Michael Bennett and Jimmy Webb's Scandal! (With Swoozie Kurtz)- Page 2

[rosscoe(au)]

Posted: 3/2/09 at 11:46pm

Thank you Pal Joey!... :))

[Actor 7]

Posted: 3/2/09 at 11:47pm

From what I have heard and read from various books about Bennett and the choreographers during his life, Bennett trusted no one more than Bob Avian and always credited Avian for his successes as a choreographer. I think hearing a first person account from Bob Avian of his thoughts about the period when he worked hand in hand with Bennett on Promises, Promises, Company, Follies, A Chorus Line and Dreamgirls, would give some valuable insight into this era. I know their friendship was not always an easy journey but we have never really had Avian's own read on his professional and personal friendship with Bennett. Only a few paragraphs in each of the two main biographies and that's about all we know. Both Bennett and Avian were first and foremost excellent dancers prior to their careers as choreographers. I would like to hear Avian's memories of the SCANDAL rehearsals. "There's going to be a scandal on Broadway" was one of the publicity releases during the Scandal workshop. It would be interesting to hear from some of the dancers involved with the workshops for Scandal as well.

Posted: 3/2/09 at 11:56pm

The Kelly book (one Singular Sensation) is the one I found unabashedly gossipy. I dunno I agree it sounds liek it was potentially awful--maybe the kind of thing everyone invovled felt was so moving but then to the outside world would have just seemed... off. Still, I wish we could hear or see something more from it.

As per Avian I wasn't trying to give him less credit than he deserves. But the man is VERY soft spoken and avoids any limelight--he doesn't seem like someone who's gonna crank out a book.

[InfiniteTheaterFrenzy]

Posted: 3/3/09 at 2:13am

Between One Singular Sensation (which I agree- most gossipy theatrical bio ever!) and the Ken Mandelbaum Michael Bennett book, I feel like I know Scandal well, and yet I have still never heard any of the music... is the only song from the show that is recorded commercially the Michael Feinstein recording of Only One Life?

[jv92]

Posted: 3/3/09 at 6:37am

The Kelly biography is a piece of trash. Half of it is pure gossip, most of it is made up of mistakes (One glaring one, for me at least- Buddy Plummer DOES NOT have a mental breakdown at the end of Follies, that's Ben). Also annoying, Liz Smith's catty comments towards Sondheim at Michael's funeral. I don't think Sondheim's tears durring whatever song he played ("Children and Art" or something) were phony whatsoever. This list goes on and on.

[morosco]

Posted: 3/3/09 at 6:41pm

I'd like to see a book on Bennett focusing on the creative process with insights from the "Dream Team" of designers Robin Wagner, Theoni V. Aldredge, and Tharon Musser (who is unfortunately facing the challenges of Alzheimer's disease at present).

[jv92]

Posted: 3/3/09 at 9:07pm

Oh no, poor Tharon! My best wishes to her.
And I still say a Michael Bennett retrospective review NEEDS to happen.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/3/09 at 9:25pm

Tharon Musser could make magic in mid-air.

[morosco]

Posted: 3/3/09 at 10:11pm

I agree. Musser's work was absolute genious. No wonder she is considered the Dean of American Lighting Designers. Quite a character.

[morosco]

Posted: 3/3/09 at 10:18pm

I should add that this is a marvelous book chronicling Musser's contributions to the theatre. Well worth having.
The Designs of Tharon Musser

Posted: 3/4/09 at 3:19am

" Also annoying, Liz Smith's catty comments towards Sondheim at Michael's funeral. I don't think Sondheim's tears durring whatever song he played ("Children and Art" or something) were phony whatsoever. This list goes on and on. "

Yes! This original thread came out of another old thread about Hal Prince and Sondheim disliking Chrous Line and that comment was brought up - I believe most of the descriptions came from that book. I do have no doubt that Prince and to a lesser extent Sondheim were jealous at some level of Chorus Line's success but to say that Sondheim's tears at Bennett's funeral were fake was just Liz being catty for the sake of being catty if you ask me.

