BWW Review: Six Performers ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE in A Salute to Iconic Lyricist Johnny Mercer
by Alix Cohen - Mar 29, 2016
Johnny Mercer (1909-1976) wrote the lyrics to more than 1500 songs, including dozens upon dozens for movies and Broadway shows. He received 19 Academy Award nominations, and won four Best Original Song Oscars. Mercer was also a composer, a vocalist and the foresighted founder of Capitol Records. To appreciate The American Songbook, one must be familiar with this multifaceted artist. In a revue presented last Thursday to Sunday at the Studio Theater on West 42nd Street, Accentuate The Positive staged its title song as an evangelical meeting. You've got to ac-cen-tu-ate the positive/E-li-mi-nate the negative/Latch on to the affirmative/Don't mess with Mister In-Between…(Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer) Stephen Belida played a preacher while around him Lynne Halliday, Tom Hafner, Madison Stratton, Lou Steele, and Carey Van Driest chanted, sung, snapped, clapped, circled, and raised their arms in Hallelujah fashion. An auspicious beginning.
BWW Reviews: The World Premiere of FOR THE BOYS Is Good. Could It Be Better?
by Paul W. Thompson - Aug 30, 2011
The Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, Illinois, north of Chicago, has an enormous subscription base, deep pockets, a talented and experienced in-house design team and a film property to adapt that touches on a number of important, stage-worthy themes (military patriotism, family, nostalgia, a timely re-visit to accusations of communism in America, parenthood, mid-century entertainment history and censorship, both military and network). And the show's lawyers have acquired the rights to a Hit Parade of jukebox-musical-worthy tunes. But is that enough to make a new stage musical out of the 1991 film 'For The Boys'?
