Word: kern
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...rate, the recent nostalgia boom in the musical theatre continues apace. The Spingold Theatre at Brandeis University has just kicked off its summer season by offering a sprightly production of Sweet Adeline, the 1929 musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, imported from a two-month run at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Connecticut...
...Jerome Kern (1885-1945) was, with Irving Berlin, one of the two composers chiefly responsible for establishing the modern musical as an important theatrical genre. Kern was also the major stimulus for the young George Gershwin, and has remained an idol for the still-active Richard Rodgers, who celebrates his 75th birthday tomorrow...
With a plot complicated enough to confuse even the most well-connected in the audience and some songs which might leave Jerome Kern wondering if pieces of his Showboat ever floated into Cambridge, the exuberant cast of leading men has taken its annual sidestep into the Hasty Pudding Theater. Cardinal Knowledge, at least ostensibly, is about a cardinal trying to track down the inheritance of his girlfriend in 17th century France but, as usual at the Hasty Pudding, it's the good time you have, not the money you lost that counts. And with the excellently choreographed, excellently executed dance...
With a plot complicated enough to confuse even the most well-connected in the audience and some song which might leave Jerome Kern wondering if pieces of his Showboat ever floated into Cambridge, the exuberant cast of leading men has taken its annual sidestep into the Hasty Pudding Theater. Cardinal Knowledge, at least ostensibly, is about a cardinal trying to track down the inheritance of his girlfriend in 17th century France but, as usual at the Hasty Pudding, it's the good time you have, not the money you lost that counts. And with the excellently choreographed, excellently executed dance...
...Cardinal Knowledge gets better. For one thing, it's shorter than the first act. For another the numbers are much catchier. The music by Paris K.C. Barklay is peppy, sweet and unashamedly derivative. One nice number called "Heaven Would Be Hell Without You" has phrases astonishingly like Jerome Kern's "Can't Help Loving That Man of Mine," and Leonard Bernstein could claim at least a one per cent royalty. But the best music is Barklay's own and sprightly. The lyrics rise and dip, more to Appalachian than Olympic heights and similarly on the downward scale. The choreography...