Word: singings
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Broadway revivals in decades. The ideal musical, by these criteria, is Rodgers and Hart's 1937 "Babes in Arms." The show's melodic bounty still astonishes: "Where or When," "I Wish I Were in Love Again," "My Funny Valentine," "Johnny One-Note," "The Lady Is a Tramp"... Care to sing along, anyone? You can do so by buying the CD from this glorious revival...
...that most people under 60 have put the great old songs out of their head - and, if they hear them, they don't like them. It's as if America took to heart a gag in this years Encores! revival of the 1932 "Pardon My English": "Go now. And sing no more...
...hinterlands would even know that a clear, crisp Broadway vocal style exists, when "American Idol" teaches that pop crooning is a demonstration of wild vibrato work and orgasmic emoting? My friend, the distinguished actor George Grizzard, watches "American Idol" and shouts with exasperation at the TV screen: "Just sing the goddamn song...
...Here are a few more Encores! epiphanies to recall with a shivery thrill... The giddy glissandi of the "Sing for Your Supper" trio (Gravitte, Luker and Sarah Uriarte Berry) from "The Boys from Syracuse"... Kuhn, an angel lost in hell, turning a 2684-seat theater into a confessional when she performs "The Man I Love" from "Strike Up the Band"... Ruthie Henshell, beautifully torching the ballad "Words Without Music" from "Ziegfeld Follies of 1936"... The second-act overture to "Babes in Arms," when the orchestra began playing "Where or When" and the audience joined in, dreamily humming along and swaying...
...Ives made a pretty, witty something of the script. Director Gary Griffin made it sing, sumptuously; Russell Warner touched up the orchestrations to these just-short-of-classic Gershwin songs; and Rob Ashford staged some sublimely silly choreography. (My notes read, "six dancing couples form a giant pretzel," but I may have been hallucinating.) In a nifty cast, I especially liked Felicia Finley, who played Magda the saucy parlormaid. Finley has looks, a voice and that ageless soubrette pertness - the total musical comedy package. But then, that's what you almost always get at Encores...