The Great American Songbook

Thanks tmesis for your usual comprehensive canter through the works of Lerner and Loewe.

I don't know anything about their early stage shows ('Life of the Party' and 'What's Up') but from Brigadoon onwards it is a small but superb collection of wonderful musicals.

So here are my personal recollections about the shows and the songs.

I don't remember much about it, but I saw and greatly enjoyed the Lost Musicals performance of 'The Day Before Spring', but with its 'modern' story setting I expect it would work best in a medium-sized theatre rather than a big house like Drury Lane. My diary note says I was hooked from the opening scene and almost in tears at the end. Sounds like it might be worth re-visiting by the Donmar or the Meunier, if it hasn't already! None of the songs have had any life outside the show, possibly because they are all integrated into the action rather than being stand-alone songs.

I saw 'Brigadoon' and 'Paint Your Wagon' in the original Australian productions in the 1950s and loved both of them. From 'Brigadoon', my jazz singer friend, the late Maxine Daniels always started her set with 'Almost Like Being in Love' and I have noticed other older ladies in their shows at places like Pizza on the Park also favoured it in their programmes. I enjoy its forward drive and the whole song seems short but very sweet! The title song in 'Paint Your Wagon' also contains a musical phrase that sounds exactly like a phrase in Act I of Puccini's 'Tosca' but I don't recall Ricordi suing Lerner and Loewe, although they did successfully sue the writers of 'Avalon' because they said the melody was lifted from 'E lucevan le stelle', which I personally don't think it is. But I digress, as usual!

I saw the original West End production of 'My Fair Lady' at Drury Lane in 1960 with Anne Rogers but the 1958 production by then already seemed rather tired. I also saw the 1979 revival at the Adelphi with Liz Robertson, directed by Alan J Lerner, whom Robertson later married. I last saw it in 2002 at Drury Lane when I was lucky enough to catch Martine McCutcheon in one of her rare performances – she was very good! 'I could have danced all night' was always a staple in my cocktail piano repertoire, but 'On the street where you live' is a bugger to play by ear because the harmonic progression that ends the middle section does not fit any normal chords, at least not that I have ever been able to figure, and you just have to play the exact notes Loewe wrote to make it sound right, something that I have to fake with only varying degrees of success!

'Gigi' is wonderful as a film but I didn't care for the stage adaption in Regent's Park, which I left after half-an-hour when a rain shower conveniently interrupted the performance. Topol was rather creepy in the Maurice Chevalier role (his 'Thank Heaven for Little Girls' smacked of paedophilia) and Millicent Martin was also a major disappointment as Mamita. I didn't like the orchestrations so cut my losses and went home when the rain started.

Now to 'Camelot'. I saw the original West End Production and also the Australian one, both in the mid 1960s, and felt that neither one was entirely satisfactory. It seemed to me to be a bit like 'Mack and Mabel' being a show on an interesting subject with a wonderful score but somehow it fails to hit the spot, even with wonderful performers. I goaded Ian Talbot into producing it in Regent's Park and I enjoyed it more, even though there had been some rather strange tinkering with the dramatic structure at the start of Act II. But, as the theatremonkey says, it still didn't really work. Perhaps a John Wilson concert (unstaged) would at least do the score justice.

I remember that in the EMI staff show I referred to earlier under Loesser, we did a parody of 'How to handle a woman' as 'How to handle an artist' with some pointed references to the EMI producer Norman Newell and the artists he recorded, and Norman, sitting in the front row, roared with laughter. We also did a parody of 'I wonder what the King is doing tonight' about some of the other company executives. I don't remember the details, but the audience certainly enjoyed it even if the bosses didn't!

I realise that my comments are more about the shows themselves rather than the songs, but I think we can take it that L & L have provided a particularly rich assortment of songs for the American Songbook from a surprisingly small number of top class musicals.