One of my favorite Broadway shows is “Promises, Promises,” with its gin and tonic of a score by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.
It was a great loss to the musical theater that Bacharach and David never wrote another Broadway musical. The story goes that David wanted to, but Bacharach was more at home in the recording studio, where he could get the sound he wanted and preserve it forever.
I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m going to ask Bacharach about it at the opening next month of “What’s It All About?,” a revue of his and David’s songs down at the New York Theatre Workshop.
I’ve been hearing very good things about this nifty little show since it went into rehearsal last month. Steven Hoggett, who choreographed “Once,” is directing. The concept is to present such great songs as “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” “This Guy’s in Love With You,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” and (my favorite) “Alfie” as if they’d been written yesterday.
“Every song has been reorchestrated, under Burt’s supervision, so they don’t sound the way you’re used to hearing them,” says a source. “The cast are all in their 20s, so they’re approaching the songs for the first time. It’s very simple — make Bacharach and David contemporary — but very effective.”
I’m glad to hear good buzz for “What’s It All About?,” because I must report that things aren’t going so well for Bacharach’s other musical, “Some Lovers.”
An adaptation of O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi,” “Some Lovers” has a brand-new Bacharach score, with lyrics by Steven Sater, of the Tony Award-winning “Spring Awakening.”
The show premiered at the Old Globe a couple of years ago, to mixed reviews. The reliable Charles McNulty of the Los Angeles Times praised the score, but complained that “the story goes nowhere.”
Sater revised the script, but, I’m told, was unable to give the show dramatic heft or make the characters likable.
“They whine a lot,” says a source. “They’re really annoying.”
Marin Mazzie played the lead, the rather dour Molly — whose company “can be trying,” McNulty wrote — at a reading in New York the other week. At one point, Mazzie looked up from her script and said of Molly, “I don’t like this woman!”
She was not alone.
Several people at the reading told me the show left them cold.
As a result, sources say, plans for a New York production have been abandoned.
“It’s too bad, because Burt’s music is terrific,” says one. “But [Sater] hasn’t been able to make you care about the story or the characters.”
Bacharach is, of course, disappointed, but he’s got “What’s It All About?” to salve the wound.
And on that front, I hear he’s glad, indeed.
****
I’m always happy when a show lives up to my hype.
I finally caught up with “After Midnight” Wednesday night, and it’s even better than I’d heard.
Don’t, under any circumstances, miss this exuberant, elegant evening of Duke Ellington songs.
Congratulations to Warren Carlyle, who began as Susan Stroman’s assistant on “The Producers” and has come into
his own as a first-rank director-choreographer with this show.
I see Tony nominations all over the place — for Carlyle, of course; for Fantasia Barrino, who’s lost weight and looks fabulous in Isabel Toledo’s gorgeous costumes; for Julius “iGlide” Chisolm, who lives up to his middle name by not dancing but gliding across the stage; and for the show itself — Best Musical.
I leave you with this image, from the other night: The great Tommy Tune, standing at the back of the theater, watching the show and dancing along to “I’ve Got the World on a String.”
If that’s not a rave, I don’t know what is.