Looking Back: '66-'67
Before I left for school, the summer brought two grand entries by Music Theatre of Lincoln Center. The first was Ethel Merman in Annie Get Your Gun, with which I ended my look back at the '65-'66 season. Annie was followed in July by Show Boat, the first major production of the show that I attended, not counting a '50s City Center mounting that marked my first attendance at a New York legitimate theatre and during much of which I slept. Lincoln Center's summer '66 Show Boat may not have been notable for its authenticity, but it was mighty enjoyable, with superb leading singers Barbara Cook, Constance Towers, and Stephen Douglass, along with such colorful character folk as David Wayne and Margaret Hamilton.
After a two-month tour, Merman's Annie Get Your Gun returned to NewYork in September, this time to the Broadway Theatre for a ten-week run. I regret giving up the chance to catch the production a second time, but by this time I was operating on my weekend schedule and concentrating on all the new plays and musicals that were arriving in New York. I also skipped A Hand Is on the Gate, an evening of black poetry and folk music which featured a who's-who of black actors, including James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson, Moses Gunn, and Gloria Foster, and the revival of Dinner at Eight with June Havoc, Walter Pidgeon, Pamela Tiffin, and Arlene Francis.
On my first fall weekend back home in the city, I began with Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance. Although it would go on to receive the Pulitzer Prize, the play received mixed reviews; it would do much better with the critics when Lincoln Center Theater revived it in the '90s. Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn, Rosemary Murphy, and Marian Seldes could not have been better, though, and A Delicate Balance was certainly Albee's finest play since Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
The next day I saw the scintillating The Killing of Sister George, a London import about a lesbian actress who fears that her soap-opera character is going to be killed off. Veteran Beryl Reid deservedly took the Best Actress Tony; although Reid repeats her role in the film version, that movie offers a relentlessly grim take on what was darkly comic on stage. Also superb in the Broadway production was newcomer Eileen Atkins, playing Reid's young, simple-minded lover.
My second fall trip was centered around seeing the big October musical, The Apple Tree. At the preview I attended, leading lady Barbara Harris was having vocal problems, but she went on anyway by the end of the run, her voice would be in serious disrepair. Much as one expects Kristin Chenoweth to have a field day in this May's Encores! production of the show, it's probably fair to say that no one could equal Harris's work in this unique trio of one-act musicals. The star was radiant and touching as Eve, a campy hoot as Princess Barbara, and adorably droll as Ella/Passionella. Harris was greatly aided by her co-stars, the excellent Alan Alda and Larry Blyden, and by Mike Nichols' staging. True, the first third of the evening, "The Diary of Adam and Eve," was superior to the other two parts. But Harris made The Apple Tree an entertaining package.
It was probably on the same trip that I saw How's the World Treating You?, a daffy London import that folded fast but that allowed one to see a distinctive new comedienne, Patricia Routledge, who, like Harris, was playing three roles. In his review of How's the World Treating You? in The New York Times, critic Walter Kerr wondered if he'd ever have the chance to see Routledge again. She would be back the following season, winning the Tony for another flop, Darling of the Day.
This was clearly the season for ladies in three-part roles: Also seen on the Apple Tree trip was Shelley Winters in a short-lived evening of three one-acts by Saul Bellow. This was yet another London import, there called The Bellow Plays, here called Under the Weather. Much more successful was Woody Allen's broad but amusing comedy of Americans behind the iron curtain, Don't Drink the Water. But then just about anything with Lou Jacobi and Kay Medford would have been amusing. Anita Gillette and "Anthony" Roberts also helped.
I won't take up your time by repeating the story of how profoundly I was affected by Cabaret when I caught a Saturday matinee preview prior to the November opening. But Cabaret is the second reason why '66-'67 stands out so sharply for me. The show was brilliantly conceived and executed, and marked the turning point of Hal Prince's career away from conventional musicals to shows that were daringly original. Grand as Barbara Harris was in Apple Tree, it's possible to say that Lotte Lenya was just as wonderful in Cabaret. And I even loved the show's much maligned leading lady, Jill Haworth, who was never to return to Broadway.
I also enjoyed Walking Happy, which I thought was a generally solid musicalization of the appealing play Hobson's Choice, with a winning star turn by England's Norman Wisdom, ably backed by Louise Troy and George Rose. True, the score was only fair. But Walking Happy was a respectable, slightly underrated show. It might have fared better in London, where the source play was more popular and where Wisdom was a much bigger draw.
The big December musical was I Do! I Do!, unforgettable because of its magnificent cast, which consisted solely of Mary Martin and Robert Preston. Although I'd seen Martin in The Sound of Music and Jennie, I was now old enough to fully appreciate her particular brand of magic; I would have had a hard time voting for the Tonys and choosing between Harris, Lenya, or Martin. Preston was grand he won the Tony; Martin lost to Harris, but both stars offered an evening-long master class in musical-comedy style. Although replacements Carol Lawrence and Gordon MacRae were said to be good, I didn't return to see them. I do wish, though, that I'd seen Martin and Preston more than once during the run.
