Review - Fiorello!

In musicals like Fiddler On The Roof, She Loves Me and The Apple Tree, the team Jerry Bock (music) and Sheldon Harnick (lyrics) once graced Broadway with scores that found poetry and elegance in the lives of everyday people. But nowhere is that more apparent than in the boisterously fun and heavily New York accented, Fiorello!, a celebration of the early career of Fiorello LaGuardia, the city's enormously popular 99th mayor.

The musical's book, by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman, while a fine example of muscular musical theatre character-driven craft, may not live up to the show's high pedigree as a Pulitzer Prize winner (The Pulitzer Advisory Board rejected the Drama Jury's strong recommendation to award Toys In The Attic.) and a Best Musical Tony winner (It tied with The Sound of Music to win over Gypsy.), the score is a ravishing example of Golden Age Broadway at its best.

In a rousing Bowery waltz, a distracted group of party officials compare their regular card game with their assignment to find a candidate willing to run for office against an unbeatable opponant: ("Politics and poker / Shuffle up the deck and find the joker.) In a lively Charleston, fans of candidate Jimmy Walker reference the hit song he wrote to voice their support: ("Hey Jim, we promise on voting day / We will love you in November as we did in May.") In a furious march, a chorus of women factory workers strike for a decent living wage: ("Must we sew and sew solely to survive / So some low so-and-so can thrive?")

Working with a condensed version of the book by the co-author's son, John Weidman, the Encores! concert staging of Fiorello!, the musical that premiered the series 20 years ago, glosses over the weaker elements and sparkles with old-fashioned moxie. Director Gary Griffin's uncomplicated staging leaves plenty of room for the actors to perform out to the audience, Alex Sanchez's choreography explodes with period exuberance and Irwin Kostal's original orchestrations burst with tradition Broadway style as played by the 28 musicians following Rob Berman's baton. This is a brash musical that doesn't need an elaborate production to come out big.

Since the actor playing the title role in Fiorello! must resemble the husky and diminutive real life fellow, the show offers some of musical theatre's character men a rare opportunity to play a romantic lead. The terrific Danny Rutigliano, accustomed to getting laughs in supporting roles, is a gritty, determined sparkplug in the role that won a Tony for unknown Tom Bosley.

But playing Fiorello LaGuardia is a bit of a mixed blessing. Like Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, the title role has curiously little to sing. (Tellingly, Bosley's Tony was for Best Supporting Actor.) In its original form, he didn't sing at all in the second act, but in later productions a musical soliloquy, made up of snippets from the rest of the score much like Gypsy's "Rose's Turn," was added to the second half. Perhaps this is because the character's rise from benevolent lawyer helping the poor to Republican congressional candidate who miraculously defeats the corrupt Tammany Hall Democrats to become a mayoral hopeful, is more of a backdrop for the main romantic story; how his secretary carries a torch for him even while watching him court and marry another woman.

That secretary is also an unusual romantic lead for a Broadway musical as she sings no love ballads; but Erin Dilly is a bit of a sparkplug herself, charming in her two numbers about romantic frustration. The lush and lovely singing is left to Kate Baldwin, possessor of one of Broadway's most beautiful and expressive sopranos, playing the labor leader who appreciates LaGuardia's heroism - both in civic duty and on the battlefields of Europe - enough to accept his marriage proposal. The evening's most entrancing moment comes when she's left alone on stage to sing the captivating "When Did I Fall In Love?" The lilting melody contains the unusual sentiment of wondering, "When did respect first become affection? / When did affection suddenly soar?"

Cigar chomping Shuler Hensley gives gravel-voiced color to his role as an old-time political tough-guy campaign manager, leading his cronies in the aforementioned "Politics and Poker" and the classic comic romp, "Little Tin Box," which spoofs the excuses made by Tammany Hall cohorts caught taking kickbacks.

One of those cohorts is a hard-nosed policeman (Jeremy Bobb) who manages to win the heart of union seamstress Dora (a wonderfully goofy Jenn Gambatese) who insists "if he'd get an honest job I would marry him" in another classic song from the score, "I Love A Cop."

Adam Heller knocks out some good laughs as LaGuardia's overworked employee and Emily Skinner is a knockout in her one scene, playing a Broadway star who belts out a number supporting the man they called "Gentleman Jimmy."

Fiorello! is the type of show that Encores! was created for; a fun evening giving actors a chance to shine in a musical that in today's economic climate wouldn't attract enough ticket sales to last long on Broadway. Maybe because it's just too good.

Photos by Joan Marcus: Top: Danny Rutigliano and Company; Bottom: Jenn Gambatese and Erin Dilly.

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"I have only one bit of advice to beginning writers: be sure your novel is read by Rodgers and Hammerstein."
-- James A. Michener

The grosses are out for the week ending 2/3/2013 and we've got them all right here in BroadwayWorld.com's grosses section.

Up for the week was: THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (4.1%), MARY POPPINS (3.2%), THE HEIRESS (3.2%), ONCE (1.7%), PICNIC(1.6%),

Down for the week was: CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (-17.1%), ANNIE (-13.4%), THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD (-8.2%), ROCK OF AGES (-6.6%), CHICAGO (-3.8%), THE LION KING (-3.5%), NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT (-3.2%), JERSEY BOYS (-2.9%), WHO'S AFRAID OF Virginia Woolf? (-2.9%), MAMMA MIA! (-2.5%), CINDERELLA (-2.2%), SPIDER-MAN TURN OFF THE DARK (-1.5%), NEWSIES (-1.3%), WICKED (-0.6%), The Other Place (-0.4%),

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