2009-2010 Musical Revivals

I miss A Little Night Music dearly, which I saw with both casts. I’m sure there are a lot of threads back then but:

* The excitement of having CZJ and Lansbury was amazing. Lansbury was so funny and I thought CZJ was also very good with a warm, pleasing voice - much better than her unfortunate and awful Tony performance. It felt like a very glamorous evening. I loved how intimate the production was in that intimate theatre and found the design choices tasteful and simple. Of course many here will probably criticise the scaled-down nature, some of the supporting cast, small orchestra etc. but I loved it.

* The glamour wasn’t quite as high with Bernadette and Stritch, I thought Bernadette gave an incredible, incredible performance of “Send in the Clowns”. A real career highlight and it felt like the whole audience was enraptured by it. There is a good clip on YouTube proshot of the first half, although of course I think nothing beats the experience in person. Stritch to be frank was not in her best, dropping many lines, not singing, not attempting an accent. Of course it was nice to see her and she tried her best to be funny but I preferred Lansbury.

I think it’s a real shame we didn’t get an EP of Bernadette (for Dolly, too).

I saw La Cage with the original cast - it was a fun evening. I’m not sure why it won best revival - interesting it also was a chocolate factory production from the UK if I recall so had a similar sensibility in terms of being scaled down. But I think it’s hard to compete with the material and cast of Night Music.

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I was fortunate to have seen them all since I believe that most of them had lotteries (in-person) or general rush. I got TKTS for "A Little Night Music" right at the last moment before the show started, and my seats were phenomenal.

Birdie suffered from a Rose that couldn't dance so there was no Shriner's Ballet. It was serviceable, but even with Stamos, Gershon, Irwin, Hoty & Houdyshell, it seemed like a community theater production. No real magic. They changed the line for Mae Peterson from "Now we know what Margo looked like when she left Shangri-La" to "Now we know what happened to Baby Jane", and that didn't come out until two years after when the show was set. A minor gripe, but for some reason, it has stuck with me. I expected far more energy than what was actually presented on stage.

"Finian's Rainbow" is, as others have stated, very dated with a troublesome book. But Kate Baldwin was phenomenal as Sharon, and I'm glad that she got nominated. I also loved the set which really made you feel like they were dancing over hills. Terri White stood out to me among the featured cast. Between this and "Follies" a few years later, she became one of my favorite character performers.

I'm not sure why "Ragtime" didn't last long other than the obvious (low box office returns). It seemed scaled down from the original production, but that made the intimacy really stand out, particularly in the tragic moments. I think it is a musical like "Side Show" that gives the public an uncomfortable place to go to, but the audience really responds to it. No one can ever compare to Stokes & Audra (they sizzled!), but the cast (particularly Christianne Noll as Mother) were great. I think Noll got to sing a bit of "Back to Before" on the Tony's, but Kate Baldwin didn't get to perform.

Having seen the 2005 revival of "La Cage" twice (because of cast changes), I was reluctant to re-visit it so soon, but I went anyway, and enjoyed it although I preferred the lavishness of the earlier production over this. Better seats for the 2005 revival most likely helped. I wasn't as crazy about Douglas Hodge as everybody else though. When I saw Gary Beach, he was truly on fire. Friends saw the tour in L.A. and were disappointed by the lack of glitz. I would have gone back to see it again with Harvey Fierstein, but with so many other options chose not to.

I think "Promise, Promises" is fun for its cast recording and very late 60's typical Bacharach score, but I didn't like it as a show on stage as much as I did with the "How to Succeed" revival. There's a sense of ickiness to it that outside of all those great songs made it a chore to fully enjoy when I began to reflect on it afterwards. Sean & Kristen didn't seem to have much sparkle together, and Kristen seems like someone who would have knee'd her married boyfriend in the no-nads rather than become suicidal.