To answer another quesiton I believe Only One Life can only be heard on Feinstein's album and is the only song from the show--however I was briefly on the Webb forum and someone claimed the song was from a DIFFERENT musical and not even from Scandal. No matter, he did play it for Bennett (didn't they work on another earlier show involving kids? In a circus tent or something? I think it's in the Mendelbaum book--anyway Webb did a number of songs that weren't used for Bennett over the years). I find Michael Feinstein's voice an aquired taste but that album has really gorwn on me and I really like it--a nice downtempo collection of Webb's songs including a good half dozen that are unrecorded ones from his unrecorded musicals (Time Flies from his musical of Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine--which has had some community productions--is particularly wonderful). You cna get it cheap used on Amazon

And JV I agree that Bennett deserves a Jerome Robbins Broadway/Fosse style tribute but it's much harder with him I believe. Bennett never had a distinctive dance vocabulary the way Robbins and especially Fosse do--the only thing that really makes you instantly know that Tick Tock (love that youtube clip) or Music and the Mirror or Turkey Lurkey are Bennett--besides them being brilliant--is he uses so well that old 60s style of "Jazz dance" that NO modern jazz dance uses--it might come from his early career on Hulabaloo.

My point is it's harder to pick random standout dances I think--which doesn't say he has less talent than Fosse, it's more about style. Sure Turkey Lurkey and a number of other routines would make sense but for a revue you'd need more longer scenes, full sets and lighting for much of the effect, etc. It makes it hard.

Posted: 3/4/09 at 3:24am

Oh and that Tharon book looks wonderful! I never thought of a book having pictures of lighting designs but it sounds like it could sit happily beside my two great books of Jo Mielziner designs and Boris Aronson's

[jv92]

Posted: 3/4/09 at 11:29am

What exactly is in the Tharon book? Does it have her lighting plots in there or picture of the way the stage and set look lit?

[morosco]

Posted: 3/4/09 at 1:43pm

The Tharon Musser book is softcover on high quality paper. I don't have it in front of me but I'd say it's 75 to 100 pages. It's a lot like what you would buy at a museum exhibition. It does have a few light plots...Ballroom, Applause, and partials for Dreamgirls (the Dreamgirls focus more on the towers). I don't remember it having the CHORUS LINE light plot but if you want to see that it's in my photo section here on broadwayworld. It also has a few "magic sheets" and some rarely seen photographs. The stories are fascinating. Her craft is discussed as well as discussion about what an amazing human being she is. She could hang with the rowdiest of crew members (and drink them under the table) and she lovingly mothered her assistants over the years. Her assistants over the years treasure the working relationship they had with Musser.

Posted: 3/5/09 at 1:11am

Does it have much of her work with the Prince/Sondheim shows (PO, Night Music and Follies?)

[morosco]

Posted: 3/5/09 at 5:58pm

There are a few pages devoted to FOLLIES. One or two pages on NIGHT MUSIC and PACIFIC OVERTURES. I should also add that the light plots for FOLLIES and A CHORUS LINE are published here too.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/6/09 at 2:44pm

I just came across this on YouTube--the commercial for BALLROOM:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGgTzf3Qfbg

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/6/09 at 2:46pm

And these, for CHORUS LINE:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Vt8BQnFknE

[morosco]

Posted: 3/6/09 at 3:21pm

Interesting how the wedge choreography was changed for the CHORUS LINE commercial.

[esparza 333]

Posted: 3/27/09 at 5:51pm

"The last Michael Bennett workshop, and indisputably the most closely watched, was 'Scandal,' a show that never opened on Broadway.

Mr. Bennett, acting as director, choreographer and producer, abruptly shut it down in January 1985, after more than a year of intense work with the company and even more time with the show's writers.

