Thoughts on NANETTE — Page 3

Yes Yes Smaxie.

That's the perfect description of the 70s version. Any show with dancers on beachballs is going to be over the top and that show was, utterly, dreamily.

BTW, I guess No No Nanette was the first to show on Broadway to have a sequel, wasn't it? It was called Yes Yes Yvette. It ran under 50 performances and had the same lyricist, Irving Caesar and the same guy produced it, HH Frazzee who mounted a great number of touring shows in the 20s.

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The Donald Saddler production that played in California and Paper Mill about 10 years ago featured a set design that was fairly close to the original Raoul Pene du Bois design. Incidentally, I did check out one of the "Peach on the Beach" beach balls... while they looked like beach balls from the audience, they were practically made out of concrete. Very very heavy, which is how the girls must have been able to balance on them.

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Amusing aside:

I took my mother to see this his weekend for Mother's Day, and while reading the playbill she says "Oh look! They made a mistake--they forgot to fill in the title of the show!" She then pointed me to Michael Berressee's choreography credit for [title of show].

Knowing how much everyone on here loves this show (and looking forward to seeing this myself), I found this quite amusing.

The beach balls (from the 71 revival) weighed 47 lb each. They were fibreglass wrapped around a sand core.

It's not until you take away Raoul Pene du Bois' designs that you realise just how important they were to the whole feel of the show. I was pleased to see (in photos) that in this presentation they utilised the shape of the false proscenium used in the revival for the onstage masking.

Updated On: 5/12/08 at 08:39 PM