Broadway's Most Wanted Read online

  Broadway’s Most Wanted

  Selected Titles in Brassey’s Most Wanted Series

  Hollywood’s Most Wanted by Floyd Conner

  Rock and Roll’s Most Wanted by Stuart Shea

  Country Music’s Most Wanted by Francesca Peppiatt

  TV’s Most Wanted by Douglas Tonks

  Forthcoming in 2004

  The 1950s’ Most Wanted by Rob Rodriguez

  The 1960s’ Most Wanted by Stuart Shea

  Business’s Most Wanted by Jim Romeo

  Chicago’s Most Wanted by Laura Enright

  Dogs’ Most Wanted by Alexandra Allred

  The World Series’ Most Wanted by John Snyder

  Broadway’s Most Wanted

  The Top 10 Book of Dynamic Divas, Surefire Showstoppers, and Box Office Busts

  Tom Shea

  Copyright © 2004 by Potomac Books, Inc.

  Published in the United States by Potomac Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Shea, Tom, 1966–

  Broadway’s most wanted: the top 10 book of dynamic divas, surefire showstoppers, and box office busts / Tom Shea.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes index.

  ISBN 978-1 -57488-596-5 (paperback)

  1. Musicals—History and criticism. 2. Musical theater—History and criticism. I. Title. ML2054.S44 2004

  782.1’4—dc22 2003028039

  Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standards Institute Z39-48 Standard.

  Potomac Books, Inc.

  22841 Quicksilver Drive

  Dulles, Virginia 20166

  First Edition

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Preface

  Introduction

  I’m the Greatest Individual

  10 Notable Tony Winners

  With Their Awful Clothes and Their Rock-and-Roll

  10 Musicals Written by Famous Rock Artists

  I Can’t Do the Sum

  10 Numerical Broadway Musicals

  Next Stop, Neverland

  10 Musicals Set in Imaginary Locations

  I Think It’s Funny

  10 Musicals Based on the Comics

  Show Me

  Behind the Scenes

  It’s a Hell of a Town

  10 Fun City Musicals

  We Shout, “Look Out, Yale!”

  10 Musicals about Sports

  Again, from the Top

  10 Prominent “Revisais”

  Duelling Musicals!

  Musicals that Share the Same Source Material

  The Wages of Sin

  TV Shows Featuring Broadway Stars

  Fill the World with Ships and Shoes

  10 Musicals about Big Business

  That Was a Flop?

  10 Misleadingly Great Broadway Cast Albums

  Cinema Theatricalo

  Movies about the Creation of Musical Theater

  Food, Glorious Food!

  10 Broadway Musicals You Could Eat

  Cold and Dead

  10 Musicals About Killers

  Every Movie’s a Circus

  10 Legendary Broadway Performers Who Lost Their Roles in the Movie Version

  I Think I Can Play This Part

  10 Broadway Performers Who Did the Movie Version

  All Hail the Political Honeymoon

  10 Musicals about Politics and Politicians

  Don’t Fence Me In

  10 Rootin’ Tootin’ Western Musicals

  Bring the House Down

  Pop Stars Who Crossed Over to Broadway

  Come Back to Me

  10 Hollywood Stars Who Crossed Over to Broadway

  It’s a Hit, It’s a Palpable Hit

  Hit Songs You Never Knew Came from Musicals

  I Love a Film Cliché

  Movie Musicals that Made It to the Stage

  We Sail the Seas

  10 Musicals Set on the Water

  I’m a Bad, Bad Man

  10 Great Musical Villains

  Blow, Gabriel, Blow

  Depictions of Faith in Broadway Musicals

  It’s Better with a Bard

  10 Musicals Based on Shakespeare

  You’re Responsible! You’re the One to Blame! It’s Your Fault!

  10 Musicals to Scratch Your Head Over

  Wig in a Box

  10 Musicals Featuring Characters in Drag

  Bigger Isn’t Better

  10 “Small” Shows

  It’s an Art

  10 Musicals about Other Art Forms

  Children Will Listen

  Parents and Children in the Musical Theater

  Keep it Gay

  10 Musicals With, Um, Happy Bachelor Characters

  Where Did We Go Right?

