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  1776 featured a John Adams as obnoxious and unpopular as he was brilliant and single-minded, intent on uniting the Colonies by himself, if need be. His opposition is nearly everyone else present at the Continental Congress, sweltering in the summer heat and arguing with Adams at almost every turn. Sherman Edwards’ unusual yet effective score shone, particularly the song “Momma, Look Sharp,” in which a soldier recounts how his best friend was shot in the field.

  Peter Stone’s book is a model of construction, offering a superb document to history while providing the necessary tension, most notably in a twenty-plus minute scene without music which in which the vital matters of independence are debated by all. The egalitarian integration of score, book, and staging (by Peter Hunt), as well as superb performances, made 1776 the smash hit of the season, winning the Tony for Best Musical.

  Don’t Fence Me In

  10 Rootin’ Tootin’ Western Musicals

  Most Broadway playhouses are in the West Forties (west of Broadway, that is). Here are ten musicals that gazed just a bit further west, beyond the Hudson.

  1. CRAZY FOR YOU

  A new musical (1992) loosely fashioned from the Gershwin brothers’s Girl Crazy (1930). In both, a man heads West to the desert, and falls in love with the only girl in Deadrock, Nevada. The creators of Crazy For You wisely wrote a new book with palatable show-biz elements: Our hero is a wannabe hoofer who revitalizes the playhouse in town, bringing in a Follies show and reviving the spirits of the townsfolk. The Gershwin numbers were aided tremendously by choreographer Susan Stroman.

  2. DESTRY RIDES AGAIN

  James Stewart played Destry, a sheriff so effective that he tames the West without using a gun, on film in 1937’s Destry Rides Again. The role was entrusted to Andy Griffith for the 1959 Broadway musical version, also called Destry Rides Again. Produced by David Merrick (who opined that at the time there had never been a real rip-snorter of a Western musical), the score was by the estimable Harold Rome, with a book by Leonard Gershe.

  3. WILDCAT

  Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh wrote the score to N. Richard Nash’s libretto about a hot-cha oil prospector in 1912. What made it noteworthy was the presence of Lucille Ball, in her only Broadway musical. Despite a typically fine Coleman-Leigh score (including “Hey, Look Me Over!” and “Give a Little Whistle”), the book was not distinguished, and Ball was uncomfortable (and unhealthy) throughout. It was a flop at just 172 performances and didn’t last the 1960 season.

  4. OKLAHOMA!

  The landmark 1943 musical based on Lynn Riggs’s 1931 play Green Grow the Lilacs. The plot means little (I hate you, I love you, you goin’ to the dance?), but the telling is everything: cowboys, farmers, and their women all coming of age as the nation grows up around them, while Oklahoma territory becomes a state. Rodgers and Hammerstein carved their niche in the American consciousness with this classic show, the first real musical play.

  5. 110 IN THE SHADE

  N. Richard Nash wrote the book for the flop Wildcat; it resembles his play The Rainmaker. Nash finally got around to adapting the play into a musical, 110 in the Shade, in 1963. Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, red-hot from The Fantasticks, scored the show, which concerns the men of the Curry family, their spinster sister, and the flashy fraud who finally makes all their dreams come true. The elemental trappings of the Western locale suited Jones and Schmidt; their work is typically excellent.

  6. THE WILL ROGERS FOLLIES

  It always takes place Tonight, On The Stage Of This Theater, but this 1991 Tony-winning musical warmly recalls the era and the essence of America’s cowboy philosopher. Director-choreographer Tommy Tune conceived the evening as a giddy, hellzapoppin’ Ziegfeld Follies revue, with Mr. Ziegfeld as a disembodied voice coaching Rogers along to tell his life story. Wild West Show acts elbow the girls, girls, girls for stage time, and Rogers and his life and times are genially observed all evening, until Wiley Post finally rises from his box seat and encourages Will to go flying with him.

  7. DOS BARBECU

  Yes indeedy, Wagner’s Ring operas reset to the contemporary West. Wagner’s mammoth operas are spun for gentle comedy in this off-Broadway spoof, which finds the Valkyries chasing the ring (and the dwarf) through Texas, where it winds up as a gift at a barbecue in honor of a double wedding ceremony. Das Barbecu, with music by Scott Warrender and book and lyrics by Jim Luigs, premiered at Goodspeed Opera House in 1993 and moved to off-Broadway in 1994, where it had the considerable benefit of a superb cast.

