| re: Did any of you see the 1983 revival of 'On Your Toes'? | |
| Posted by: reed23 01:30 am EST 12/31/22 | |
| In reply to: Did any of you see the 1983 revival of 'On Your Toes'? - DistantDrumming 03:44 am EST 12/30/22 | |
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| I wasn't wild about it. It was intermittent fun – and glorious to hear Spialek's original orchestrations, more sophisticated, breathtaking, and glistening than any others in the generally loud and brassy 70s-80s retro scene on Broadway. I felt it lumbered along as if it were directed by a 95-year-old (who, by the way, was not the show's original director, and was only one of three book-writers.) I tended to agree with Frank Rich for the most part. The lead was not remotely up to the sky-high level of Ray Bolger's supreme comic and character-dancing attributes; he was a good dancer and standard-issue juvenile in his acting. Christine Andreas was an out-of-town replacement for Regina O'Malley; I saw O'Malley some years later, when she reached character age, playing Mme. Thenardier in the LES MISERABLES national tour, and she was full of huge energy and personality, with a clarion voice (actress Kerry O'Malley is her niece.) One of my favorite songs in a middling score was "It's Got To Be Love," although marred (as you can hear on the album) by a shuffling fading away without a proper ending. The comic numbers "Too Good For The Average Man" and "The Heart Is Quicker Than The Eye" were very mildly amusing, especially as perfunctorily recited by Dina Merrill in her first and only musical. "Quiet Night" right in the middle of Act Two seemed like a long black hole of hymn-like quiet non-energy; fortunately it was followed by the show's best number, the title song (minus the Bolger touch.) I remember the title song is where I first saw and noticed an exceptional ensemble member named Dana Moore, whose exemplary work became familiar in later, better productions. It's an oft-repeated myth that "Slaughter On Tenth Avenue" was a ballet "integrated into the plot of a musical." That's true, if you consider talking about and writing a ballet, and then having that ballet performed, to be "integrated into the plot of the musical" (of course the action of the ballet had nothing to do with the characters and plot of ON YOUR TOES, other than "So we've mentioned a ballet and here's how it turned out.") There was the funny bit (designed for Bolger) that had something to do with the lead getting mixed up with the Mob, or something, and his doing twenty repetitions of the last chorus of the ballet to prevent a gangster in the house with a machine gun from doing him in in front of an audience. |
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| Previous: | Did any of you see the 1983 revival of 'On Your Toes'? - DistantDrumming 03:44 am EST 12/30/22 |
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