It must be remembered that the big Broadway box-office musical of the season was not supposed to be Cabaret, I Do!, or The Apple Tree. It was supposed to have been Breakfast at Tiffany's, which, after a tortuous road tryout, was shut down by producer David Merrick on December 14, after just a few New York previews. Because I was away at college and there was no internet in those days, I learned that Tiffany's had closed just after it happened; I wistfully returned my ticket to the Majestic box office, but would much rather have seen the show than gotten the refund.
Instead of Tiffany's, I had to settle for seeing the musical that opened on December 15, A Joyful Noise. This was a truly inferior piece about a country singer, played by ready-and-willing John Raitt, supported by such talents as Susan Watson, Leland Palmer, Swen Swenson, and flop diva Karen Morrow. Along with Michael Bennett's inventive choreography, those cast members were the only redeeming feature of a poor show.
In his review of The Star-Spangled Girl, Kerr wrote that Neil Simon didn't have an idea for a new play this year but wrote one anyway. It was indeed second-rate Simon; Connie Stevens was a rather brassy leading lady, although Anthony Perkins and Richard Benjamin were sharp comic players. I also caught two ghastly plays at the ANTA now the Virginia Theatre, Alfred Drake in Those That Play the Clowns and Ingmar Bergman regular Ingrid Thulin in Of Love Remembered. The latter show cost me the price of a cast album: I accidentally left my just-purchased-at-Sam-Goody's copy of RCA's new off-Broadway cast LP of By Jupiter under my seat. It was gone when I returned to look for it, so I was forced to buy another copy the next day.
More English imports: Droll performing songwriters Michael Flanders and Donald Swann in a sequel evening of their special material, At the Drop of Another Hat, then the season's most acclaimed puzzler, Harold Pinter's The Homecoming. I didn't get this one the first time around, but came to admire it later, when I studied it and saw the film version. For the Best Play Tony, The Homecoming beat out A Delicate Balance, Sister George, and the next British import, Peter Shaffer's delightful Black Comedy. With such superb players as Geraldine Page, Lynn Redgrave, and Michael Crawford, Black Comedy was a treat that I happened to catch on its Sunday opening night.
Robert Anderson's You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running was solid commercial comic fare, and allowed Eileen Heckart the chance to match Barbara Harris and Shelley Winters by playing three roles in this evening of four short plays. I'm glad I caught one of the seven performances of Jules Feiffer's Little Murders, a quick flop there would be a successful off-Broadway revival that allowed one the opportunity to hear musical-comedy sweetheart Barbara Cook utter a rather strong for the time expletive. Elliott Gould was her leading man, and the Broadhurst was so empty at the performance I attended that the mezzanine was closed off.
If we could all see it now, we would probably have a fine time watching Clive Revill, Dolores Gray, and Elizabeth Allen in Sherry! At the time, though, Sherry! felt like a dimishment of its source, The Man Who Came to Dinner, with too many forced musical numbers. Too bad no Broadway cast recording was made, for the leads were ideal.
The season concluded with two more big musicals. The very popular Greek film Never on Sunday was turned into Illya, Darling, the sort of musical that assumed the audience had seen the film and so didn't bother telling its story very clearly. Repeating from the film, star Melina Mercouri was glamorous and game, and she kept the show running. But Illya, Darling was considerably worse than you might think.
On the other hand, I thought Hallelujah, Baby! played much better than its reviews would lead one to believe. Leslie Uggams made a very fetching star debut, the Jule Styne-Betty Comden-Adolph Green score was highly enjoyable, and Arthur Laurents's book was sleek and ambitious. Some of the criticism directed against the show's somewhat naive depiction of race relations in the U.S. from the turn of the century to the present was justified. Still, Hallelujah, Baby! was an entertaining evening, as good as the season's second-tier hits like The Apple Tree and I Do!
A word must be said for the continuing excellence of Broadway's only genuine repertory company, the APA-Phoenix, which offered intriguing productions of School for Scandal, Right You Are...., The Wild Duck, and You Can't Take It With You the latter a company hit from the previous season, with vivid performances by Rosemary Harris and Helen Hayes. Less fortunate was the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, which had indifferent results with The Alchemist, Yerma, and Galileo.
City Center had a wonderful season that began in the fall with Maureen Stapleton reprising her Broadway role in Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tatoo; the revival won sufficient acclaim to transfer to the Billy Rose Theatre. I wish I hadn't skipped Jennifer Jones in The Country Girl and Judith Anderson in Elizabeth the Queen. But I did see great City Center accounts of Carousel Bruce Yarnell, Constance Towers, Nancy Dussault, Patricia Neway, Finian's Rainbow Dussault, The Sound of Music Towers, and Wonderful Town Elaine Stritch. Newcomer Sandy Duncan danced Louise in Carousel and Susan the Silent in Finian's, graduating to Liesl in The Sound of Music.
And let's not forget that throughout '66-'67, Broadway was still playing host to the original productions of such musicals as Hello, Dolly!, Mame, Fiddler on the Roof, Man of La Mancha, Sweet Charity, and Funny Girl.