Word: fiorello
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...favorite fellow countrymen: Ralph Nader, Dr. Benjamin Spock and, perhaps above all, Norman Thomas ("He was the American Isaiah"). But the Manchester method of history may finally be described as stream-of-schlock, often fascinating though sometimes overwhelming. Figures like Marilyn Monroe ("She exulted in her carnality") and Fiorello LaGuardia ("swashbuckling five-foot-two-inch mayor") coexist in a kind of cartoon version of American folklore. About three pages are devoted to the life and times of Frank Sinatra-juxtaposed with a mini-history of the atomic bomb. In the spinning mind of the reader, the Bay of Pigs...
...FIORELLO!, though, is a demanding production and it is impressive that the directors have done as well as they have. The music is ambitious in this show, requiring more complicated counterpoint than most musicals attempt. Nonetheless, the political hacks and the trio of legal clients handle the score professionally, rendering clear and balanced performances...
...Fiorello! is based on the early career of Fiorello H. LaGuardia up to the start of his successful campaign for mayor of New York City in 1933. His biography is a mere thread of a plot to connect a series of vignettes about fun-loving politicians in the 1920s. In addition to being the best-written parts of the show, these vignettes are irresistable in the way they seem also to satirize recent events. The claims of Tammany officials that they afforded various luxuries on their comparatively modest salaries by saving the pennies earned by, for example, returning empty milk...
Despite the political relevancy of Fiorello!, this musical is not "political" and it is not "current." Before any women decide to give the show the hook, they should remember that the play is period and women did say things like "I'm going to marry the very next man who asks me." And although the play is about politics, it does not mean to make a statement about things political--except to say that politics is entertaining, which in its own way is as fundamental and fundamentally cynical a statement as one could expect...
...Fiorello is reviewed on page...