• Encores! revives itself

6/16/22 (Thurs)

It’s a happy surprise to see that the City Center Encores! series has reversed course from its attempt to right the racist ways of the Broadway musical, returning to its original mission of presenting great theater. The three musicals chosen for next year, all worthy picks, are Jerry Herman’s notable flop Dear World (1969), the millennial operetta The Light in the Piazza (2005) and the British megahit Oliver! (1960).

The first is a terrific choice: not a success in its day with either critics or the public, due in good part to a rambling book –  but that score! This is exactly the type of show that Encores! is all about, bringing back a shaky show with an unquestionably top-grade score. I was surprised to learn that they hadn’t done it already. An added bonus is that it will star veteran Donna Murphy, who’s going to have a ball with this. The original star, 96-year-old Angela Lansbury, who won a Tony for her performance, topped that last week with a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award, so this will be a fitting tribute to her as well.

Piazza is a bit too recent to be reviving and is hardly unknown; I just saw a major staging at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 2019. Still, it’s a challenging show with a solid book and soaring score. Ruthie Ann Miles is an interesting choice for the lead, but vocally that puts the show in good hands.

Oliver! is a curious choice: it’s an extremely well known property (the Oscar-winning film version is being remade at the moment by Disney evidently in a rap version – no comment), and with its thoroughly British author, theme and setting, this doesn’t fit the profile of an American classic. Nevertheless, it was a huge hit on Broadway in its day and was successfully revived some years back, but hasn’t been seen now for around 40 years. That always seemed strange to me given the family-friendly content and name recognition; I suspect that Equity regulations had something to do with it in light of all the children in the cast. In any case, it still lays claim to being the best British musical ever written, especially one that’s actually about Britain (as few of the post-Cats megahits are), and the rollicking score is going to sound amazing with the onstage Encores! orchestra. They must have confidence with this title – they’re doubling the usual run to two weeks.

Since its launch in 1994, the Encores! series has been dedicated to unearthing forgotten musicals of the past in concert versions using their original orchestrations, giving us some idea of how these shows might have looked and sounded in generations past. The shows were always secondary to the glorious music at their core, still some of the best music that America has ever produced. Hearing those songs in their original context was always a thrill.

Unfortunately, a new leadership that took charge a few years ago decided that what we needed was for artists to “reclaim work for our time through their own personal lens”. It concentrated not on the music but on the thematic content of the show itself, and sought to reinterpret the works rather than present them as they might have been done in their day. This is not the stated mission of Encores! and is certainly not what Encores! audiences are paying for. It wasn’t quite clear if the leaders knew what they were doing in any case; in their first season, they chose two shows for their black-oriented themes in an attempt to send some sort of message without seeming to realize or care that both were middling works created largely by white males. They got their comeuppance in some scathing reviews and underwhelming attendance, which must have focused their minds on getting back to what their audiences actually wanted.  Hooray for that. Here’s to a new season definitely worth looking forward to.

On a related note, I felt sure that the next season would be Asian-themed shows, and my modest suggestion would have been Flower Drum Song in its original version. The show is a light look at the conflict between Chinese immigrants in San Francisco and their thoroughly assimilated children. Despite the opportunities for Asian actors and wonderful music, PC issues make it difficult to revive without significant changes (a tepid reworking failed on Broadway in 2002), but that is precisely where Encores! could serve a role, especially with several of the original cast members still alive and active to help out. While a movie version is reportedly in the works, that will inevitably be completely rewritten, and I can’t imagine that Hollywood would object to a limited run (usually only five performances) at a major NY venue, which would be seen by few people but attract lots of publicity in the form of reviews and such. So how about it, Encores!?