I was chatting with a work-friend recently. He noticed that I wore a lot of t-shirts for musicals. Mainly, these are for shows either I have been in or I have been connected to. He mentioned that "42nd Street" was one of the few musicals he liked. I tried to hold off on going in to my "42nd Street" rant.
True, I was in "42nd Street", and I felt that the performance was lacking in many ways. I felt that we bit off a bit too much. One of the strengths of this theatre group is that it has several directors working together, but this time three of the four directors were in the show. Further, there was a huge emphasis on teaching the cast tap dance for the large musical numbers. Something had to "give" and something did: the acting. I noticed that I received a grand total of two "notes" for the entire production ("could he be a little more Texan?" and "Don't cross in front of those people, cross behind them"). I decided that at a crucial scene for my character, rather than play it over-the-top for laughs, I was going to play it straight. My character was going to have a broken heart. NO ONE plays this scene this way. And . . . none of the directors had any notes about that? Most of the cast did a fine job with the acting, but some people were positively dreadful.
I am hoping this theatre group knows that this was too much, that the directing staff needs to stick with directing.
But that is neither here nor there. One big problem was the source material.
When I first read the script for "42nd Street", I thought "um . . . okay." The play didn't quite work for me. Later, I realized what was going on. I noticed that songs like "Lullaby of Broadway" and "We're In The Money" weren't in the movie "42nd Street". The play was written in the 80's, but I knew those songs were much older than that. I looked for the source of the songs and I discovered they were in other musicals made by the director of the "42nd Street" movie, Busby Berkeley. Okay, it made sense now! The play "42nd Street" was actually a tribute to the works of Busby Berkeley! And the "play" part was just a few scenes thrown in to stitch it all together.
And that, of course, is a problem for me. One of my sayings, to which no one seems to agree, is that there are these wonderful things called "concerts". If your emphasis is going to be on singing and dancing, throw a concert. A play is about drama, a play is about acting. A friend once told me that Gilbert, from Gilbert & Sullivan, used to say that he wanted "actors that sing", not "singers that act". If "42nd Street" was just going to be a pageant of big Berkeley-esque musical numbers, more power to them. But, they tried to put a play in there, and the play was . . . dreadful!
Now, I'm not going to criticize the fact that 90% of the cast are only there for musical numbers. I must confess that I did the same thing in my musical, "Vampe", although I think I did a better job. Unfortunately, this is true of one of the leads, Billy Lawler. What can we say about Billy? He is full of himself, a little over-dramatic, and has fallen for Peggy. And that amounts to maybe 10 minutes of stage time. He's there to do the big "We're In The Money" dance! "Anytime Annie", even with an actress that didn't slur her lines . . . was there to say two lines and take part in some musical numbers. Burt? Maggie? All were just a bunch of blank characters, with about as much personality as "Man With Clipboard".
And what about Peggy? She's a great dancer, she's pretty, and she's dumb. And that's about it. She's thrust into stardom (note that she is thrust into it: from the moment she shows up, she doesn't actually do anything to become a star, it all just sort of happens), and in the end she's a great dancer, she's pretty, and she's dumb. True, part of the theme is that stardom doesn't change her . . . but would it be a crime if her character could grow just a little bit?
Julian, the director, gets some great speech, but is literally "nothing" as a character. Nothing. The sad thing is that the movie really gave us some source material, that was forgotten in the play. In the movie, Julian was very ill, and there were hints that he was dying. Also, there was a hint in the movie that Julian was gay. All of these were stripped out of the play for some reason (it would have added maybe 5 minutes to the play if they were kept in), and with that it turned Julian into a barking piece of cardboard.
My character, Abner, was only a little more interesting. There is supposed to be a love triangle. Abner is daffily unaware that his love, Dorothy, is seeing Pat behind his back. Dorothy is just using Abner . . . doesn't this bother anyone? For a nice change of pace, Pat isn't there to take part in a bunch of musical numbers. He's . . . just . . . there. At least the movie hinted that he was also falling for Peggy.
Dorothy was the most interesting character. She goes through most of the play as a bitch, using her rich boyfriend to fund a play to make her a star again. She's apparently not very good, though. She gets injured, thus ending her performing career, and has a change of heart. She marries Pat and becomes nice. This transformation, the most interesting part of the story . . . is not onstage! We're too busy watching Peggy rehearse for the final show.
My big scene, as Abner, is when he tells off Dorothy. She splashes wine on his face and storms off to call Pat. This is meant to be played for laughs. Abner declares that Dorothy is out of the play. Everyone protests, and Julian sends to dancers to flirt with Abner to convince him to not pull the plug. Finally, Maggie flashes her shoulder at Abner. Despite Dorothy's behavior, the show goes on with her as the lead. But, she winds up slipping and injuring herself (and blaming Peggy), thus having her removed from the show twice. This was not a well-structured plot point! In particular, I found Julian and Maggie's actions despicable. Abner is just realizing that he was being used by Dorothy, so their solution is to . . . use him a little more? I decided to play this moment "straight". Abner has been suspicious of Dorothy all through the play, and now he's had enough. She is drunk and rude to him, and he yells at her. When she storms off, he stands there heartbroken. The rest of the cast picked up on this, and instead of dancing girls and Maggie seducing Abner, we played things differently. Abner couldn't bring himself to end the show and put everyone out of work. And Maggie wasn't trying to seduce him, she was just being a friend. Of course, this huge change in the scene was completely forgotten: it was followed by several amazing dance sequences, so no one remembered my performance. Oh well.
I think "42nd Street" reflects something I dislike in so many musicals. It was nothing more than a pageant, a concert. It was a dreadful play, but no one seemed to mind because of the great musical numbers. I keep reminding myself that, like 99% of the musicals out there, this will be forgotten a century from now. And our performance of it is probably still forgotten.
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