Obscure Recordings: More '60s Off-Broadway
Continuing a look at off-Broadway cast albums that began several weeks back with The Streets of New York, today I'm examining two more musical adaptations and one original from the golden age of the off-Broadway musical, the early '60s.
All in Love opened at the Martinique, the off-Broadway theatre space in the Martinique Hotel in Herald Square, on November 10, 1961, a date that falls between the Broadway openings of Kean and The Gay Life.
Unlike The Streets of New York, which was based on a fairly forgotten Boucicault play, All in Love was based on a famous work, Richard Brinsley Sheridan's play The Rivals, from 1775, and a play receiving a Broadway revival this season by Lincoln Center Theater. Sheridan also wrote the more frequently performed The School for Scandal; someone must have tried to musicalize that one, too, although I'm not aware of it.
The book and lyrics for All in Love were by Bruce Geller, the music by Jacques Urbont, who sometimes went by the name "Jack." In 1957, Urbont and Geller had collaborated on the short-lived Phoenix Theatre musical Livin' the Life, based, like Big River, on Huckleberry Finn.
As in The Rivals, the musical's characters include Lydia Languish, who insists on finding a husband who's poor; Jack Absolute, in love with Lydia and therefore pretending to be a pauper; and Mrs. Malaprop, Lydia's aunt, the linguistically challenged lady who tends to get her multi-syllabic words mixed up.
Jack was played by David Atkinson, the strong baritone who had taken the male leads in the Broadway flops The Girl in Pink Tights and The Vamp. He would later become one of the Broadway Quixotes in Man of La Mancha, where he would re-encounter Gaylea Byrne, his Lydia Languish here, and later a Broadway Aldonza. When Byrne appeared in All in Love, she had just completed two years of understudying the role of Eliza in the national tour of My Fair Lady. Byrne's most interesting subsequent credit was playing the title role in the Australian production of Mame, back in the days when they sent less-than-stellar Americans over to star in American musicals in Australia, often attempting to pass them off as big stars back home.
The All in Love cast also included another strong baritone, Lee Cass, from The Most Happy Fella and Greenwillow, and Charles Kimbrough Company, "Murphy Brown" in a small role. The cast member who went the farthest was probably Dom De Luise, who appeared in a number of off-Broadway musicals in the '60s and had just come from a year in the off-Broadway musical spoof Little Mary Sunshine. Also note a couple of other All in Love credits, for lighting Jules Fisher and orchestrations Jonathan Tunick.
As the label would later do for I Had a Ball, Mercury Records now controlled by Decca Broadway recorded the cast album of All in Love and released the LP in a butterfly sleeve, at the top of which is splashed the description, "Original Cast Album from the Broadway Hit Show." All in Love was neither a Broadway show nor a big hit, but it did manage a run of 141 performances and was well received. In The New York Times, critic Milton Esterow called it "a delightful musical comedy....book and lyrics have wit and ingenuity...music is tuneful and original...a grand show."
On disc, All in Love is a complete charmer. Atkinson has fine solos in "I Love a Fool" and "Don't Ask Me," while Cass then Atkinson get the handsome waltz, "The Lady Was Made to Be Loved." Byrne has a strong opener, naturally called "Poor." Playing Lydia's maid, Christina Gillespie from the equally charming off-Broadway musical Ernest in Love gets perhaps the catchiest numbers, "What Can It Be?" and "I Found Him," the latter also featured in the smart Julius Monk cabaret revue Seven Come Eleven, which opened a month before All in Love. Mrs. Malaprop is nicely musicalized in "A More Than Ordinary Glorious Vocabulary." There are several adept ensembles "Why Wives?", and there's even a pleasing title song at the end.
Composer Urbont went on to compose the score for the 1971 off-Broadway nudie musical Stag Movie, featuring Adrienne Barbeau, and a musical version of the Broadway play Mrs. McThing that was performed at Goodpeed. He doesn't seem to have made it to Broadway beyond contributing some incidental music to a Geraldine Page straight-play flop, The Great Indoors 1966. But All in Love indicates that he was indeed ready for the main stem. And obscure as it is, the All in Love cast album is worthy of CD reissue.
Not of the same caliber but fairly enjoyable is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, based on the James Thurber short story that had already been successfully filmed with Danny Kaye. The musical Secret Life of Walter Mitty had unknown writers music by Leon Carr, lyrics by Earl Shuman, book by Joe Manchester, the latter also the producer and stagers the director was Mervyn Nelson, who also contributed "additional dialogue".