  10 Surprise Hit Musicals

  Am I My Resumé?

  Musical Actors Who Write

  I Saw Stars

  Recent TV Shows With Tony Winners and Nominees

  All We’ll Do Is Just Dance

  10 Dance Musicals

  Hard to Be a Diva

  10 Outrageous Offstage Moments

  All Things Bright and Beautiful

  10 Musicals about the Animal Kingdom

  Let’s Do It

  10 Musicals About S-E-X

  Oh, I Say!

  10 Broadway Musicals Whose Titles Are Complete Sentences

  Monorail!

  10 Musical Theater Spoofs

  Historical News Is Being Made

  10 Innovative Musicals

  Sunrise, Sunset

  10 of New York’s Longest-Running Musicals

  Index

  About the Author

  Illustrations

  Playbill for The Mystery of Edwin Drood

  Playbill for Into the Woods

  Playbill for Too Many Girls

  Backstage at The Pirates of Penzance

  How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

  Harry Connick, Jr.

  Playbill for City of Angels

  Lara Teeter and Christine Andreas, On Your Toes

  Cast of Honk!

  Playbill for Company

  Preface

  This is my first book, and trust me, it’s no day at the beach writing one, even when it’s a subject as close to the heart as musicals are to my heart. (For the record, I do live near the beach, but sand gets in your computer, so I don’t recommend writing there.) No one who creates does so alone, and there are many people I have to acknowledge for their direct and indirect assistance in the creation of Broadway’s Most Wanted.

  First of all, my editor, Don Jacobs, at Brassey’s. Thanks for the opportunity and all your help. Don McKeon at Brassey’s was also of great help to me. My brother, Stuart Shea, was my road grader and not only gave me the idea for writing this book; his assistance in its assembly has been invaluable and much appreciated. I urge you all to pick up his book in this series, Rock and Roll’s Most Wanted. Thanks, Stu. You’ll never know what it’s meant. My friends and colleagues Lara Teeter, Neda Spears, Francesca Peppiatt, Meghan Falica, Emir Yonzon, and Diane van Lente provided materials invaluable to the production of this book as well, and for that, they have my best thanks.

  Personally, I would like to acknowledge the talented tap dance team of Mandelbaum, Mordden, Filichia, Gottfried, Green, Guernsey, and Suskin for their inspiration. The folks at Chicago’s Navy Pier, Light Opera Works in Evanston, Illinois, and the folks at Porchlight Music Theater, Bailiwick Reperto
ry, and City Lit Theater in Chicago kept me sane (and working) during the writing of this book. If you live in or around Chicago, see something at each of these theaters right now. To my friends Jeanne Arrigo, Gretchen Wilhelm, Michael Kotze, David Hoth, Rebecka Reeve, Julie Boesch, Shaun O’Keefe, Henry Odum, Kara Chandler, James Pelton, Don Shell, Page Hearn, Doug MacKechnie, David Breslow, Denise McGowan, Mary Lou Doherty, George Light, and Cecilia Garibay, my love and thanks. To my sweet Macheath, who couldn’t be less like his namesake, I love you. To Richard P. Hoffman, Michael and Candace Pufall, Sandi Phillips, Sandra Franck, Philip Kraus, and Hub Owen, for auld lang syne. To absent friends, I can only send you my love and everlasting thoughts. My family has always been behind me, Stu, Ceci, John, and especially Mom and Dad. Saecula Saeculorum.

  Finally, to those who make the musical theater, the writers, actors, choreographers, scenic artists, tech folk, stage managers, producers, and audiences: You make my world better with your efforts, and this book is for you.

  I only hope it’s worthy.

  Introduction

  I guess it was Gilbert and Sullivan that started it all. My parents both appreciated the genius of the English duo, whose deceptively lighthearted comic operas set the tone for everything that was to follow in the musical theater. That appreciation rubbed off on my brothers and me very, very early, and soon enough, cast albums of West Side Story, Oklahoma!, and even Sweeney Todd came home from the library. Pretty soon, my whole family was indulging the habit, buying not only Finian’s Rainbow, but Greenwillow, Candide, and Follies in Concert as well. I was hooked.

