Previews: Monday's BROADWAY BY THE SEASON Concert Sounds Exciting!

Assuming you don’t have a time machine available this coming Monday night (August 7), the best way to get the flavor of what Broadway had to offer in the middle of the last century is a special offering at Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center on West 67th Street. That’s when you can attend the next installment of Scott Siegel’s Broadway by the Season concert series. Indefatigable producer/director/host/writer/curator /creator/theatre maven Siegel shared some thoughts with me between preparations for this and other events he’s juggling this summer and beyond. The merry Man For All Seasons enthused, “I love the diversity of talent we have in this show on Monday: from a lyric soprano, to a baritone bass, and from a musical comedy master and a dance troupe. Nearly one third of our show on Monday night will feature a wide variety of Broadway hoofing. We have a total of ten dancers in our show and it's going to be really fun and exciting to see them in action. It's going to be a full-service concert!” 

The stars are Tony Danza, Bill Daugherty, Ali Ewoldt, Jason Graae, Danny Gardner (who is also the choreographer), Kendrick Jones, douglas Ladnier, Julia Murney, and Christiane Noll, accompanied by  the Ross Patterson Little Big Band. Surveyed will be material from the 1940-41 season in the first act, representing such scores as Rodgers & Hart’s Pal Joey and Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin’s Lady in the Dark; and jumping ahead to the 1951-52 period in the second act includes souvenirs of Lerner & Loewe’s Paint Your Wagon, the Sammy Fain/ E.Y. Harburg score for Flahooley and more. 

To bring you up to speed on these periods, get you in the mood, or to test your claim as an expert, there’s a quiz at the end of this column!  You’re on the “No-Googling Honor System!”

For those who treasure musical theatre’s past, programs such as Scott Siegel’s Broadway by the Season are always indisputably “in season,” as indicated in the past by the satisfied attendees of the similar long-running series Broadway by the Year —at The Town Hall, also with Mr. Siegel at the helm. A subscription package is available for the “season” of Broadway by the Season, encompassing Monday’s celebration and the upcoming evenings in September and October. 

The participants recruited for the festivities are audience favorites, having earned frequent flyer miles in Siegel strolls down the Memory Lane of Broadway and in Broadway musicals. Jason Graae remembers being in the very first season of Broadway by the Year back in 2001 and appreciates the Golden Age repertoire, telling me, “It’s a huge part of our musical theater history and Scott’s shows keep them alive. I love contemporary music theatre but there’s nothing like these classics.” This time, he’s got just one song — but what a song it is! He gets the delicious but daunting challenge of the tongue-twisting speed-drill showpiece “Tchaikovsky (and Other Russians).” In an understatement, the guy with The Cheshire Cat grin describes this word salad (with Russian dressing), introduced by Danny Kaye in Lady in the Dark, as “quite a mouthful.” A bit later, he concedes that “the lyrics are hellacious.” But he’s ready, willing (and, I know able) to tackle the Olympican feat.

Another veteran of the Siegel soirees, including 15 Broadway Unplugged events, is Bill Daugherty, whom New York City audiences and students haven’t seen as much of in the last nine years since he relocated upstate.  One of his assigned pieces is “Love Is a Simple Thing” from the revue New Faces of 1952 with a sweet lyric by June Carroll and a smile-inducing melody by Arthur Siegel (no relation to Scott). Bill reports that he’s glad the song is on the bill and adds, “I am pleased to have been asked to do it because Arthur Siegel was a buddy of mine and it was always a pleasure when he would do a rendition of this song for audiences.” A longtime teacher at the college level, Mr. D. is also the vocal coach for the young adult singers who are the cream of the crop from performing arts schools chosen, by audition, to strut their stuff at 54 Below on August 16 and 17 as members of Scott Siegel’s Broadway: The Next Generation.

Ross Patterson has been a regular pianist and musical director for the impresario’s presentations and he’s on board here. Christiane Noll shared this appreciation of his work: “ I always feel so taken care of with Ross at the keyboard. Many times the songs have been new to my repertoire, as in this particular evening. Safe in Ross’s hands, we find our version of these wonderful classic songs and end up making some musical magic!”

Matching material and performer is one of the key ingredients to the success of these endeavors, douglas Ladnier points out. He relates that, “In my case for instance, year after year, I am still in awe of how Scott  identifies the perfect new songs for me from these  often very old musicals — it is uncanny how well these songs always fit into my voice, my personality, and my particular style of singing. That is really where Scott’s genius shines!”

