“Kiss Today Goodbye, and Point Me Toward Tomorrow”
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“KISS TODAY GOODBYE, AND POINT ME TOWARD TOMORROW”: REVIVING THE TIME-BOUND MUSICAL, 1968-1975 A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the Graduate School At the University of Missouri In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy By BRYAN M. VANDEVENDER Dr. Cheryl Black, Dissertation Supervisor July 2014 © Copyright by Bryan M. Vandevender 2014 All Rights Reserved The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the dissertation entitled “KISS TODAY GOODBYE, AND POINT ME TOWARD TOMORROW”: REVIVING THE TIME-BOUND MUSICAL, 1968-1975 Presented by Bryan M. Vandevender A candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy And hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. Dr. Cheryl Black Dr. David Crespy Dr. Suzanne Burgoyne Dr. Judith Sebesta ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I incurred several debts while working to complete my doctoral program and this dissertation. I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to several individuals who helped me along the way. In addition to serving as my dissertation advisor, Dr. Cheryl Black has been a selfless mentor to me for five years. I am deeply grateful to have been her student and collaborator. Dr. Judith Sebesta nurtured my interest in musical theatre scholarship in the early days of my doctoral program and continued to encourage my work from far away Texas. Her graduate course in American Musical Theatre History sparked the idea for this project, and our many conversations over the past six years helped it to take shape. The other members of my dissertation committee, Dr. David Crespy and Dr. Suzanne Burgoyne, also deserve recognition as they have been thoughtful readers and vocal advocates of my work. My friends and graduate student colleagues at the University of Missouri, particularly Ron Zank, Emily Rollie, and Milbre Burch, have challenged me, encouraged me, and been wonderful traveling companions on my academic journey. Because my dissertation required that I spend time in archives, I would not have been able to complete this project without the assistance of the curators and research librarians at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University. Finally, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge my parents, Steve and Gail, and my sister, Emily. Thank you for your love and support throughout my graduate education. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. ii Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iv Chapter One: Introduction .................................................................................................. 1 Chapter Two: "It's What's Happening": Hair ................................................................... 28 Chapter Three: "Everything's Different, Nothing's Changed": Company ........................ 98 Chapter Four: "Love's What We'll Remember": A Chorus Line .................................... 161 Chapter Five: Conclusion ............................................................................................... 232 Appendix A: The Most Frequently Revived Musicals in Broadway History ................. 250 Appendix B: The Longest Running Musical Revivals in Broadway History ................. 252 Appendix C: Production Information for Hair - 1968 Broadway Production ................ 254 Appendix D: Production Information for Hair - 1977 Broadway Revival ..................... 256 Appendix E: Production Information for Hair - 2009 Broadway Revival ..................... 258 Appendix F: Production Information for Company - 1970 Broadway Production ........ 260 Appendix G: Production Information for Company - 1995 Broadway Revival ............. 262 Appendix H: Production Information for Company - 2006 Broadway Revival ............. 264 Appendix I: Production Information for A Chorus Line - 1975 Broadway Production . 266 Appendix J: Production Information for A Chorus Line - 2006 Broadway Revival ...... 268 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 270 Vita .................................................................................................................................. 281 iii ABSTRACT As musical theatre scholars Stacy Wolf, Sheldon Patinkin, and John Bush Jones have argued, American musicals are among our country’s most valuable social documents as they depict the dominant discourses and reigning values of the cultural moment from which they first emerged through song, dance, and story. Consequently, all works are innately tied to the era that produced them. Some musicals, however, feature ties to the past are stronger and markedly more visible than others. When the vestiges of the past are so numerous that a given musical says more about the prevailing paradigms of art and thought at a specific moment in American history than it does about the universality of the human condition, then the work might be identified as time-bound. A musical’s propensity for time-boundedness is perhaps never more evident than when it is revived years after its original production. When the era that occasioned the piece has passed and the attitudes that it first espoused have changed, a musical that was once fresh and timely can appear quaint, absurd, impolitic, or even myopic to a contemporary audience. Moreover, if the forms of song and dance first employed by that musical are outmoded, and not altered or updated in some way, then the work may read aesthetically as well as socially obsolete. This study offers a systematic investigation of the ways in which theatre artists—directors, designers, composers, librettists, and choreographers— have approached the task of reviving significantly time-bound musicals on Broadway. Through an examination of three representative case studies—Hair (1968), Company (1970), and A Chorus Line (1975)—this project identifies the various ways in which the musicals are anchored to their original era, how those bonds have been negotiated in revivals, and to what effect. iv CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION What does a geist do when the zeit has moved on?1 PURPOSE/RATIONALE In an April 1995 article for The New York Times, theatre critic Margo Jefferson somewhat caustically described the current theatrical landscape on Broadway as “a museum of the American Musical staffed by busy curator-directors eager to put their stamp on every show they mount.”2 Sarcasm notwithstanding, Jefferson’s assessment was both fair and particularly apt, as a surfeit of musical revivals had taken residence in New York theatres over the previous five years. In response to rising production costs and increased financial risk, Broadway producers slowly shifted their attention away from newer, untested works and instead focused more readily on mounting new productions of previously successful musicals, hoping to draw audiences through appeals to nostalgia and the promise of familiar, time-tested fare. What began as a commercially cautious pattern, however, had become a popular and profitable trend at the time of Jefferson’s writing. The 1995 Broadway season featured seven such re-stagings, bringing the total number of musical revivals produced on the Great White Way since 1989 to twenty-two. These figures, while relatively common by today’s standards, were quite staggering given that several seasons immediately prior to 1989 failed to produce more than one musical revival. Even more remarkable was the fact that a significant number of these productions 1 Clive Barnes, “The Roots of Hair’s Brush With Fame,” review of Hair by James Rado, 2 Margo Jefferson, “Strolling Along Broadway’s Museum Mile,” New York Times, April 2, 1995. 1 were commercially successful. Very few revived musicals since the 1971 Broadway remounting of Vincent Youmans’s 1925 musical comedy No, No Nanette—famously supervised by Busby Berkeley and heavily revised to good effect by Burt Shevelove— had been able to capture the attention and favor of New York theatregoers. The new Nanette was an achievement, but also an anomaly, and while many musical theatre historians credit its success with re-igniting the Broadway producing community’s interest in revivals, thereby creating something of a revival craze on Broadway throughout the 1970s, the majority of like productions that followed—such as Irene (1973), Good News (1974), Where’s Charley? (1974), Can-Can (1981), and Little Johnny Jones (1982)—were marked by brief runs and financial losses. By comparison, the musical revival seemed to receive a much warmer welcome in the 1990s. Several of the revivals running on Broadway when Jefferson’s article went into print—such as Jerry Zak’s critically lauded treatment of Guys and Dolls (1992), Harold Prince’s dramaturgically retooled Show Boat (1994), and Jeff Calhoun’s celebrity-studded Grease (1994)—proved exceptionally popular with audiences. Steady and enthusiastic attendance kept these revivals and many of those that would appear in subsequent seasons lucrative and running well past their initial premiere.3 Lending further credence to Jefferson’s museum metaphor was the fact that the years that witnessed this revival phenomenon did not boast a significant number of successful new American musicals. Between 1989 and 1994, only thirty-five original 3 A few of these later long-running