This ain't your father's "Cabaret," old chum!

Regular readers of Connecticut Wit know that my preference in musicals runs Gershwin-Squared, Richard Rodgers (with Hart first then Hammerstein), Cole Porter, Cahn and Van Heusen, and the rare Sondheim (i.e., only when he's the lyricist for Jule Styne or Leonard Bernstein).  They'd also know that my preferred stage version of scandalous behavior is Pal Joey's approach to his "mice" --- to "treat a lady like a dame and a dame like a lady."   And they'd certainly be able to figure out that my musical-cum-Nazis of choice would be the one with the would-be-nun with the Viennese kids dressed in old curtains.

So how then can I give a rave review to the disturbing and erotic production of Cabaret that is playing at Playhouse on Park until July 21?
 

Photos by Rich Wagner

Because it's so bloody well conceived, directed, acted, sung, and danced.  Everybody involved in this production makes it work. 

Sean Harris' direction maintains the perfect balance between rousing production numbers of the Kit Kat Klub and the deadly serious social problems that rap, at first, lightly on its door, then come flying through its windows like a brick, and finally tear the place (not to mention Germany, Europe, and the world) apart. 

Colin Britt's musical direction is remarkable (yet again); his marvelously precise ensemble can raise the heat and chill to the bone in frighteningly swift succession. 

And what can be said of Darlene Zoller's choreography? In the intimate space that is Playhouse on Park's theatre, an audience member gets to know the scantily-dressed, lithe, and acrobatic chorus of dancers very well quite quickly.  Indeed, I think, after last Wednesday's performance, I'd be married to at least two of them in some southern states!
 

The performances are all very fine and several truly remarkable.  Brendan Norton's Emcee (above top) lords over the action like the twisted puppet-master he is -- yet with a manic energy that he somehow manages to have implode in front of us.  And while Erin Lindsey Krom's Sally Bowles and Jake Lowenthal's Cliff give us the full arc of doomed love (from naive devil-may-caring to disillusioned horror) that we expect from Cabaret, for this audience member, Kathleen Huber's Fraulein Schneider and Damian Buzzerio's Herr Schultz (seen below) take this production to a whole other level.  Huber is so natural and compelling that I have a hard time imagining her having to make her decision about marrying her Jewish suitor every night.  And if (Spoiler Alert!) you don't think a pineapple is a loving gesture after Buzzerio's ridiculously sincere gift, you have no heart. 



The production designers Erik Diaz (Scenic), Marcus Abbott (Lighting) and Erin Kacmaricik (costume) all contribute mightily to the power of the play, as well.  (But, let's face it, I haven't seen that much lingerie since I first learned about the Victoria's Secret catalogue in the 1980s.)

At times alluring, decadent, quotidian, and appalling, this superb production can't help but make us face our roles in this tragic dance.  It's not an easy night at the theatre, but you'll find few more fulfilling.
 

   

And this is "Robin and the Seven Hoods" how?

So, the Broadway-bound version of Robin and the Seven Hoods has gotten rid of all the songs from the 1964 film except one -- which, I'm assuming, is "My Kind of Town (Chicago is)" and replaced them with a whole slew of other Cahn and Van Heusen songs.  This ridiculous re-write, by Rupert "The Pina Colada Song" Holmes, of all people, also means  no "Mr. Booze," "Bang, Bang", "Any Man Who Loves His Mother," "Don't be a Do-Badder," "All for One," or "Charlotte Couldn't Charleston"!

What this production should be doing is restoring "I Like to Lead When I Dance" to its proper place in the show because Frank never recorded it for the film after the production fell into a bit of chaos due to John Kennedy's assassination.

Listen, I'd go see any Cahn/Van Heusen musical (indeed what they should be doing is reviving Skyscaper!), but, if you're doing RATSH, then, by gosh, DO it.

Sigh.

Happy Mother's Day, All You Moms!

The best Mom song EVER!

Dean Martin singing the Sammy Cahn/Jimmy Van Heusen composition "Any Man Who Loves His Mother," from Robin and the Seven Hoods.

A Sammy Cahn Call for SUBMISSIONS

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Sammy Re-CAHN-sidered

for a proposed anthology of new short works commemorating the centenary of the lyricist’s birth

Sammy Cahn (1913-1993), the Academy- and Emmy-Award-winning lyricist of many of the standards commonly referred to as the “Great American Songbook,” as well as the writer who “put more words into Frank Sinatra’s mouth than any other,” was very vocal in his disagreement with the policy that writers are not able to copyright the titles of their compositions.