Walter Mitty concerned a forty-year-old suburban father and husband who escapes his drab reality through elaborate daydreams in which he becomes a world-class surgeon, rocket scientist, psychiatrist, prizefighter, and impressario. The musical opened at Greenwich Village's Players Theatre, not far from The Fantasticks, on October 26, 1964 and lasted ninety-six performances. The actor taking the title role, Marc London, had few musical credits before or since. Playing Walter's wife was Lorraine Serabian, who, four years later, would be The Leader in Broadway's Zorba, and has recently been seen in productions ranging from Master Class to Hello, Dolly!
Playing nightclub singer Willa de Wisp was the superb Cathryn Damon, an asset as supporting principal in such Broadway musicals as Flora, the Red Menace, Foxy, and Come Summer, but also a fine dramatic actress. After standing by for Angela Lansbury in the West Coast lap of Mame, Damon had some TV success with a lead role on "Soap." Lower down in the credits for Walter Mitty was Rue McClanahan, who is heard on the cast album in one duet.
Critic Lewis Funke in The New York Times offered a thumbs-down verdict, noting "a few pleasant tunes," but "not much in the way of a witty line...generally mirthless." Other critics were kinder, with Richard Watts in The Post finding the show "brightly entertaining."
What distinguishes The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is that it got a cast album on no less a label than Columbia Records, a cast album that has yet to appear on CD.
The recording opens and closes with an attractive, choral "Secret Life." It's followed by a pleasant if simple father-daughter duet, "Walking With Peninnah." Damon has the sultry "Marriage Is For Old Folks" and an amusing take-off on French chanteuses, "Fan the Flame." She's also part of the first-act finale, a catchy march in which Walter's bar cronies instill in him "Confidence." To demonstrate one's confidence, the lyric suggests, you might "insult Willie Mays, and hate Helen Hayes." In the second half, there's a driving ensemble, "Now That I Am Forty."
The stage expansion of the thin story adds extraneous characters, and the dream sequences don't exactly approach the quality of those in Lady in the Dark. But it's a sweet little show. While I did not see the off-Broadway Walter Mitty, I have seen it in a college staging, and it works fairly well. The off-Broadway version featured fifteen performers, but there are so many small roles that more cast members can be added if desired.
Given the wealth of musical-theatre talent that emerged in the early '60s, some gifted folk were bound to get lost. One such was John Jennings, who wrote the music and lyrics for Riverwind. It was one of those small-scale original musicals that appeared along with the many '60s off-Broadway musicals adapted from plays. Most of those originals went unrecorded, but Riverwind got a London Records cast album that supplied a full orchestra for a score that had been performed in the theatre by a piano and percussion.
That theatre was the West Village's Actor's Playhouse, where Riverwind opened on December 12, 1962. For an off-Broadway original, it had a fine run of just over a year 443 performances. Jennings hailed from Indiana, and he set his New York debut show at a tourist cabin colony on the banks of the Wabash River in Indiana. Riverwind examined the lives of seven residents at the getaway. There's the widow who owns the place, her daughter, and their handyman, who's in love with the daughter. We meet two couples currently residing at Riverwind, a middle-aged married pair returning to the spot where they had been happy seventeen years earlier, and a young, unmarried duo.
Playing the husband was Lawrence Brooks, who had created the leading role of Edvard Grieg in Broadway's Song of Norway and had recently been standing by for Alfred Drake in Kean. His wife was played by Elizabeth Parrish, fresh from a year in Little Mary Sunshine, and destined to create the role of restaurant operator Jacqueline in La Cage aux Folles. Helon Blount, who had replaced Susan Johnson in The Most Happy Fella, was the mother, and her daughter was Dawn Nickerson, who had just finished understudying Carol Lawrence in Subways Are For Sleeping. The unmarried female guest was Lovelady Powell, who had a career at the time as a nightclub and TV vocalist.
Although he received no credit on the cast album, the book for Riverwind was by Joseph Benjamin, based on a story by Jennings. During the run, the original choreography was replaced by new musical staging, credited to "Ronnie Fields," the name Ron Field Applause, Cabaret was using at the time.
On disc, the Riverwind score is a delight, its catchiest item a showstopping advice song for mother and daughter called "Sew the Buttons On." Other strong pieces include the fine title song for the unhappy wife; the daughter's "I Want a Surprise"; a bluesy solo for the wife, "A Woman Must Think of These Things"; a waltz for the husband and the daughter, "Pardon Me While I Dance"; and two cynical duets for the younger guests.
Although New York Times critic Howard Taubman found the Riverwind book "earnest but soggy", he praised "a sheaf of uncommonly attractive musical numbers... it is not often that an off-Broadway musical is blessed with such agreeable tunes and lyrics." Jennings was clearly a talent, one who was apparently never heard from again. It's questionable whether Decca Broadway would be interested in reissuing the obscure Riverwind album, but it's worth seeking out.