'Scandal' had been a chancy project from the beginning. The story of a self-doubting woman caught up in the throes of marital upheaval, the show was punctuated by production numbers that revealed with no little explicitness her sexual fantasies and adventures. Despite an enthusiasm for the show that members of the team still express today, Mr. Bennett says that his decision to terminate the production was based on economic and creative factors, and that they were the proper outcome of the workshops. 'What's a workshop for?' he asks. 'To see whether a show should go into production. I have very good instincts, and I decided 'Scandal' would not work.'

That decision came as a shock to the rest of the team.

'Michael sent me the script and it just knocked me out,' says Swoosie Kurtz, who played the leading role in the show. 'He called and said, 'Honey, do you want to be the leading lady in my next musical?' I thought, Did I? He's got to be one of the four, maybe five best directors alive.

Working with him one-on-one was extraordinary - his inventiveness, his imagination, his knowledge of what should be cut and what's dead wood.'

During four workshops, songs written by Jimmy Webb and major dance numbers were integrated into a script written by Treva Silverman, a writer of the original Mary Tyler Moore television series. The director announced his plan to open the show with a brief Off Broadway run before moving it to the Mark Hellinger, a theater that he vainly attempted to become a part-owner of during that time.

The Off Broadway plan, Mr. Bennett concedes, did not go over well with the performers or the creative team. 'The crew - people who had been working with me all my life -did not want to go Off Broadway,' he says.

'They were upset because they were expecting Broadway money at a certain point,' Miss Kurtz says, 'and suddenly it was being put off again.

My own feeling was that he knew better than we what would be best for the show.'

'I think Michael's the only one who knows what happened with 'Scandal,' ' says Ms. Silverman, who had worked with Mr. Bennett for several years on the project before the workshops had begun. Ms. Silverman and Mr. Webb were reluctant to talk in detail about their work on 'Scandal.'

But a frank tale of sexual experimentation was looking like more and more of a risk, he says, in an era of growing conservatism and concern about AIDS. People involved with the show began to question its taste. Mr. Bennett also admits that he was deeply frustrated when, at the last minute the writers, whom he says were not theater-oriented, attempted to exact greater control when Broadway rehearsals were announced.

'A number of things happened that indicated to me that the group of people I had put together was unproduceable,' says Mr. Bennett. 'A number of very dear friends of mine got very greedy,' he adds, refusing to be more specific. But many factors figured in his decision to terminate 'Scandal' and Mr. Bennett insists that no single one forced him to stop work on the show. The outcome, however, had its effect: 'He got sick of the greed,' says Mr. Wagner, who designed the sets for 'Scandal.'"


I found this in a New York Times article from 1986. Very Interesting.

Scandal 1986 NYT

Updated On: 3/27/09 at 05:51 PM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/28/09 at 12:42am

That article really captures the spirit of what went on.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/28/09 at 1:34am

I hadn't read that article in decades. If AIDS hadn't killed Michael Bennett, All That Chat would have.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/28/09 at 9:09am

I can see the obituary now: "He died of complications from All That Chat."

[bk]

Posted: 3/28/09 at 11:14am

I had the joy of working with Tharon Musser back in my long-ago acting days. I did a play at the Mark Taper Forum called Forget-Me-Not Lane by Peter Nichols. Arvin Brown directed it, and the design team was stellar - Eugene and Franny Lee and Ms. Musser. I cornered her one day and asked if I could buy her a drink after rehearsal. So we went to the joint that used to be downstairs from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and told her how brilliant I thought she was and I started "quoting" her light cues from Follies - she was astonished that I actually remembered the lighting. We talked about the show for two hours and it's one of my fondest memories from that period.

Another Follies alum was in our cast - John McMartin - he would NEVER talk about Follies.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/28/09 at 11:24am

If I close my eyes, I can still see some of Tharon Musser's lighting from Follies and Night Music and Chorus Line.

She made magic in mid-air.