One of my all time theatrical regrets came with "A Little Night Music", having not gone back to see Peters & Stritch, having seen CZJ and Angela right before the announcement was made about the replacements. But overall, I loved this production, and felt that it deserved to win over "La Cage" (with "Ragtime" as my close second), and learned a major lesson about replacements in shows I love. Never ever miss the opportunity to see someone you like when they take over a major part on Broadway. I did that with "Dolly" after seeing Bette, enjoying it equally as much with Donna & Bernadette, and just having shivers down my spine every time that overture started. I still get chills with the opening of "A Little Night Music" of how the melody goes into directions I never would have dreamed of, manipulating the ear with complete delight.

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There were a lot of musical revivals that season, but they all had their individual strengths and weaknesses. From what I remember, the Tony that year was competitive because the consensus was that the two closed revivals (Ragtime and Finian's Rainbow) were much stronger than the two nominees still running (Night Music and La Cage).

Bye Bye Birdie opened first and was pretty universally disliked. Gershon and Stamos were considered awkward and miscast by most, and none of the kids really jumped out. There was much excitement before the show, but that quickly dissipated once previews actually began.

Ragtime and Finian's Rainbow were both very well liked on here--and by the critics--but they failed to find audiences. Both were physically stripped-down productions but featured large casts and full orchestras, which did feature the performances and the scores beautifully, but they were intimate shows with no stars and huge overheads. Whoopi Goldberg lauded Ragtime on The View, but that wasn't enough. It's worth noting that once Ragtime announced its closing notice, ticket sales skyrocketed and within a day or two, a week-long extension was announced. Had these shows not opened at the depths of a recession, they might have been hits (or at least sustained longer runs) based on their glowing reviews.

A Little Night Music and La Cage were both more controversial here--these were chamber-sized productions of big glamorous shows, with tiny orchestras to boot. La Cage was pretty well-liked, but many who had seen the original production missed the grandeur and felt that the smaller production looked tackier, but it was led by a great performance from Douglas Hodge. Night Music was loved by some but not all. The five-piece orchestration would have been fine in the 200-seat theatre where the production originated, but at the Walter Kerr it felt empty (believe it or not, the cast recording slightly augmented the orchestra, and yet it still sounds embarrassing). This production was described by many (including the creatives and cast) as "Chekhovian" which, to me, seems misguided. It's a comedy of manors, but they added so many pauses and it felt a little languid. Not without merit, but certainly misguided in some respects.

And Promises, Promises closed out the season of revivals mirroring the season's first show--Bye Bye Birdie--as another '60s musical with severely miscast leads. I remember that even though I was entirely unfamiliar with the Bacharach catalogue (I was 13 at the time!) I could instantly tell which two hits were shoehorned in for this revival. Rob Ashford made a series of missteps he would immediately repeat for How to Succeed the next season (although with a much better-cast leading performance) in his busy, backbreaking choreography that didn't so much serve the story as make you bad for the exhausted dancers. Both Promises, Promises and the forthcoming How to Succeed pulled inspiration from the hit drama of the day, Mad Men, in its take on workplace sexism of the 1960's--lean into it fully to present it satirically and highly stylized. But the main problem with this revival was that Rob Ashford is not a very good director. This production ran on the draw of its stars, but it didn't have very much buzz behind it. Katie Finneran, at least, gave a lively performance that everyone agreed was a highlight of the evening.

Lining them up side-by-side, you can see that the themes of the season were "minimalism" and "stars"--it was the middle of a recession, after all! La Cage was a solid enough production, but it won the Tony not because it was so outstanding, but because it had the fewest detractors.

Perhaps this recession season will give us a hint of what's to come when Broadway does finally reopen in a risky, unknown climate--big stars in stripped-down productions.

Thank you everyone for your thorough thoughts! I love all of the cast recordings for these revivals (for the 4 out of the 6 that released them). It's so interesting to read such detailed comparisons!

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I'm shocked at the negativity directed towards the 2010 Promises, Promises revival. I thought it was everything & more...with just the right, light touch needed for the show.

I first saw the Best Choreography number danced on The Tonys. It inspired me to purchase the cast recording, which I played & played & played. Finally, I saw the production. Loved it!

I believe I recall reading somewhere it made over $1 million dollars a week.

It brought to life all I thought a Broadway show would be as I fantasized about The Great White Way as a first-grader in my home in Bergen County, NJ in 1969.