Word: balladeers
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...goes swirling into the aisles. David Mitchell's set, festooned with primary colors, is a child's dream of the Big Top. While Michael Stewart has written prosaic nuts-and-bolts lyrics, Cy Coleman's music has a hang-gliding lift to it, and one lovely ballad, The Colors of My Life, will probably take off for a life of its own. As for Joe Layton's staging, the blinding speed of his now-you-see-it-now-you-don't direction makes playgoers forget that they can see right through Barnum...
With the entrance of the two leading women, Happy End takes off. Elizabeth Norment makes a sultry autocrat, ever-cool and competent. Although she has to strain her voice a bit to carry off "the Ballad of the Lily of Hell," she infuses the number with an energy and viciousness that recalls--for a moment--Threepenny Opera's brilliant evocation of evil...
Following Elvis's ballad of betrayal, "Motel Matches," comes one of the album's most thrilling songs, "The Human Touch." Elvis seems trapped in a bizarre reggaed polka, dreadlocks and kielbasa, an "industrial squeeze" that "looks like a luxury,/Feels like a disease." This is Modern Man bombarded by machines, crying for the human touch as he vocally ascends the scale to keep from being swallowed, and succumbs with a heart-rending wail. The song is followed slam-bang by "Beaten To the Punch," in which Elvis races to keep up with the noisy, busy instruments, seizing opportunities before everyone...
...tales to life. In other parts however, Prince's troupe buffs the stories with several coats of shlock and the actors can do little to salvage the intended meanings and morals. Confusion reigns at the end of "Henny Penny," as the cast sings and rocks to the Vietnam ballad "What are We Fighting For" while Foxy-Loxy ships the birds off to who knows where. It's easy to suspend cynicism and read between the still-fresh lines of the simple tales, but ten years later, Story Theatre's sociological comments seem sadly out of date...
...Theeeeere she is, Miss Ameeeerica." It won't be quite the same any more. Bert Parks, 65, for 25 years the mellow master of ceremonies whose rendition of that unguent ballad had become something of a late-summer tradition, has not been invited back for 1980's Miss America contest. Parks took the news hard: "I never thought they'd pull a trick like this. It's a little shabby, isn't it?" No reason was given for his ouster, nor was a successor announced. Some names have been dropped, such as those of Entertainer...