  8. URBAN COWBOY

  A spring opening (and closing) in 2003, Urban Cowboy is closely based on the John Travolta-Debra Winger movie of the same name. Young Bud and his wife, Sissy, live their lives in contemporary Houston, with much of the action centering around Gilley’s Bar and that famous mechanical bull. As is the case with many new musicals, particularly those adapted from film sources, the score is a mix of old hit songs (“Could I Have This Dance,” “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”) and new show tunes, in this case, tunes from several composers.

  9. PAINT YOUR WAGON

  The great songwriting team of Lerner and Loewe did most of their work in a European milieu (My Fair Lady, Brigadoon, Gigi), but this 1951 show, their second Broadway success, is a pure Western love story. It concerns a grizzled gold prospector and his budding daughter (who can’t understand why the menfolk are always pawing her) headed to California for the Rush of 1849, and her romance with a young Mexican. Don’t be put off by the film version, with those singing stars, Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood: Paint Your Wagon is a superb show.

  10. THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS

  A posse of Texans (authors Peter Masterson and Larry L. King, composer Carol Hall, and director-choreographer Tommy Tune) created this smash 1977 musical based on the real-life pleasure-for-poultry Chicken Ranch in west Texas. Run for generations with a tacit relationship between The Madam and The Law, it’s only when a ratings-hungry TV preacher gets his truss in a twist that Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd reluctantly steps in to close ’er down. Tune’s cartoonish direction (i.e., cheerleaders dancing with two life-size cheerleader dolls apiece) greatly aided the no-nonsense satire of the tale.

  Bring the House Down

  Pop Stars Who Crossed Over to Broadway

  Like movie and TV stars, pop recording artists can rejuvenate their careers, or even find a second home, in the musical theater. Here are ten singing sensations who traded the studio and concert stage for the legitimate stage.

  1. REBA MCENTIRE

  One of the most popular country singers ever, Reba McEntire had crossed over to films with her performance in Rob Reiner’s dreadful North. She played a Texas mama who sang to convince young North to join her family. She fared better with her first Broadway project, Annie Get Your Gun.

  Other stars followed Bernadette Peters in the role of Annie Oakley in the 1999 revival, but Reba seemed to make the most sense. Not as needlessly glamorous as Susan Lucci, she also had the “country girl” authenticity to eclipse someone like Cheryl Ladd in the role. McEntire got great reviews (some saying she was better even than Peters), and her facility with the comedy paved the way to her still-running, eponymous sitcom.

  2. JOEY FATONE

  Heartthrob Joey Fatone and his cohorts in the boy band N*SYNC put on a lively, almost non-stop stage show with vocal and stage pyrotechnics to spare. Fatone later branched out to pure acting, landing gigs in the vanity N*SYNC film project On The Line and a funny character bit in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. He made his Broadway debut in 2002, playing filmmaker Mark Cohen, in the long-running Rent.

  3. TONI BRAXTON

  Toni Braxton, the gorgeous, soulful, Grammy-winning R & B singer, made a belated Broadway debut as heroine Belle in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Taking on the role in July of 1998, Braxton used her considerable beauty and star power to charm audiences and strike another blow for color-blind casting. While it’s true that beautiful songbirds like Miss Braxton will probably never lack work, the presence of a Bl
ack Belle in the Broadway arena was nevertheless a pleasing sight. She also took on the title role in Disney’s Aida in June 2003.

  4. FRENCHIE DAVIS

  Frenchie Davis is a classic example of the “failing upward” school of success which is so prevalent in show business. A surefire finalist on TV’s popular American Idol, the plus-sized Davis found her vehicle to fame had stalled after she was discovered to have posed for an adult Internet website. (Boo, hiss!) “Save Frenchie” petitions went out, but Fox TV executives held their ground. (BOO, HISS!)

  Entertainment Tonight knew a good thing when it saw one, and hired Davis as a roving reporter. (Aww-www.) Finally, the outsized performer landed where she belonged—in the belter-friendly smash hit Rent (Yaaaaaay!) Unlike either of the two American Idol finalists, Miss Davis appears to have the vocal chops to be able to sustain a career in front of a live audience.

