Music Theater Works

Pippin – Music Theater Works – North Shore Center for the Performing Arts – June 7, 2023

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I’d never seen Pippin before. It’s a very strange show, but I was hoping at least to see someone being held upside-down hanging from a trapeze while singing No Time at All, ala Andrea Martin in her Tony award-winning performance in the 2013 Broadway revival, but that was wishful thing, although, just as in the Broadway productions, the song was a show stopper, this time performed by Kathleen Puls Andrade.

Pippin, or really, Pepin the Hunchback, was the eldest son of Charlemagne (Charles the Great), named after his grandfather Pepin the Short, in what can only be seen as a cruel generation-skipping continuation of family humor. He never played basketball.

With all the fun stuff of the wild and crazy 8th and early 9th centuries as background, this production cleverly mixes in aspects of current day news broadcasts, while maintaining its play within a play confusion where the protagonist searches, in both incarnations, for self-discovery, being too late to join the Knights of the Round Table in their much more entertaining quest for the Holy Grail a couple centuries earlier.

The plot aside, dancing carried the day, with complicated, high-energy movement generated by a dozen very fresh-looking faces and backed up by an excellent band. If there was any doubt that the original show was choreographed by Bob Fosse, that was removed in the scene the ensemble broke out the white gloves, but alas, no trapeze.

Avenue Q – Music Theater Works – March 15, 2023

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This was my quadrennial visit to Avenue Q, my favorite musical roadway, ahead of 42nd Street, Christopher Street, Henry Street, Broadway, and Sunset Boulevard (forget about Fleet Street).

Unlike some shows, it has not lost its relevance after 20 years. Even the puppets seem like they haven’t aged a day.

I hadn’t previously been to the North Theater at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, where the Music Theater Works is working at music theater while its new building gets built. I loved it, a perfect fit for this show.

I want to give special mention to the two cast members charged with jumping between characters, Andres DeLeon and Melissa Crabtree. Take it from someone who has had his hand up a puppet’s butt (see my piece on my most recent journey to Q at the Mercury Theater), there’s an emotional attachment.

Yet these two actors flawlessly flowed between wildly different persona, demonstrating quick changes, not merely in their handheld attachments, but also in their physical manifestations and vocal ranges.

It’s all great fun, with some very smart commentary mixed in, and we all have the double EGOT-winning composer Robert Lopez to thank for it. I can’t get enough of his work, so I’m seeing The Book of Mormon again in three weeks. It’s the best show about following the advice in a book since How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which was about the business of wickets, not the business of religion.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying – Music Theater Works – Cahn Auditorium – June 15, 2019

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Without conscious effort on my part, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is the third (out of nine) Pulitzer Prize for Drama winning musical I’ve seen in the last eight months. This doesn’t rise to the level of seeing a baseball game in every major league stadium in one season, but it’s all I’ve got.

The Music Theater Works pre-show talk discussed all nine winners, but, as for this production, notably, Ken Singleton as J. Pierrepont Finch was terrific (though nobody could ever top Robert Morse, who took the part from Broadway to the movies without getting replaced by Vanessa Redgrave or Audrey Hepburn, or having his voice dubbed by Marnie Nixon), and the recorded voice of the book was done by . . . wait, wait, don’t tell me, oh right, Peter Sagal, a role previously performed for Broadway revivals by Walter Cronkite and Anderson Cooper.

Playwright Abe Burrows was one of the recipients of the award for How to Succeed in 1962, which is interesting because his Guys and Dolls was originally selected as the winner in 1951, but, rumor has it, because of his troubles with the House Un-American Activities Committee, the trustees of Columbia University vetoed the award (and none was given that year). They must have been concerned that the difficulty in finding a location for the Oldest Established Permanent Floating Crap Game was meant as propaganda to symbolize the predicted fall of capitalism.

As with the crap game, the lure of easy money finds its way into How to Succeed, which famously features a treasure hunt as a marketing ploy. In that spirit, if you can name the other eight Pulitzer winning musicals, six of which I’ve seen, without resorting to the internet, you win a year’s free subscription to this free blog (restrictions may apply).

Anything Goes – Music Theater Works (Cahn Auditorium) – August 18, 2018

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Several people who knew I was going to see Anything Goes remarked to me that it had gotten good reviews. I guess they were just trying to make conversation, given that it hadn’t opened yet. Perhaps they were recalling the reviews for the original 1934 Broadway production starring Ethel Merman, or subsequent ones featuring Patti LuPone and Sutton Foster. In any event, though it required great will power, I restrained myself from correcting them, until now.

Usually I do wait for reviews, and don’t like to go to opening nights, having participated in enough of them to know that often something goes wrong. But this was a short run and I had confidence both in the company and in Cole Porter, a real up-and-comer.

But, sure enough, there was a miscue by the star of the show, Erica Evans, as she started her first song. I’m not sure whether she started singing too early, or had word problems, but after one line, she very calmly and professionally, almost as if it were part of the song, said let’s try that again, a cue that the orchestra, through the conductor, flawlessly picked up on as it vamped to allow her to restart. She then proceeded to knock our socks off for the rest of the show.

Also, a quick mention of the percussionist who, in addition to a slew of the usual instruments, threw in a whistle, a bird call, and several other interesting things I couldn’t keep track of.

But, of course, my favorite part was the tap dance to the title song that closes the first act. What is it about someone, who has just finished being part of a 20-person, high-energy tap dance, calling out five, six, seven, eight, to launch the group into a dance reprise as the curtain lowers that is particularly delightful, or should I say delovely?