In honor of the upcoming centenary of his birth, and with a loving wink at his titular annoyance, the editor is soliciting new poems, flash fiction, flash non-fiction, and micro-dramas, each with the same title as one of his song lyrics. The new pieces need not refer to the songwriter’s lyrics nor be similar in theme or style to the originals; the editor only seeks a variety of poetic approaches toward – and treatments of – Cahn’s titles.

Sammy Cahn’s songs include:

All the Way, Bei Mir Bist du Schoen, Be My Love, Call Me Irresponsible, The Christmas Waltz, Come Dance with Me, Come Fly with Me, Day By Day, Five Minutes More, Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry, High Hopes, I Should Care, I'll Walk Alone, It's Been a Long, Long Time, I've Heard That Song Before, Let it Snow, Love and Marriage, My Kind of Town, Please Be Kind, Pocketful of Miracles, Rhythm is Our Business, Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week), Teach Me Tonight, (Love is) The Tender Trap, The Things We Did Last Summer, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Three Coins in the Fountain, Time After Time, To Love and Be Loved, Until the Real Thing Comes Along, Walking Happy, and MANY MANY MORE

Please send your submission by 1 July 2010 to:

gigliotti@ccsu.edu

or

Dr. Gilbert L. Gigliotti
Department of English
Central Connecticut State U
1615 Stanley Street
New Britain, CT 06050

Happy Birthday, Frank, Jr.!

Frank Sinatra, Jr. is 65 today.

To celebrate, check out his 2006 That Face cd, with a very nice version of a great Cahn and Van Heusen song "Walking Happy."

I'm fairly certain that, if Frank, Jr. had any other name, he'd be far better respected than he is. An excellent musician, great bandleader, and a fine singer, he is in an entirely different class than a Harry Connick, Jr. or a Michael Buble. If you really listen, you'll understand that.

His problem, however, has always been twofold:

1) He sounds, thanks to genetics, more like Frank than is beneficial to anyone because you can also clearly tell he's not his father. Before you hold this fact against him, of course, remember that NO ONE is another Sinatra (and certainly not the aforementioned Connick or Buble).

2) From the beginning of his career in the early 60s, he's been rabidly anti-rock-music. (And I don't mean just anti-heavy-metal, or anti-rap, or anti-grunge...I'm talking anti-Beatles.) Given his generation, even if he prefers a Rodgers and Hammerstein to a Lennon and McCartney, there's no need to continually condemn it. That ship has sailed, and, by refusing to accept it, his campaign to keep the Great American Songbook alive and well is, in some ways, discredited...especially since plenty of more contemporary artists have acknowledged, indeed EMBRACED, Sinatra as a seminal influence, musical and otherwise.

Anyway, Franklin Wayne Sinatra (not really a junior at all)...Happy Birthday!

Loyalty and Innocence

Yesterday, at the Hartford Armory, I gave a talk to a local "Red Hat" ladies club on Frank Sinatra by focusing on songs he recorded and things he did in January. (I always try to have a different selection of songs when I speak -- even if I'm going over the same territory again and again -- and, with Sinatra's long career, it's quite easy to do.)

One song was the Sammy Cahn special lyric for the first Reagan Inaugural Gala (1/19/81), "Nancy (with the Reagan Face)," based upon the Phil ("Sgt. Bilko") Silvers lyric in honor of the birth of Frank's eldest child in the early 40s, "Nancy (with the Laughing Face)."

Sammy was a life-long Democrat (unlike Sinatra who became a Republican in the early '70s during his brief retirement and stayed). Indeed, in 1972, Frank campaigned with the Vice President and actually sang "THAT'S why Spiro is a...CHAMP."

Oops.

Anyway, Democrats were quite angry at Sammy Cahn for his willingness to aid the opposition by writing this special material for Frank, but he always placed his loyalty to his dear friend Francis Albert over that to a political party. I applaud that sense of priorities...besides if anyone voted for Nixon/Agnew in 1972 because of the really awful Cahn rewrite of "The Lady is a Tramp," then the McGovern campaign must have had real problems!

