellison Conlee