Word: loessers
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...whose star shines in the musical-comedy sky right now, you can bet it'll be Frank Loesser. Though the songwriter died in 1969, his work is enjoying a burgeoning revival. Last week Loesser's "musical with a lotta music," The Most Happy Fella (1956), opened to bravos and bouquets at the New York City Opera in Lincoln Center. A more intimate version of Fella will come to Broadway later this season, as will Loesser's damn-near-immortal Guys and Dolls (1950). This summer's straw-hat circuit was brightened by Where's Charley? (1948), starring Loesser's widow...
...Loesser's output as a Hollywood songwriter, in the years before the composer-lyricist-librettist ganged up on Broadway, needs no revival. It already ornaments every TV late show. Loesser's catchy titles and skewed wit helped lodge many a song in the musical muscle memory of anyone who loves vintage pop: Heart and Soul and Two Sleepy People (music by Hoagy Carmichael), I Don't Want to Walk Without You (Jule Styne), Jingle Jangle Jingle (Joseph Lilley), Hoop-Dee-Doo (Milton DeLugg). And when Loesser began marrying his own music to his words, he hatched even more smashes: What...
...MOST HAPPY FELLA. Frank Loesser's Napa Valley fable, done along operatic lines well before Andrew Lloyd Webber came along, has been a cult icon since its 1956 Broadway production. New York City Opera has a new staging. It stars Louis Quilico as the middle-aged lover of a pert mail-order bride...
...MOST HAPPY FELLA. A Frank Loesser minifestival seems to be under way with a superb staging of this musical drama about a mail-order bride at Connecticut's Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam and another planned at the New York City Opera, and with a revival of his Guys and Dolls that is scheduled to open on Broadway next spring...
...hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers remain loyal to the sassy Daily News, which over the years has been celebrated in song (by Frank Loesser and Phil Ochs, among others) and screenplay (its Art Deco building on Manhattan's 42nd Street was reporter Clark Kent's workplace in the Superman movies). For the tabloid's fans, Maxwell's moxie may prove congenial. He has shown a shrewd feel for the city's odd blend of worldliness and parochialism. Playing to Manhattanites' penchant for embracing almost any outsider who professes himself instantly smitten with their metropolis, Maxwell arrived by yacht...