  Okay, if any or all of the above makes no sense to you, Toothsome Reader, fret not. It’s just my way of saying I love the musical theater and have for a long time. It’s a unique art form, which, like all great art forms, has evolved (some would say devolved, given the current state of the art) over time, changing as the times have demanded.

  Broadway’s Most Wanted is a book to honor the creators, performers, and audiences who have made the musical theater what it is today: the good, the bad, and the really, really ugly. When a show is a hit, the world is a wonderful place. But most show freaks will tell you that a bomb of a show, and I mean a real turkey, is as precious and enjoyable, in its own perverse way, as a hit. So you’ll find lists of The Bad and The Ugly as well as lists of The Good. It’s all so much fun, anyway.

  Let’s get this out of the way right off: Broadway. For the purposes of this book, we use the term “Broadway” loosely, and not literally (i.e., the legitimate New York playhouses located between the low Forties and low Sixties on Manhattan Island in New York City). Think of it as the catchall to define all of musical theater. Broadway is obviously much more than musicals, and vice versa, but there you go. To limit the scope of this book to only those shows that have played Broadway would be to exclude, which is something as a writer (and, indeed, as a performer) I can’t abide. So you’ll find references to off-Broadway (like the all-time long-running champ, The Fantasticks), regional theaters across the country (like Casper, the Musical and Sylvia’s Real Good Advice), and musicals from abroad (like Chess and The Beautiful Game).

  A few terms with which the novice may not be familiar: A musical, on paper, consists of music, lyrics (the rhyming text accompanying the music), which together constitute the score of a musical, and a libretto (the script), also called the book. The scenic, costume, and lighting designers, in addition to the music director and the choreographer, who invents the dances for the musical, are under the aegis of the stage director, who in turn collaborates with all and reports to the producer of the musical, all in the effort to create the best show possible. A show rehearses, then, after a preview period in which one hopes problems are ironed out in front of an audience, goes up (opens) on a predetermined date. Then after critics review the show, all and sundry can practice their Tony Award speeches. Or, they can get bad reviews and close in a week, adding yet one more title to the list of flops to plague Broadway.

  That’s basically what happens to a musical. This book will introduce you to various lists of musicals, some fun, some serious, some famous, and some obscure. I hope you’ll be as intrigued as I was the first time I heard a piece of musical theater. If that’s the case, or even if it’s not, just do what I do, and what the Victorians did: Blame it on Gilbert and Sullivan.

  I’m the Greatest Individual

  10 notable Tony winners

  The American Theater Wing’s Antoinette Perry Award, shortened in pop-culture parlance to the Tony Awards, are Broadway’s supreme achievement and honor. Here are ten notable winning examples of “distinguished achievement in the theater.”

  1. HAROLD PRINCE

  Harold Prince, the innovative director and producer, is the proud possessor of a staggering 20, count ’em, 20 Tony Awards—more than any other individual. Prince’s Tony tally includes one special award for career achievement, eight for producing (starting in 1955 with The Pajama Game), and eight for directing (his last was for the revival of Show Boat in 1995). He often combined directing and producing, and came up Yahtzee, most notably for his shows with Stephen Sondheim in the 1970s: Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, and Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

  2. THE PRODUCERS

  Mel Brooks’s riotous musical farce from 2001 is the Broadway show with more Tony Awards than any other. The Producers, based on Brooks’s film of the same name, enjoyed some great buzz when it previewed in Chicago, and there was no stopping it by the time it hit New York. The show is an overstuffed, laff-a-minnit, anything-goes, old-fashioned musical comedy, the likes of which hadn’t been seen on Broadway in years. It was no surprise when the raves and massive lines at the box office prompted Tony voters to reward the show with an unprecedented 15 nominations. So great was the sweep on awards night that the show won for every category in which it was nominated. Its only losses belonging to three actors (Roger Bart, Brad Oscar, and Matthew Broderick) nominated against other Producers cast members. By the end of the night, The Producers had racked up twelve Tonys.

