Steel Pier — Page 2

The STEEL PIER was a large entertainment pier in Atlantic City and it housed many dance marathons in it's time.

And a Diving Horse too.

I saw this show as part of my coverage of the 1997 Tony awards.

The cast was very good even and the show played well even though the first act had some saggy spots where they spent time in a futile attempt to flesh out the minor characters of the other marathon dancers. A larger problem is that the set up of the basic ghost story premise was clumsy.

Even with these deficiencies, it was a far stronger more cohesive book than THE LIFE and much better staged than TITANIC. Had the revival of CHICAGO not happened the same season, STEEL PIER would have probably done better at the 1997 Tony Awards. Coming away empty handed it was selling only 70% of capacity and closed at the end of June. The OCR arrived in stores in late July, too late to help the show.

Anyone who has heard the CD knows that this is another great Kander and Ebb score and one that they were both very proud of. In many ways the CD, like MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG has kept interest in the show alive and there have been a number of successful regional stagings.

It may not have been the season's best score (TITANIC was) but was far more entertaining and interesting than JEKYLL & HYDE, or THE LIFE. It got more favourable reviews (5) than TITACIC (1).
Ethan Mordden chooses it as one of the few interesting shows of the 1990's in his fascinating book The Happiest Corpse I've Ever Seen.

When you loo at some shows that are absoute garbage that have run for years, 12 weeks for STEEL PIER seems a bit unfair.

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I especially remember the one with the dancing on the wings of the plane

Stroman should have won

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Why do most people rave about The Producers & others loathe it?

Go figure

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I will have to get over to the Samuel French office and pick up a copy of the script. I am curious how much dialogue was written just for teh CD. I don't recall the book being that terrible. As noted, a bit clumsy at times and with some draggy spots in the first half. The Wednesday matinee crowd I saw it with really loved it.



There was no problem with the direction at all. Stroman's choeography was inventive, having to show the dancers becoming increasingly weary. Admittedly it's more fun to watch the lively energetic first dance sequence, "Everybody Dance" than the later routines where exhaustion sets in but as someone here said it made them feel like they had been through 3 weeks of non-stop dancing, which makes the show effective.

I was far more bored by the mess on stage that evening with JEKYLL & HYDE yet it ran 4 years!

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yeah the recording is amazing.

The score is quite nice with the exception of the banal, stupid song Monk's character sings in Act IIto Pudgy McHappy or whatever the character's name was, something like that. The book was awful. I actually found it at the store near the St. James that has a lovely collection of scripts for sale. That night I read it and couldn't even get through it. It was complicated, boring and stupid. Susan Stroman's choreography was spectacular, the actors did a nice job, the production design was good. Just the book and that stupid song for Debra Monk in Act II. It 20 years, if Encores! is still going strong, it'd be a good choice.
JBDC- Don't put words in Kander and Ebb's mouth. Per Colored Lights, they said that Reinking's dancing was great, they were happy for Chicago, but felt Stroman should have won. They never said that her stuff was leaps and bounds ahead of Reinking's. I mean, can you top Fosse when it's done well?

I love listening to that song. She performs it so beautifully.

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I may be in the minority but I enjoyed the show

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Colored Lights is from THE RINK. STEEL PIER wasn't written yet when AND THE WORLD GOES 'ROUND was staged.

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Don't feel bad!!! At least you found Kander and Ebb.

Karen Mason has an AMAZING voice. She understudied Norma (several of them) in Sunset Boulevard (and I hear the nights she went on, the few people who remained in the audience LOVED her.

KAREN MASON


As Norma

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Updated On: 3/18/07 at 08:10 PM

I saw Mason in SUNSET (on purpose) - she sang the score magnificently - I preferred her musical interpretation/voice to Buckley's, and wish it had somehow been recorded. However, she has a very youthful exuberance that couldn't be reigned in, and so acting-wise, was very wrong.

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The score, to me, is one of Kander's and Ebb's best. The neo-Gershwin period style is carried through beautifully. The show has a SOUND, fully realized. Something which, sadly, is not true of Curtains.

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