I also played a brief snippet from the Kennedy Inaugural Gala that Frank produced twenty years earlier (1/19/61) and was struck by the very partisan nature of all the talk by Kennedy and Sinatra alike. Clearly meant as a true victory party in a way that would seem quite unseemly and not terribly presidential now, there was no "now's the time to come together." It was, rather, "We beat 'em!"

Ah, the glories of a time BEFORE 24/7 news coverage -- when not every event had to be played before a world-wide audience, when every emotion had to be played close to the vest.

As I was driving to the talk, I was listening to Sinatra's recording of "(You and Me) We Wanted it All" which contains a wonderful lyric as he recalls the time when he and his lost love were still together and happy. He longs for the days of innocence (and ignorant bliss):

...Back when we were dumb.
How did we become so smart
and learn to break each other's heart?

Must-see Christmas Movies

It's, as Sammy Cahn's "The Christmas Waltz" goes, "the time of year when the world falls in love" and, more unavoidably, when every t.v. channel airs every Christmas movie/special ever made -- no matter the quality of cast, script, or mise en scène.

Below are my must-sees: the films that matter to me for one reason or the other. None is terribly unique (except maybe It's Only Money), but that's only on the list because it shows a California Christmas -- and nothing in 1951 could have been odder than a film in which there are Christmas trees among the palms.

1) Miracle on 34th Street (1947): Maureen O'Hara, Edmund Gwenn, John Payne, and Natalie Wood http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IZr_SvCcXc

The gold standard of Christmas movies. Brilliantly written and acted. A nice balance between fantasy and reality (personal, corporate, and political). And a young Natalie Wood who shows already why she'd grow up into "Natalie Wood."

2) It's Only Money, a.k.a. Double Dynamite (1951): Frank Sinatra, Groucho Marx, Jane Russell http://www.guba.com/watch/3000092384

Jane Russell can't act or sing, but, as released in 1951 by boyfriend Howard Hughes, she gets the title role since she's packing the "Double Dynamite" in her sweater! Happy Holidays, gentlemen.

3) The Little Drummer Boy (1968): Jose Ferrer, Greer Garson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZvjPCcHI4g

Greer Garson, with whom I first fell in love when I saw Mrs. Miniver, narrates this Rankin/Bass take on the nativity story and familiar Christmas song. Jose Ferrer as the "desert showman" is pretty swell too. And it's always nice to see at least a cameo by Jesus in a Christmas film.

4) A Christmas Story (1983): Darren McGavin, Melinda Dillon, Peter Billingsley http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mjruvE310Y

Nostalgic and funny. VERY funny.

It's All Up to Us

Last week I gave a talk about Frank Sinatra to the local Senior Club and had U.S. Representative Chris Murphy as my opening act.

There's a reason why Sinatra had comedians as lead-ins and not congressmen (although Frank would frequently introduce Sen. Jack Kennedy in the audience at his concerts in Vegas): congressional representatives talk about things that matter to people, but they tend not to please anyone with their answers -- especially when they're talking about Medicare Part D.

He was engaging, informative, knowledgeable, and sincerely interested in fixing the system, all the qualities one wants in a representative, but short of saying he had just completely abolished the administrative red tape associated with signing up for or switching specific plans, he wasn't telling them much they really wanted to know.

Talk about a tough audience...and thanks for the warm up, Chris!

His speaking that day did give me the chance to mention to his aide that, if health insurance reform is on the way, I had the song for him. It was written by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, donated to the Good Health Association of North Carolina, and recorded by Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore on 11/7/46.

Entitled "It's All Up To You (To Make North Carolina Number One in Good Health)," the song is an excellent example of what health care reform needs in the US (and something that the Clinton Health Care Reform attempt in the early 1990s simply lacked): catchy lyrics to summarize succinctly why it'd be good for ALL of us.

Consider this:

..if we do this, we will be the state
where the weak grow strong
and the strong grow great.

Iraq as "The Tender Trap"?

Re: An Iraqi Reporter's Throwing His Shoes at the U.S. President:

A little quote from Sammy Cahn's "The Tender Trap" (recorded by Frank Sinatra, 1955)

...And all at once it seems so nice;
The folks are throwing shoes and rice.
You hurry to a spot
That's just a dot on the map.
Then you wonder how it all came about;
It's too late now there's no getting out.
You fell in love, and love is the Tender Trap!

(Emphasis added.)