The book isn't "horrendous", it simply suffers from being based on real people and (unlike FUNNY GIRL, say) the fact that Michael Stewart felt the need to be more or less true to Mack Sennett's and Mabel Norman's actual lives.
The simple fact is that they worked together early in their careers, had a brief romance and then went their separate ways. Each did interesting work without the other, though as the show demonstrates, Mabel's "serious" career didn't enjoy the same popularity as Mack's Keystone Cops.
But the problem with the show lies in that phrase "went their separate ways". Act II of the show is a painful exercise in trying to invent excuses to keep Mabel in the show. I worked on a production that Ron Link directed, starring Lucie Arnaz, shortly after the Broadway production closed. The big joke among the cast was "What's in the little red suitcase?" In order to justify Mabel running into Mack on a boat dock so that she can sing "Time Heals Everything", that version actually gave her a line to the effect of "What am I doing here? Oh, I'm looking for my little red suitcase." Said suitcase was never mentioned again except backstage to much hilarity.
Jerry Herman as been saying for years that the problem is that the ending is sad, but lots of successful musicals have sad endings. (See most R&H shows.) Ron Link solved that problem by giving Mack a line, "What's the point of making movies if you can't change reality?", and then replaying the overture and staging it as Mack's "Hollywood happy ending" vision of what his life would have been like if Mabel had lived and come back to him.
It worked beautifully. But it didn't solve the problem of a second act in which the leading characters live in different worlds, travel in different social circles and make different types of movies.
Great score though. Still my favorite of Herman's. But there's a fundamental structural flaw that no amount of window dressing is going to fix. This isn't to say it can't be fixed, but as with ANYONE CAN WHISTLE, nobody to date has figured out how to do it. (Disclaimer: I did not see the Doyle production.)
Oh, and BTW, I saw Jane Krakowski play Mabel for Reprise LA. I know we all adore her and rightfully so, but she sang the score as if she were counting 8s in her head. If nothing else, Mabel has to have a very distinctive voice to make that score work; merely singing well, even very well, is not enough.
(ETA as this lengthy post indicates, I really loved the Ron Link production of the show. (Michael Stewart on the other hand, walked out of the tech rehearsal, threw his opening night tickets at me and told me to tell the creative staff he wanted nothing to do with it. He stomped out, so I didn't get an explanation as to why he was so upset. And just to be clear: he wasn't being unkind to me personally; he was just really in a bad humor.) And the show sold pretty well by Miami standards and considering it hadn't been a hit on Broadway. But it didn't solve the basic structural problem.)
Updated On: 6/13/12 at 07:50 PM
