50 Favourite Musicals: 24: 42ND STREET (1980) (Harry Warren / Al Dubin, Johnny Mercer)

The 50 shows that have stood out down the years and, as we get up among the paint cards, the shows that have become the cast recording of my life:

First performed: 1980, Winter Garden, NY

First seen by me: 1984, Drury Lane, London

Productions seen: two

Score: Harry Warren / Al Dubin, Johnny Mercer
Book: Michael Stewart, Mark Bramble

Plot:  1933: Broadway director Julian Marsh is hoping his new show 'Pretty Lady' will restore his fortunes after recent flops, although he is saddled with a temperamental leading lady Dorothy Brock whose sugar daddy is bankrolling the show.  At an audition for the chorus, Peggy Sawyer, fresh from Pennsylvania, is the last to be cast.  But when Dorothy breaks her ankle onstage during an out-of-town tryout, all looks lost...but then Julian remembers young Sawyer...

Five memorable numbers: DAMES, 42ND STREET, LULLABY OF BROADWAY, ABOUT A QUARTER TO NINE, WE'RE IN THE MONEY

Producer David Merrick, trying to reclaim his King of Broadway crown, decided to produce 42nd STREET, adapted from the film by Mark Bramble - his ex-office boy - and Michael Stewart.  Stewart had written the lacklustre book for MACK AND MABEL which Merrick produced and Gower Champion directed.  The show flopped and Champion swore they would never work together again.  But six years and two more flops later, Champion signed up for 42nd STREET but, again, he and Merrick clashed.  Aware that word had reached the NY critics that 42nd STREET had problems in it's Washington tryout, the paranoid Merrick cancelled all the Broadway previews to stop the press sneaking in but insisted the actors still perform to the empty auditorium.  One of the cast suggested that they all bring in any cuddly toys they had one night and played the show to them sitting in the front rows!  These non-previews also covered up the sudden absence of Champion, but he was in hospital having succumbed to a blood disease that he had been fighting.  Opening night arrived and Merrick *had* to let the press and public in - but that morning, Gower Champion died.  Merrick only told the writers and asked Champion's family to keep silent.  After acknowledging the rapturous ovation at the end of the show, Merrick announced to the stunned cast and audience that Champion was dead.  The next morning 42nd STREET was front-page news and Merrick had his hit.  There is still conjecture that he made the announcement this way knowing it would make any bad reviews redundant.  The show transferred to London in 1984 and was an instant hit, giving London the sort of huge Broadway show it had not seen in years.  I saw a preview and was swept away by Champion's machine-gun tap choreography, Theoni V. Aldredge's lavish costumes and the larger-than-life performances of Georgia Brown as Dorothy Brock, Clare Leach as Peggy Sawyer and Carol Ball as Anytime Annie.  I knew Carol from Richard Eyre's company at the National Theatre so eventually her dressing room became a second home.  Flash-forward 33 years and it was a very strange experience to see the show on the same stage when it was revived in a slightly revised version.  I had not wanted to see it to be honest... but there I was at the end, clapping like a seal and beaming.  Randy Skinner had filled out the choreography for some added numbers and the show was directed by Mark Bramble, who has since died.  Bramble didn't revise his book so it remains as thin as ever - 42nd STREET is definitely the last musical to go to if you want 3-dimensional characters; it literally jumps from song to song like a tapping mountain goat.  But the show knows it's strengths and the songs - and the thrilling dance routines that accompany them - just keep on coming.  The Harry Warren and Al Dubin songs might not be the best songs of the 1930s but boy, they have tunes. From the famous opening moments - when the curtain rises and pauses so you can focus on the ensemble's furious tapping feet - the show just picks you up and whirls you through it's classic backstage tale.  Oddly enough, what stuck me during the revival is the desperation behind it all:  if PRETTY LADY fails Marsh faces a bleak future, Peggy has only her no-hope existence in Pennsylvania to return to, and the dancers all face unemployment and the breadline.  It's odd that I never really noticed it in the 1980s.


