George and Ira Gershwin are returning to Broadway next month with an all- new musical called ”Crazy for You.”
Yes, that`s right: George and Ira Gershwin. Yes, they are both long dead- George since 1937, Ira since 1983. Their inimitable music lives on, however, and that`s the whole point of ”Crazy for You,” a very merry, music- and-dance-filled, old fashioned fun kind of show that in the here and now of 1992, to use stage door parlance, has hit written all over it.
The show takes a completely brand new book by Tony nominated playwright Ken Ludwig, author of the hit Broadway farce ”Lend Me A Tenor,” and weds it to 15 Gershwin classics from previous shows-including ”I Got Rhythm,”
”Embraceable You,” ”But Not For Me” and ”Shall We Dance?”-plus five recently unearthed Gershwin tunes never before heard on the stage.
It stars multitalented Jodi Benson, best known as the film voice of ”The Little Mermaid;” has a $7.5 million budget, which has provided some of the most marvelously colorful and versatile sets to be seen on the American stage in years; and opens Feb. 19 at New York`s Shubert Theater.
Advance ticket sales already have surpassed $15 million. The show`s been a sell-out during its tryout run in Washington, where rave reviews included a ”wonderful” from the Washington Post and ”a four-star knockout” from NBC`s Arch Campbell.
”Crazy for You” is a ”revival” in the purest sense of the term, taking this uniquely American entertainment form back to its 1920s and 1930s roots, when musicals were comedies-and usually love stories to boot. The genre was designed strictly for entertainment, and was seldom employed in attempts to musically transmogrify successful books or films, as with the recent box office disasters ”Shogun” and ”Nick and Nora” or as scored ”artistic”
studies of morbid, melodramatic figures, as with ”Evita” and ”Assassins.” The latter, Stephen Sondheim`s musical discourse on the people who`ve tried to kill American presidents, came and went quickly last winter.
”The American musical comedy really has been one of our greatest contributions to the world`s cultural history,” said Ludwig, still working furiously on last minute script revisions at his Washington home. ”Nothing else compares. But 10 or 15 years ago or more, shows began to change and something got lost. I was very interested in bringing that back.”
The inspiration for the show came from former Neiman Marcus executive turned mail order catalogue entrepreneur (”The Horchow Collection”) Ralph Horchow, whose love for Gershwin music dates back his childhood in Cincinnati in the 1930s, when George Gershwin himself once turned up at Horchow`s parents house during a tour stop and entertained the family at the piano.
Although he`d invested in a number of shows, Horchow wanted to become a producer in his own right and wanted to make his debut with a Gershwin show. Acquiring Broadway angel Elizabeth Williams (”Les Miserables,” ”Phantom of the Opera,” ”The Secret Garden”) as a partner, he signed up Ludwig and English director Mike Ockrent and set about trying to work up a revival of the Gershwins` popular 1930 production ”Girl Crazy.”
Written by Guy Bolton and John McGowan (who get credits for
”inspiration” in the ”Crazy for You” program), that show played on a New York-sophisticate-goes-west-to-a-dude-ranch theme familiar to moviegoers who saw last summer`s Billy Crystal comedy hit ”City Slickers.”
Fifty two years after the fact, however, ”Girl Crazy`s” script didn`t look so hot. The music in the show was terrific, including ”I Got Rhythm,”
”Embraceable You” and ”I`m Bidin` My Time,” but the book was not.
”It was terrible,” said Ludwig. ”It was very dated, and had all these unfortunate stereotypes-American Indians saying `me got wampum,` New York cab drivers with exaggerated Yiddish accents. Like many of the books in the 1930s, it was really a series of comedy sketches. It just wouldn`t play to today`s audiences at all.”
They threw away the 1930 book entirely, and Ludwig last summer wrote a new one from scratch, retaining only the premise of a young New Yorker going west.
”It`s set in 1930, but it`s written for contemporary audiences,” he said.
In the new version, the young hero, Bobby Child, is the scion of a big New York banking family. Stage struck and counting a number of chorus girls as his friends, Bobby more than anything wants to be a musical comedy performer himself, but his domineering mother drags him into the world of deals, foreclosures and ledgers.
Serendipity smiles, however, when he`s sent out to a town called Deadrock, Nev., to foreclose on a local Wild West opry house of a defunct theater, which also doubles as the town post office. Polly, daughter of the theater owner and also Deadrock`s mailwoman, wants to revive the theater by staging a big show. Bobby, instantly smitten with Polly, decides to assist her instead of foreclosing, and has his Broadway show pals come out to help. Polly has no faith in mopey, amateur Bobby, however, and wants nothing less than a show staged by the great Bela Zangler (read Florian Ziegfeld). So, Bobby disguises himself as Zangler.
The plot gets a lot twistier, and a lot sillier, but needless to say, the show goes on. Ludwig caught some flak from a Washington critic for using the same kind of mistaken-identity device he did in his highly successful ”Lend Me A Tenor,” but he had a ready response.
”It works, so why not use it?”
Interestingly, the story was not written to conform to the music. Ludwig wrote his book and then he, Ockrent, Horchow and others listened to recordings of more than 500 Gershwin tunes-mostly done by Michael Feinstein, Maureen McGovern and Bobby Short-narrowing down the list until they had the most appropriate songs for the characters and scenes. The only number that doesn`t quite work is ”The Way You Wear Your Hat.” Nevada girls are not noted for the way they sip their tea.
Also aiding in the selection process was Bob Kimball, a musical consultant to the Gershwin estate who recommended a search of the large trove of unproduced Gershwin songs discovered in a trunk in a Seacaucus, N.J., warehouse a decade ago. From these, they incorporated five tunes for ”Crazy For You,” including the title song (which the Gershwins spelled ”K-ra-zy For You”), ”Tonight`s The Night,” ”The Real American Folk Song is a Rag,”
”What Causes That?” and ”Naughty Baby.” Though the latter song has not been performed in a stage show, it has become a popular number for Maureen McGovern in personal appearances and on her new Gershwin album of the same name.
The only real problem posed by the music, said Ludwig, ”is that the Gershwins didn`t write `There`s No Business Like Show Business,` which would have been perfect.”
Benson, who also was the voice of Thumbelina and has recorded children`s songs for Disney, is as agile a dancer as she is talented as a vocalist. Harry ”Sunday in the Park with George” Groener does fine as Bobby, though his singing isn`t quite up to the level of his comic acting and dancing.
Also to be cheered are Bruce ”Those Were the Days” Adler as Zangler, John ”They`re Playing Our Song” Hillner as Bobby`s Nevada saloon keeper rival Lank Hawkins, Michele ”Mail” Pawk as Bobby`s voluptuous fiance Irene Roth (if they married, they`d be Rothschild, get it?) and Jane ”Me and My Girl” Connell as Bobby`s hilariously fur-coated mother. The Manhattan Rhythm Kings, who essentially play themselves, and the gifted ensemble keep the show moving effortlessly between the skits and lines.
Cheers, too, should go to Robin Wagner for the phenomenal and ingenius sets-especially the grand Art Deco extravaganza used for the finale, which transcends even Busby Berkeley.
”Crazy for You” rediscovers the American musical in a way that should be instructive to those so paranoid about the invasion of British monster hits like ”Phantom” and ”Les Miz.” Ludwig and Ockrent couldn`t resist a slight dig at Albion. In one big ”Crazy for You” production number, the cast does a pyramid dance routine stacking chairs upon chairs. When they all get down again at the end, what`s left resembles the barricade scene in ”Les Miz.”
”Take that down,” says Bobby. ”It looks like the French Revolution.”
