Word: comden
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...PARTY WITH BETTY COMDEN AND ADOLPH GREEN
...party, according to Webster's, is a social gathering for pleasure, and by that definition-or any other-an evening with Betty Comden and Adolph Green is an invitation into high society. For more than 30 years this prolific writing team has enchanted theater audiences with book and lyrics for such hits as On the Town and Bells Are Ringing and delighted moviegoers with films like The Band Wagon and Singin' in the Rain. Now, for six weeks, Comden and Green are back on Broadway, doing their own numbers in their...
...steers clear of political as well as personal problems in their patter: "Hallelujah Baby, about black-white relations in the U.S., never got an ending, somehow...we had to keep changing it as the front pages changed." Though Comden and Green are to be respected for not indulging in gossip or trying to play up themselves by playing off others, perhaps this matured, mellowed presentation makes their show too smooth, too digestible...
...spontaneous combustion," Comden says of their composition. Green revealed a little more of the reworking that went into songs that play effortlessly now. "Sometimes you have a great tune. Lenny had this theme: da da dee, da da dum, -- Green picks the tune out on his chair--"and for a long time it was known in New York living rooms, very much to our embarrassment, as da da dee, da da dum. And then we found the phrase: 'Just in time...
Well, that's successful entertainment. And this "Party" was a vastly entertaining performance. Comden and Green are careful to say they are writers, not performers, but they are almost as talented on the boards as on paper. Dramatics were perfectly designed, blocking and business minimal but maximally suggestive. Their voices, Comden's coloratura in particular, were the biggest surprise of all. Any entertainer able to transform the cavernous spaces of the Loeb mainstage into an intimate club has quite a noisemaker...