Most of the available video footage is of the revivals but 42nd STREET is here because of the impact that original 1984 production had on me so here is the wonderful Clare Leach as Peggy with Michael Howe as Billy in the climax of that production, singing and dancing the bitter title song; what better lasting tribute to Gower Champion's sensational choreography.

BARNUM at the Menier Chocolate Factory - Life Under The Small Top...

It's not for want of productions that I have never seen the Cy Coleman musical BARNUM which I have finally caught up with at the Menier Chocolate Factory.  Michael Crawford, Paul Nicholas, Peter Duncan, Christopher Fitzgerald and Brian Conley have all played the title role in UK productions and now it falls on the lofty shoulders of comedian Marcus Brigstocke.

BARNUM opened on Broadway in 1980 with Jim Dale in the title role and upcoming actress Glenn Close as his long-suffering wife Charity, it was nominated for 10 Tony Awards but so was EVITA which won most of the top prizes, BARNUM eventually ending up with 3, including the Best Actor nod for Dale.

For such a populist and popular musical, my only reference for it was the 1983 skating routine by Torvell and Dean, and I find that odd as I am a bit of a musicals fan.  None of the songs are particularly famous in their own right and I think ultimately it might be because the material is actually fairly thin.  The role of Barnum needs to be played by a charismatic, show-off, starry performer because - not only is he hardly ever offstage - but he needs to carry the thinness of the book.

For all the time onstage, what do we ever learn of P.T. Barnum through Mark Bramble's threadbare book?  That he was a bit of a chancer and believed in flim-flam as much as the punters he was always trying to attract, be it showbiz or politics?  What do we learn of his wife Charity?  That she was that most awful of things - long-suffering - and met all of her husband's outlandish plans with a wry smile and a pat on the hand?  Yeesh.  The workman-like lyrics by Michael Stewart tell us as much as we need to know and nothing more.  Bramble and Stewart both were responsible for the paper-thin book for 42nd STREET so it comes as no surprise that they are similarly bereft of imagination here.

Cy Coleman's music is also fitfully memorable but does finally pull out a showstopper with "Come Follow The Band" but it's sad when one considers this was the man responsible for LITTLE ME, SWEET CHARITY, ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY and CITY OF ANGELS, but maybe he flourished better in more hard-nosed entertainment worlds than folksy Americana.

Marcus Brigstocke certainly gives a likeable and quietly-winning performance as Barnum, one that certainly fits within the Menier's limited performing space, but therein lies the production's problem.  As I said before, the role cries out for a performer who is not content in simply inhabiting a space - Dale, Crawford, et al are all larger-than-life, unabashed show-off performers who also have that underlying thread of being unlikeable.  As I said, Brigstocke is likeable which isn't enough for this role.  His singing voice also seemed to remain in his mouth - SING OUT P.T.!

Where the production scores is in it's female characters - for all the afore-mentioned dullness of material, Laura Pitt-Pulford was very good as Charity, the level of musicality seemed to perk up whenever she was onstage and her lovely voice got the most out of her earnest ballads.  The inexplicably busy Rosalie Craig isn't a patch on Pitt-Pulford.

Also hitting their mark are Celinde Schoenmaker as the Swedish diva Jenny Lind - her voice belts out and bounces around the small Menier auditorium so you really feel it's force - and Tupele Dorgu also registers as both Joyce Heth, Barnum's first successful 'personality', and in the second act as a luscious-toned blues singer.

The ensemble seemingly never draw breath as they spin, dance, somersault and cavort around Paul Farnsworth's mini-big top set - mind out for the flame-twirler!  Shining out of them is the remarkable Danny Collins, fresh from Matthew Bourne's EARLY ADVENTURES, whose sinuous physicality stands out in Rebecca Howell's energetic choreography.

Gordon Greenberg, whose Chichester production of GUYS AND DOLLS so impressed, here keeps the action flowing and ingeniously uses every opportunity that the Menier's playing space can provide but, again we have to face the fact, that with such thin material to work with Greenberg has no other option but to keep the show moving and distract us with flames, gymnastics and a constant whirl of movement.

It is a tribute to Greenberg, musical director Alex Parker and the non-stop cast that the show ultimately wins one over - it sure ain't because of the material they have to work with.