| Sunday, November 11, 2007 |
| You're my Venus, you're my fire |
Just as I had always intended to get to a Lamplighters show and finally did, I have for years thought I should check out local theater company 42nd Street Moon, which revives old, forgotten musicals in staged concert versions (i.e. with extremely minimal set design, and actors often holding scripts). I thought it was such a good idea -- I mean, everybody revives "Damn Yankees" and "The King and I," but who else is going to bring back the 1929 Cole Porter nugget "Fifty Million Frenchmen"?
I was finally inspired to buy tickets for a Moon production when I saw that they were reviving 1943's "One Touch of Venus," a musical with a score by Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash. When I was in high school, I was obsessed with a series of books called "The Best Plays of [Year]." I checked them all out, and read all the plays and musicals. With some of the musicals, such as "Kiss Me Kate" or "Oklahoma," it was easy enough to find the scores on LP, but I also enjoyed reading the obscure ones like, well, "One Touch of Venus," the story of a statue that comes to life and falls in love with the humble barber who accidentally released her from the spell that had imprisoned her in marble. It was made into a movie with Ava Gardner in the title role, but the film didn't include many songs from the original score.
Anyway, I dragged a somewhat reluctant Joe to see the play -- it was a Sunday matinee so the average age of the audience was probably around 80 -- and happily, we both found it incredibly charming. It was actually better than I'd thought it would be. The cast was excellent, especially the gorgeous and charismatic Nina Josephs as Venus; I suspect everyone in the audience, male and female, envied Anil Margsahayam (in the role of Venus's barber/rescuer/love object) at least a little. The show was staged in the intimate Eureka Theater in San Francisco, so the singers were able to perform without artificial amplification, always a treat.
Plays such as "South Pacific," "Showboat" or "The Sound of Music" seem to belong to the ages because they're so frequently revived, but there's a unique pleasure in seeing a show that hasn't been performed much since its original run -- it's almost like time travel. The company's next play, "Oh Lady, Lady!," is even older, dating from 1918, with songs by P.G. Wodehouse and Jerome Kern. 42nd Street Moon is a small Bay Area gem, and I hope to see more of their shows in the future.
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posted by 125records @ 8:12 PM  |
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| 1 Comments: |
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I didn't know there was another Best Plays of the Year fan in the world (there must be quite a few, I just haven't met too many). High school was the best time to read them for me too, although I would sometimes go check them out (literally, from the library) in later years. It's great how the wit in those seldom-seen old plays holds up!
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I didn't know there was another Best Plays of the Year fan in the world (there must be quite a few, I just haven't met too many). High school was the best time to read them for me too, although I would sometimes go check them out (literally, from the library) in later years. It's great how the wit in those seldom-seen old plays holds up!