  5. LINDA RONSTADT

  In the 1970s, many rock critics bemoaned the lack of legitimate female singing talent in the ranks; their exceptions were usually Pat Benatar and Linda Ronstadt. Joseph Papp evidently thought so, too; he put Ronstadt in the Public Theater revival of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance in the summer of 1980. Her wide eyes fluttering with faux- Victorian propriety, Ronstadt’s voice was stretched somewhat thin at the top of the killer role of Major-General Stanley’s daughter Mabel, but her rock-star presence was one of the many offbeat delights in the successful revival. Showing off her versatility futher, Ronstadt’s concert of Mexican music, Canciones de Mi Padre, played Broadway in the summer of 1988.

  6. SEBASTIAN BACH

  Dude. Skid Row lead singer Sebastian Bach has apparently found a second career in the musical theater. Admittedly, though, the roles he’s found in the theater have only been a stone’s throw from the role of hair band frontman. His first stint was in the long-running Wildhorn-Bricusse turkey Jekyll & Hyde, taking over the huge role of the titular fun couple in June of 2000. Next on his plate was Riff Raff in the revival of The Rocky Horror Show, which he took over just in time for Halloween in 2001. He was dismissed, amid some mystery, from 2003’s national tour of Jesus Christ Superstar. Dude.

  7. SHEENA EASTON

  The bonnie Scot lassie with the number one hit made her Broadway debut in 1991, after a tour in what ads called “one of the musical theater’s great sexy parts,” Aldonza, in Man of La Mancha. (Memo to marketing: She’s not. She’s a “kitchen slut reeking of sweat.”). Easton got pretty bad notices, but the whole revival was a wash until some old hands came in to save it, like the original Aldonza, Joan Diener. Easton could have been well-served by Broadway; she’s beautiful and can act and sing, as evinced by a stint on TV’s Miami Vice. Brigadoon, anyone?

  8. DEBORAH GIBSON

  Eighties pop moppet turns Broadway trouper! So might the headlines read for Deborah, a/k/a Debbie Gibson. The possessor of Billboard number one singles before she could drink, Miss Gibson turned to the Broadway stage not long after that, playing Eponine in Les Miserables in 1991, and following up with Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (preceding Toni Braxton, as it happens), Grease, and, following tours of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Funny Girl, and Gypsy in New Jersey, she took over the star-spangled replacement reins of Sally Bowles in the Roundabout revival of Cabaret.

  9. VANESSA WILLIAMS

  Vanessa Williams is basically Frenchie Davis writ large (you should pardon the expression): Miss America, disgraced by porn photos, lays low until everyone realizes she can sing and act, carves out a huge pop career, then hits Broadway. While her beauty was obvious at first sight, Williams took her time in hitting the Main Stem, finally taking over from the great Chita Rivera in Kiss of the Spider Woman. That role, a mysterious Argentinian film icon, was not such a great fit, but after a good stab at another Rivera role, Rose in a TV-movie Bye Bye Birdie, and a triumph in a 1997 concert production of St. Louis Woman, she blazed back to Broadway as the Witch (sporting warts in Act One, a killer Roman wrap outfit in Act Two) in the 2002 revival of the Sondheim-Lapine Into the Woods.

  10. CAROLE KING

  One of the greatest female songwriters ever, the great Carole King carved out her own space in pop music history as both a songwriter and a superb performer. Her considerable catalogue of songs, including such all-time greats as “The Loco-Motion,” “You’ve Got a Friend,” and “Tapestry,” has been excerpted in three different Broadway shows, most notoriously the 1982 disaster Rock and Roll! The First 5,000 Years.

  King finally made her dramatic debut on Broadway in 1995, playing Mother Johnstone in Willy Russell’s one-of-a-kind musical Blood Brothers. She took over the role of a conflicted mother of identical twins, forced to give one up at birth, from another pop star, Petula Clark.

