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| re: Parallel observation: "Larger than Life" performers like Channing, Merman even LuPone. Do we still cultivate them? | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 10:01 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: Parallel observation: "Larger than Life" performers like Channing, Merman even LuPone. Do we still cultivate them? - Marlo*Manners 04:29 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| I don't have a good enough ear to always be sure, but I think that friends have told me that Channing did not sing in lower keys in 1995 than she had in 1964. The voice had deteriorated and that perhaps made her sound like she was singing lower in terms of vocal timbre, but the original keys for her (which I think most of the successor Dollys did not use) were so low that going lower was almost not even an option. :) But I may be wrong, and perhaps she did use lower keys on those late tours and the last Broadway run for her. Did you see her on Broadway or on the pre-Broadway tour? 1994 suggests that you saw her on the pre-Broadway tour, but I wonder if you meant to type 1995. If you did see her on Broadway, I'm surprised to hear that the conductor was having trouble with her backphrasing since she was, except on nights when she wasn't well (which started to happen during that last Broadway run), incredibly consistent in the role. She was not the only Dolly to backphrase a lot. Miller never played Dolly on Broadway or on one of the major national tours, but she did play it on a Kenley tour. There was a wide range of performer types among Channing's successors on Broadway and on the tours of the original production, and I think some were probably not especially larger than life, while others decidedly were. Anyway, it's been years, I think, since we've had the talk here about the rarity nowadays of eccentric performers of the type we used to have. We used to have it a lot. |
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| The day and month are correct, the year is wrong - October 31, 1995 on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne. | |
| Posted by: Marlo*Manners 11:13 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Parallel observation: "Larger than Life" performers like Channing, Merman even LuPone. Do we still cultivate them? - AlanScott 10:01 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| BTW: Channing got a very good review in the NY Times and was praised in other publications. The production looked like a scaled down touring production that was playing in a big Broadway barn. Lee Roy Reams stuck very closely to the Gower Champion template. Channing's wig was a strange raspberry pink color. The rest of the cast was aged up a bit - Florence Lacey was a rather matronly but beautifully sung Irene Malloy and Jay Garner was Horace Vandergelder. The rest of the cast I forgot and were likely forgettable. Channing was managing her voice from phrase to phrase and "Before the Parade Passes By" was a triumph of will over reduced means. She put it over though. Physically, I remember incredible physical business that required lots of control over the body. But I didn't get any sense she was frail or unsteady on her feet. The eating scene was a tour de force as she stuffed her face full of potato puffs (actually little pieces of dyed tissue paper that she balled up in her cheeks and didn't swallow) while rattling off Dolly's dialogue with Horace. Anyway, Miss Channing was probably not "ageless" but definitely still giving a star performance. Marlo Manners (Lady Barrington) |
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| re: The day and month are correct, the year is wrong - October 31, 1995 on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne. | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 12:58 am EDT 06/27/18 | |
| In reply to: The day and month are correct, the year is wrong - October 31, 1995 on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne. - Marlo*Manners 11:13 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| I'm sure the production played in much bigger barns on the road before (and after) Broadway. Both times I saw her during that last run, she had tremendous energy. As I noted in another post, she was ill at one point during the run, but it's hard to imagine anyone being more energized than she was the two times I saw her. Some of the roles were cast with people older than in the original, but Garner was only four or five years older than Burns. Lacey was probably back because she was available and had done the role in the 1978 revival. Herman loved her in the role, and I think Channing was probably happy to have someone there who had been in it with her before and with whom she probably got along very well. It may be that the Cornelius, Michael DeVries, who was in his mid-40s, was hired more to match with Lacey than directly because of Channing. |
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