Good morning, all. All this talk of matzoh balls, chopped liver, and brisket from yesterday has given me such a craving. I may be living at my neighborhood deli today. First I have a date with my goddaughter to see SCOOBY DOO 2 at 2. As dear friend BK would say, isn't that too too?
So, TOD is guilty pleasures? That's not easy when it comes to musicals and plays; is a show a guilty pleasure because it failed? I can think of several flops I saw that deserved longer runs: TEIBELE AND HER DEMON, FRANKENSTEIN (at the Palace), both with great incidental music by Richard Peaslee, BIRDS OF PARADISE, RAGS, THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE, and the list could continue.
I'm going to define Guilty Pleasure as something your peer/intellectual group would put down but contains some personal resonance for you alone, so here are my choices for TOD:
Musical: HELLO, DOLLY! Carol Channing's last revival didn't run long, and there was a lot of "oh no, not again" from my acquaintances, but it's a show I only want to see in Gower Champion's production: it moves, it dances, it had style and panache which is missing from a lot of revivals of other shows I've seen after seeing the original, and Michael Stewart's book is funny. I first saw Ginger Rogers do it in 1966, then I saw Channing do it in 1978 (?), and while she was much more fragile in this last revival from the 1990s, she's a great comedienne and I had a wonderful time.
Play: Well, that's harder; classic plays survive and get redone, but who's to know how many hit plays today will be around in 100 years and get revivals?
One of the funniest plays I've seen in the past 10 years was an off-off-Broadway comedy BACK SEATS AND BATHROOM STALLS, whose title alone would bend some noses out of joint and therefore qualify it as a guilty pleasure, but it was quite good with an excellent cast. I doubt enough people saw it to get it published or transferred but it deserved some success. I wish I could say that I saw and loved MOOSE MURDERS, since that would seem to be the epitome of a Guilty Pleasure, but I missed it. I did see CARRIE, but there's no guilty pleasure there: it was dreadful.
CD: Al Carmines' PROMENADE; Lehman Engle hated this show and put it down in several of his books, possibly in his BMI workshop as well, and when I moved to New York in 1979, Mr Carmines and this show seemed to be regarded as a second-rate citizens. The score and its vocal demands seem to be inspired in part by the world's greatest cult musical, CANDIDE, and it's libretto seems to be a variant on CANDIDE as redone by someone like Ionesco. I missed the 1969 Promenade Theatre production which named the theatre, so this CD is my only souvenir of the show and I think it's great with an amazing cast for an off-Broadway musical. I'm sorry that RCA waited too long to record it and that Madeline Kahn had already left the show, but Alice Playten's "Capricious and Fickle" is one of my favorite things on disc.
Movie: MONSTER IN THE CLOSET: funny movie with some good actors including a young Paul Walker and Henry Gibson and with some good points on homophobia and closets.
Did I cover all elements of TOD? I hope.