Julia Murney opines that “the three most enjoyable elements” of these events consist of: “hearing or learning songs that I'm totally unfamiliar with – sometimes from shows I've never heard of; the quality of the performers Scott ropes in to do his shows; and his mini-lectures about the songs and the shows they're from  –  it's a theatre nerd's delight.” Danny Gardner agrees about the value of the host’s informative narration, emphasizing it this way: “The thing I love about Scott’s concerts is the historical context he is able to give each song. Some of them don’t get performed very often but, singing them reminds us where musical theater came from. For example, I’m choreographing “I’m On My Way” from Paint Your Wagon. Being that Agnes De Mille originally choreographed the Broadway production, I am basing part of my choreography off her work in ‘June Is Bustin’ Out All Over’  [from Carousel]. The excitement and open gestures she uses for ‘June’ really inspired me for the movement of the excitement of the gold rush in Paint Your Wagon.”

The appearance of Broadway by the Season is a reason to rejoice in summer and autumn. ‘Tis the season to be jolly. Deck the Merkin Hall with smiles. 

Tickets for the August 7 concert are $75 and $60. They can be purchased at the Merkin Hall box office at 129 West 67th Street,  calling 212-501-3330 or online: 

  https://www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org/mch/event/scott-siegels-broadway-by-the-season-1940-41-1951-52/

The next two programs in the series will look at increasingly more recent years:  September 11 covers the Broadway seasons 1964-65 and 1972/73, while October 30 brings us back to the seasons of 1988-89 and 2013-14.

This concert series is sponsored by Doris & Edwin Cohen, Tom & Maran Hood, Pat Cayne, and The Edythe Kenner Foundation. Many others have added their donations to help make the programs possible and contributions are, of course, always welcome.

See also www.SiegelPresents.com 

—--

AND NOW THE PROMISED RELATED BROADWAY QUIZ. (Answers on the bottom)

—1—  Which of these statements about a singer in the concert is the ONLY  one that is true? (The others are alternate facts):  …… (-A-) Tony Danza has a connection to different cities: He was born in Brooklyn, New York; was in the musical Honeymoon in Vegas; made his film debut in The Hollywood Knights; and appeared in a TV movie called The Garbage Picking Field Goal Kicking Philadelphia Phenomenon.   ..... (-B-) Kendrick Jones’s real name is Kendrick Kendomopalapodous, but he chose Jones as his stage name to celebrate his Broadway debut in the role of Bustopher Jones in the musical Cats (and also so as not to be confused with an already established Equity actor-dancer also named Kendrick Kendomopalapodous).  ……   (C)  Ali Ewoldt and Sally Mayes briefly co-hosted a cable TV variety show on the US/Canada border called “Ali and Sally in the Red River Valley.”   ……  (-D-)   In New Orleans, where he presided as the Grand Marshall of the annual festive Fat Tuesday Parade this year, Jason Graae first met the twin brother he never knew he had: the celebration’s longtime coordinator, Marty Graae.   

—2—   In the present-day theatre world where it often takes years to develop and fund a new show, it might be difficult to imagine how bustling Broadway of yore was and how busy its writers could be in a single year. In the time period spotlight in the first half of Monday’s show, 1940-41, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart had two musicals open on Broadway in 1940: Pal Joey and Higher and Higher, as well as two movie versions of earlier stage musicals (The Boys from Syracuse and Too Many Girls). They were also among those who contributed songs to a show that closed on the road. What was the title? …          (-A-) Two Hours with Music  ……(-B-) Two Days with No Sleep ……(-C-) Two Weeks with Pay …… (-D-) Two Years with a Kangaroo

—3—   Many years before that musical about a little orphan, Annie, gave us a hopeful song stating that things will be sunnier “Tomorrow,” the Broadway season of 1940-41 brought two bits of optimism about tomorrow being a day worth waiting for, and both are in Monday’s concert. One is “It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow” by Irving Berlin. What is the other?     ................   (-A-) “Great Day” ……(-B-)  “There’s a Great Day Coming, Mañana”   ……(-C-)  “Maybe Tuesday Will Be My Good News Day” …… (-D-) “Tomorrow Will Probably Be Better Because It Couldn’t Be Worse Than This Rotten Day, Darling” 

—4—   One of dancer/singer Danny Gardner’s numbers is “My Home Is in My Shoes.” What musical is it from?  ……(-A-) There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe  ……(-B-) The Ballerina from Buffalo  …… (-C-) Top Banana …… (-D-) The Tap-Dancing Rabbi

—5—  One of the songs in the concert is “Chi-Ri-Bim, Chi-Ri-Bom.” What production, from the ‘51-’52 season, included it?……(-A-) Bagels and Yox   ……(-B-) No Bagels for Barbara (The Gluten-Free Revue)....    (-C-) Bagels, Bangles, and Beads ……(-D-) King Lear: The Musical

ANSWERS:  

1:-- A

2:---C

3:---B

4:---C

5:---A  

 

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