  3. STEPHEN SONDHEIM

  The greatest composer-lyricist of his generation, Stephen Sondheim is the proud and rightful owner of six Tony Awards (should be nine, but who’s counting? Well, I am. Ahem: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Pacific Overtures, Sunday in the Park With George. Discuss.) for his thrilling and inventive scores for Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, and Passion. The first three shows on the list gave Sondheim a unique Tony three-peat for the composer and lyricist awards. Tony voters and theater fans alike await his next Broadway musical (hopefully the long-delayed Bounce) like a message from Olympus, unhappily for all, it’s nine years and counting.

  4. HELLO, DOLLY!

  Before The Producers did its Tony smash-and-grab, there was Hello, Dolly! The breezy, brassy Jerry Herman-Michael Stewart musical about everyone’s favorite pushy matchmaker held the record for the most Tony Awards for 27 years. The troubled David Merrick production just barely managed to scrape together its opening night, but it was obviously top-drawer musical theater from the get-go. The press quickly labeled Hello, Dolly! a smash, and its hot-ticket status smoothed the way to its winning an then-unprecedented 10 Tony Awards.

  5. ANGELA LANSBURY/GWEN VERDON

  Two of the greatest Broadway performers in history share the most Best Musical Actress Tony Awards. Gwen Verdon, aka Sex on a Stage, the adorable red-haired triple threat and muse of Bob Fosse, won for her sensuous Lola in Damn Yankees, her sensusous scene-stealing in Can-Can, her sensuous Anna Christie in New Girl in Town, and her sensuous redheadedness in Redhead. Also the owner of four Tonys is the woman who’s basically Verdon’s stage alter ego, Angela Lansbury. The elegant and hilarious character actress won for her Rose in the 1974 revival of Gypsy, her Madwoman of Chaillot in Dear World, her indelible many-costumed Mame, and for her perfect Cockney capitalist, Mrs. Lovett, in Sweeney Todd.

  6. FRANKIE MICHAELS

  Franki
e Michaels won the Tony for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 1966 for his performance as young Patrick Dennis in Mame. He was also ten years old when it happened, making him the youngest Tony recipient ever. Young Master Michaels never won another Tony and never acted in another show on Broadway. He had had some mild success as a child actor on television before Mame, but his performance in that show, and his place in the Tony history books, are all that theater fans need to remember him.

  7. DAISY EAGAN

  Eleven-year-old Daisy Eagan became the youngest female performer to win a Tony for her portrayal of Mary Lennox, the juvenile heroine of The Secret Garden. Her unsympathetic and proactive performance earned her raves and, on Tony night, a medallion and a kiss on the head from Audrey Hepburn. Eagan then proceeded to give the most adorable acceptance speech in Tony history (or at least since Debbie Shapiro’s “My husband told me not to dither” speech in 1989), calling out to her mom and dad who seemed to be in the balcony of the Minskoff Theater. Unlike many child performers, who have trouble fulfilling their early promise, Eagan seems remarkably well-adjusted. Even though she has appeared on Broadway only once since The Secret Garden, in James Joyce’s The Dead in 2000, she was featured on Bravo network’s reality series The “It” Factor, which followed young actors around the city on auditions, etc. She appears sporadically in theater now and maintains a healthy Internet presence, free of artifice and “child star” posing.

  8. BOB FOSSE

  Broadway’s sexy older brother, Bob Fosse, was one of the greatest director-choreographers in Broadway history. He also was the recipient of nine Tony Awards, for projects as diverse as the state-of-the-art hoofing for The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees, his bizarre but brilliant melding of vaudeville, commedia dell’arte, and strippin’ in Pippin, and his stubborn refusal to throw the kitchen sink into his Dancin’. Fosse’s early success on shows like Damn Yankees and Redhead assured him a place among the leading lights, and this place begat a new, and some would say imperial, way of creating shows, as epitomized by his near-total artistic control over shows like Pippin and Chicago. But nine Tonys will earn you that kind of control.