"1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" and "Roza"

[WithoutATrace]

Posted: 8/26/05 at 10:56am

Was anyone on this board fortunate enough to see either of these two broadway flops? I would love to hear your reviews...what were the plots of these shows, how was the music, book, acting, do you think these shows could have been saved?

From what I've heard, 1600 has a good score and a bad book and Roza was just horrible. How was Georgia Brown as Madame Roza?

Any information you could provide would be wonderful. Thanks!

[Barihunk]

Posted: 8/26/05 at 11:38am

I did not see the original "1600 Penn Ave", but I had the experience of performing in a workshop production of it in college back in 1992. It was backed by the Bernstein estate and played at the Kennedy Center for a week in the summer. The hope was to see if it could move to Broadway eventually. The workshop went back to the original book which apparently had been all but thrown out by the time the 1976 production opened.

The original version had a sort of show within a show aspect to it, with a group of actors putting together this musical about former presidents. There was very Upstairs/Downstairs quality to it as well - with a subplot concerning the slaves (Lud and Seena) who worked in the White House. Some of the material for those characters was tremendous. Really brilliant. Also, the pieces for the actress playing the various First Ladies were terrific (Duet for One), but as a whole, while very ambitious, it just didn't work. This version eventually became (in a somewhate trimmed version) "A White House Cantata". Deutsche Grammophone recorded it in 1997 - it's worth picking up, although an OBC would have been preferrable for Patricia Routledge's performance alone. I found Bernstein's music to be fascinating throughout. I think it would be a great show for Encores to do some day - maybe with Chenoweth and Hugh Jackman, Stokes Mitchell and Audra McDonald.

Updated On: 8/26/05 at 11:38 AM