  Come Back to Me

  10 Hollywood Stars Who Crossed Over to Broadway

  Now, as in the past, Broadway serves as a “training ground” for many future movie and television stars. Likewise, a Hollywood star’s appearance on the Main Stem can pre-sell a show or give the box office a much-needed shot in the arm. Here are ten performers who made it big in Hollywood, then played New York, often returning in triumph.

  1. STING

  Rock legend Sting (nee Gordon Sumner), of the band The Police, was represented on Broadway in 1982 via some Police tunes in the disastrous revue Rock and Roll! The First 5,000 Years. But in 1990, after rock stardom and some genuine movie acclaim, he made his Broadway acting debut as gang leader Macheath in Michael Feingold’s translation of the Brecht-Weill classic, 3 Penny Opera. The revival was not very well received, but Sting received acclaim for his performance in some circles.

  2. KATHARINE HEPBURN

  Perhaps the greatest movie actress of all time, the late, great Kate appeared in plays on Broadway as early as 1928. But it wasn’t until 1969, and after several Oscars, that she made her Broadway musical debut. For Hepburn to deign to perform in a tuner, the subject had to be as legendary as she, and indeed it was: The show was Coco, and Hepburn wittily essayed the part of designer Coco Chanel, she of the pink suit and big glasses. (Hepburn made the scene in the big glasses, but mostly stuck to slacks.) As high-profile as her return was, she was basically playing herself, and critics and audiences loved it live. They loved her more than the show, though, and Hepburn lost the Tony Award, to …

  3. LAUREN BACALL

  … Who made her musical debut that same season, in Applause, the musical version of the classic film All About Eve. Bacall completely dug the groovy modernday adaptation, swinging in a disco here, dishing with her gay hairdresser there, covering up her lack of real musical-theater savvy with her effortless glamour and star power. Despite the presence of Hepburn in Coco, just a couple of blocks north, Bacall’s was by far the biggest and most heralded star turn of the season. Her next musical was over a decade later, in Woman of the Year, another adaptation, this time from a Tracy-Hepburn film (oh, the irony). Bacall’s typical no-nonsense glamour and that unassailable star power won her another Tony, and she was later replaced in the role by…

  4. RAQUEL WELCH

  … Who took over the role of Tess Harding from Bacall in 1982. Welch’s movie career was running on fumes at this time, but her Broadway debut created a stir of its own, skewing the role a bit younger, and offering a very different kind of glamour and hotness than Bacall. Predictably, the press embarrassed themselves, getting their tongues caught in their typewriters and debating the proper way to spell “AA-OOOOOO-GAH!”

  Thirteen years later, Miss Welch played a role even more implausible than Tess Harding, when she followed Julie Andrews into the Broadway flop Victor/Victoria. Myra Breckenridge repeated itself here, as Welch, the ur-female, again played a woman dabbling in sexual ambiguity.

  5. DAVID HASSELHOFF

  Say what you will about the star of Knight Rider and Baywatch, he was at least partly responsible for turning the former into a household name (including a forthcoming full-length “reunion” movie) and the latter into the most popular TV
show on the planet. Hasselhoff also enjoys a successful career as a pop star in Germany and a decent level of fame here in the states, so the producers of the long-running Jekyll & Hyde, Frank Wildhorn, wasn’t exactly whistling “Dixie” when they asked Hasselhoff to take over the title dual roles.

  For three months in 2000, Hasselhoff took on gallant Henry Jekyll and goofus Mr. Hyde in Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse’s cheesy take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s Victorian horror tale. TV cameras for the Broadway Television Network recorded Hasselhoff’s last night, and although he worked hard, the highcamp, totally silly material defeated him soundly. (His karate-kick exit after his curtain call didn’t help either.) Rumors have Hasselhoff headed back to Broadway in a revival of Lerner and Loewe’s Paint Your Wagon.

  6. LIZA MINNELLI

  While it couldn’t have been easy for a performer to grow up as Judy Garland’s daughter, Liza Minnelli obviously had the talent to go the distance. Her first musical was the confusing Flora, the Red Menace, which did less for her than she did for the show. She did, however, win a Tony for Flora at age nineteen, and that show’s composer and lyricist, John Kander and Fred Ebb, wrote their next score, Cabaret, with Minnelli in mind. She didn’t do it on stage but had some mild success with the film version (you know, co-starring with a guy named Oscar!).