`In the last decade or so,” wrote Broadway historian Abe Lauffe back in the late `70s, ”the changing attitude of adults towards hysterical teenagers has somewhat dimmed the amusing qualities of `Bye Bye Birdie.` In reviewing a recent summer revival of the show, one critic said that `Birdie` was not a production for adults who had seen it before.”
The wheel apparently has turned a bit since ”Birdie” seemed so out of fashion 15 years ago.
Tommy Tune, admittedly partisan as star of the current smash revival of
”Birdie,” a touring sensation opening Tuesday at the Auditorium Theatre and surprising even the show`s creators and Tune himself with its stunning success, says more accurately, ”If ever a show belonged in a time capsule as a representation of a time in our culture and lives, it`s this one.”
No one would confuse ”Birdie” with high art. This isn`t the sociocultural microscope or musical innovation of ”West Side Story,” or the soaring melodies and operetta splendors of Rodgers and Hammerstein, all somewhat contemporaneous with this 1960 valentine.
No, ”Birdie” has a silly, pop-cultural storyline and a dozen or so passable show tunes of a period nature. It was a solid undertaking that Lauffe, who was also a critic, dismissed as deserving its modest 607 performances on Broadway-and no more.
”Birdie” is in many ways the repository of our archetype of the American teenager: kooky, terminally hormonal, swooning at pop idols, frenzied about who`s going steady with whom, and riddled, if only in the cherished dreamland of memory, with vices no more venal than an obsession with soda shops and telephone chatter.
”Birdie” is the story of a fictional character blatantly modeled on the young Elvis Presley, named Conrad Birdie, who is about to be drafted and is scheduled to play a farewell gig on ”The Ed Sullivan Show.” As part of the publicity bonanza, Birdie`s manager, a teacher-turned-songwriter named Albert Peterson, originally played by Dick Van Dyke and now played by Tune, schemes to have the Sullivan show broadcast live from a prototypical small town, where a prototypical teenager will be picked to give him ”One Last Kiss” on the air.
The pandemonium that visits the town-one Sweet Apple, Ohio-and the love complications the situation creates for the manager constitute much of the plot of the musical; the energy comes from the frenzied evocation of the screaming 1960-ish teenagers and the then-young tradition of teenage idols whom befuddled parents found inexplicable and nutty.
The plot mirrored an era when Eisenhower was president, Kennedy and Camelot were waiting to happen and teenage fads could be dutifully chronicled and exposed by nothing more threatening than the Sullivan show, which was a virtual national pastime. The original Baby Boomers were teenagers and, as in so many other chapters in their lives, they were the loudest teenagers ever.
”Why can`t they be like we were, perfect in every way,” croons the beleaguered father in ”Birdie.” ”What`s the matter with kids today?”
Familiar refrain
True, kids today know all about safe sex, AIDS, condoms, crack and gangs, topics at the family dinner table-when the family manages to eat together. But the generational disparity told of in ”Birdie” is still with us, a split forever funny and irksome at once.
And those countless teenagers who, in high school productions, screeched their hearts out and imitated themselves, singing ”The Telephone Hour”
(”Hi, Nancy. Hi Ursula. What`s the story, morning glory? What`s the tale, nightingale? Did you hear about Hugo and Kim?”) have grown up, married and raised impossible kids of their own. (A middle-age gentleman proudly nabbed Tune at a recent autograph session and boasted, ”I played Harvey Johnson`s dad”-a role with one line.)
The issues of contention may be different, and the teen idols aren`t Elvis Presley and the Beatles anymore, but Madonna, Michael Jackson and New Kids on the Block.
Still, the refrain is ever with us: ”Why can`t they be like we were, perfect in every way? What`s the matter with kids today?”
”We`re gratified by what`s happened, and we`ve wondered why it`s a hit all over again, and the honest truth is I can`t even figure it out myself,”
says composer Charles Strouse. He was only 26 when he wrote the score for
”Birdie,” a novice Broadway songster with little experience in theatrical musicals and absolutely no affinity, he says, for the rock `n` roll genre at the heart of the musical`s sendup.
”I was a serious composer, studying abstract composition,” he says. ”I guess I fell into this.”
After the play came out, he says, ”I was studying with Aaron Copland . . . (and he) actually called me up and said, `You know, there`s this fellow with a hit musical who has the same name as yours.`
”It`s often been credited as the first rock `n` roll musical,” Strouse adds. ”I`m flattered, but it`s nothing of the sort. The rock `n` roll genre is hinted at, but not at the heart of the score.”
2 new numbers
He`s right.
It`s the light-hearted playfulness of ”Birdie,” the work of a bunch of freewheeling creators who didn`t take themselves quite so seriously as Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, or Bernstein and Sondheim, that infuses
”Birdie” with its casual, unassuming, almost humble nonchalance.
Strouse and his witty lyricist, Lee Adams, have even written not one but two new numbers for the show, one a showcase for Tune`s rubbery choreographic and tap-dancing talents called ”A Giant Step,” in which Albert stand up to his possessive mother, and the other, ”He`s Mine,” a tug of war between Albert`s long-suffering girlfriend, Rose, and his mother (played on the road by Broadway`s queen of the whiny deadpan, Marilyn Cooper).
One can`t imagine Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein even conceiving of similarly tampering with the sacrosanct ”West Side Story.”
”I just don`t think of my work that way,” Strouse says. ”The truth is, Dick Van Dyke is a very different performer. He`s one of the most shy and humble performers I`ve ever known. In some ways, he would have preferred not to sing and dance at all. He was happy when we took material away. When Albert stands up to his mother, it`s a big moment, and when we went back to the material, it seemed natural to give Tommy something to do, since he loves performing.”
That whole spirit is somehow a part of what makes ”Birdie” a movable feast whose raw material has always adapted so well for its many high school incarnations. Bookwriter Michael Stewart, lyricist Adams and even Gower Champion, who made his directorial debut with the project, seemed to come at it with Strouse`s easy-going, ”let`s try this” attitude.
A moment in time
The show`s genuinely charming songs, ”Put on a Happy Face,” the moody and timely ”Lot of Livin` to Do” and the all-but-forgotten but lovely
”English Teacher” aren`t what one remembers. It`s the layered cubicles of teenagers crooning on telephones, the funky putdown in ”Kids” that linger.
The current participants, who began their roles nearly a year ago and will have toured 27 cities before the show shuts down early this summer, retain what almost seems like a flippant attitude toward the project.
”I keep saying it`s a perfect example of a well-crafted musical comedy from Broadway`s golden age, and that`s so wordy and pretentious,” Tune says. ”It`s what I believe, but it`s wordy. The truth is in the subject matter.”
”I never gave it much thought,” says director Gene Saks, the smooth, machine-like craftsman whose string of Neil Simon hits and original staging of ”Mame” rank high among his many successes. ”I came in because Tommy Tune was involved and I like him.
”Perhaps it`s that `Birdie` is the Broadway show people remember they saw first,” Saks suggests, ”the one their parents first took them to as children. Now they`re bringing their own kids and telling them, `Look, this is what it was like before R ratings, before sexually transmitted diseases. This was our time to be happy.` ”
