Seesaw...My new favorite musical.

It's always great to find another SEESAW fan. This is definitely one of my favorite shows, never seen it live so I guess I should say one of my favorite Broadway scores.
Isn't Michele Lee one of the best belters? I simply love her voice, the emotion she puts into it, her great comedic timing, the pathos in songs like "I'm Way Ahead," I mean she did it all in that show.
I'm surprised Encores! hasn't tackled this show yet, it's a great turn for a female star (with about 4 or 5 solos I believe), great turn for the male star, and also the Tommy Tune character (blanking out on his name) leads the law tap number and "It's Not Where You Start."
If you like the score, Joely Fisher does a hilarous and showstopping rendition of "Welcome to Holiday Inn" in the concert tribute to Richard Adler, Jerry Bock, and Cy Coleman album readily available on iTunes.
SEESAW love makes my day.
"If there's a wrong way to say, a wrong way to play it..."

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It was a highlight of my teenage years, even though I knew it was not great like Sondheim.

I wanted to be tough and sing like Michelle Lee and laugh and dance like Tommy Tune. And I wanted Ken Howard to rescue me from my neuroses. None of which happened because...nobody did it like me.

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An old friend of mine, the late Thea Ramsay, opened her club act with "Welcome to Holiday Inn".

Thea had very fine blonde hair that wouldn't hold a curl for very long. She solved this by setting her hair in hot rollers and made her entrance wearing them. As she sang the song she took her rollers out finishing in time for a Big Finish. Her curls lasted about the length of her act.

Also, don't forget Gittel's last song "I'm Way Ahead/Seesaw reprise". This is a star eleven o'clock number.

If you look closely with a magnifying glass at the cd photos you will see a picture of Michael Bennett and then-Mayor John Lindsay who looked more than a lot like leading man Ken Howard. It is a nice little in-joke.

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SEESAW page on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Seesaw_%28musical%29&oldid=120050094

Seesaw is a musical with a book by Michael Bennett, music by Cy Coleman, and lyrics by Dorothy Fields.

Based on the William Gibson play Two for the Seesaw, the plot focuses on a brief affair between Jerry Ryan, a young lawyer from Nebraska, and Gittel Mosca, a kooky, streetwise dancer from the Bronx. The musical numbers evoke colorful aspects of New York City life but have relatively little to do with the story. The most notable feature of the score's original orchestrations was their wide use of brass instruments.

A stormy tryout period resulted in the departure of original director Ned Sherin (to make room for director/choreographer Bennett) and female lead Lainie Kazan. After 25 previews, the Broadway production, directed and choreographed by Bennett, opened on March 18, 1973 at the Uris Theatre. It later transferred to the Mark Hellinger; between the two venues, it ran a total of 296 performances.

The opening night cast included Ken Howard, Michele Lee (ironically, a close friend of Kazan, whom she replaced), Giancarlo Esposito, and Tommy Tune.

The director was Ed Sherin, husband of Jane Alexander. He is the director of Law and Order now or some NY based series.

He was nominated for at least one Tony for Find Your Way Home and maybe more. His other musical was Rex, Richard Rodgers' penultimate show. That show was doctored by Hal Prince, but Sherin held onto billing for dear life since he didn't want to be fired from another show.

Seesaw ran about 7-8 months on a week-to-week basis barely breaking even with rental and royalty waivers. Plus a few other cost saving things...(See below).

Finally the IRS showed up because they had been 'saving' money by not paying the payroll taxes to the feds, and the IRS scooped up all the cash at the Hellinger window, and that was that. This was a Tuesday and Seesaw closed the following weekend losing all of its capitalization and then some.

It was revised a bit and had a reasonably successful tour with John Gavin and Lucie Arnaz (This tour is what gave Lucie industry cred), and there was a bus and truck that starred John Raitt. Not a bad after-life for a 7 month flop.

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very few people ever heard of Tommy Tune before "See Saw".....thought he was great

This was the first show Michaell Bennett got full directing credit for, right?

Anyway there's a bit about the troubles with this show in a thread I started on Michael Bennett and Seesaw (https://forum.broadwayworld.com/readmessage.cfm?boardname=bway&thread=930910#2926848) and sinc ethen I got the cd--and love it too. Perthaps it has a few too many similarities with Sweet Charity (the only other score sadly, Coleman and Dorothy Fields did together before her death) but that hardly seems a crime. However--it's based on a 2 person drama and was opened up *huge*. I think that may be the big problem with the piece--in the end apparantly there were so many rewrites (out of town when Bennett came to fix it the cast would perform the old versiona dn meanwhile rehearse Bennett's version which was nearly completely redone daily) that in the end no one was sure who wrote the book (michael Stewart wrote the original, Neil Simon helped with some rewrites, Michael Bennett took all the credit). Of course Michele Lee was one of the people who came in whith Bennett so that's a good thing, even if she was probably all wrong for the role (most say).

I wish there were some clips of this--there's a performance by Lee in 1975 singing on the Dinah Shore show, there're the dancers of Seesaw (including Tune) dresed as Hippies doing a number from Mame (!) with Carol Channin (!!) on youtube, and there's Shirley Bassey singing Nobody DOes it Like Me which is hysterical to me cuz Shirley sings it with all the modesty of the Queen of Sheba.

I get the impression that it has a great score (it does) and the production lasted even as long as it did largely thanks to Bennett's often ingenius staging which was largely just to throw as many production numbers at the piece as possible. Which doesn't make it all that revivable unless you can do those production numbers--but an Encore staging would be great. Mordden in his book on 70s musicals (where he devotes a chapter comparing this to Pippin and how each were changed so much in rehearsals) also says that John Gavin, who did the Broadway production before the tour, coming in and having a shirtless scnee which brought in tons of gays probably helped too... lol (though having seen Gavin shirtlessin Psycho I have to say I woulda bought a ticket...)

E

As a sidenote, the fired lead was Lainie Kazan who went on to have a more successful life in Hollywood and later starred in MY FAVORITE YEAR on Broadway. The most heart-breaking part of the story was that she knew that Bennett was rehearsing her good friend Michele Lee in the mornings while she was performing the show at night.

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It seems like cutting "Poor Everybody Else" from CHARITY was a good decision, Verdon already cut some of her numbers during the run of the show, I can't imagine her being able to do this number. I'm always surprised to hear Lee doing it so effortlessly on the recording, she was a true belter, her performance of this one song is quite exhilarating.

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Yeah I guess, for her sake, Bennett staged it with, if there was dancing, others dancing behind her, not her. I wonder if Fosse got as far as staging the original and what it looked like?

I particularly love the reprise/counterpart in the tap/lawyer number

One small complaint--the DRG CD isn't very good quality. I assume it's one of their older releases and so no remastering was done like their newer ones--the source, when you listen to it on headphones especially, sounds a bit like a low quality tape with lotsa "echoes" when a cut fades out etc. And of course useless "linear notes" if you can call them that. Still for a fairly obscure, one year run of a show I shouldn't complain so I'll quit (oh and I woulda loved to have heard what John Gavin sounded like in the male lead replacement cast and tour just cuz he's one of my big oldtime movie star crushes but oh well :) (apparantly him being in the show brought in a large influx of gay audience members interested to see his shirtless scene--somethings with Broadway audiences never change I guess)

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OK Mandelbaum's book on Bennett says that Michele Lee sang her 11 O clock finale number at the '74 Tonys--Brody or anyone have a copy?

The "Who is Tommy Tune?" was very obviously sarcasm.

I <3 Seesaw. Anyone heard the two cut songs on Lost in Boston?

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