Word: belters
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Porter really were to lend approval, it would be chiefly for Patti LuPone. As Nightclub Belter Reno Sweeney, she rivals the role's originator, Ethel Merman, in volume and clarity of voice, and far outdoes her in intelligence and heart. CoStar Howard McGillin has shirt-ad looks, puppyish charm and a lilting tenor. Other delights: Tony Walton's Art Deco ocean-liner set, Paul Gallo's seascape lighting and Michael Smuin's crisp choreography. The supporting cast is mostly ordinary, and Kathleen Mahony-Bennett's oomphless ingenue is not even that. The book, by P.G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton...
...story, as in the first version, are plaintive solos for disillusioned women: Broadway Baby, in which an old show girl (Margaret Courtenay) recalls youthful struggles in a tinkly, ironic forerunner of A Chorus Line's What I Did for Love; Who's That Woman?, a realization by a brassy belter (Lynda Baron) of how age has crept up on her; Could I Leave You?, an outpouring of vitriol from a neglected wife (Rigg); Losing My Mind, the pathetic admissions of a suppliant lover (Julia McKenzie). Sondheim's best lyric ever is I'm Still Here, an anthem of survival that...
...fault was Ronstadt's. Her voice seemed small and uncertain, and she was unable to move from her strong, rock-belter's low register to her silvery high notes without shifting gears awkwardly in her uncertain middle range, where most of Mimi's singing is done. It seems doubtful that her deficiencies are readily curable. She must have known early in rehearsal that the experts had been right to say that a pop singer could not make the leap to Boheme. She might have quit then and sunk a production that depended heavily on her name. That she stayed...
...galvanic as Holliday is Cleavant Derricks as a slam-bang comic belter sadly beached by new musical tides. A superb choreographer, Bennett is surprisingly skimpy on dances. Only one number, Steppin ' to the Bad Side, fully displays his stylish percussive mastery. But then, the entire evening marches to his drumming beat...
Crimes of the Heart. Three sisters, nurtured in Southern gothic grotesquerie, induce spasms of laughter in Beth Henley's Pulitzer-prizewinning drama. Dreamgirls. A pearl in the strand of notable U.S. musicals. There is dazzling elegance in Theoni V. Aldredge's costumes, and a young belter named Jennifer Holliday can start, stop and steal a show. (See above.) The Dresser. Paul Rogers plays a decrepit provincial Shakespearean actor-manager; Tom Courtenay, his valet. In double image, they are Lear and his Fool-and both are magnificent...