Nothing Like a Dame (Book Review)

If you are a fan of musical theatre, you will greatly enjoy Nothing Like a Dame, Eddie Shapiro's collection of long, thoughtful interviews with many of the most brilliant women doing musicals today.

Using a simple question-and-answer structure, Shapiro lets us vicariously hang out with Elaine Stritch, Carol Channing, Chita Rivera, Donna McKechnie, Angela Lansbury, Leslie Uggams, Judy Kaye, Betty Buckley, Patti LuPone, Bebe Neuwirth, Donna Murphy, Lillias White, Karen Ziemba, Debra Monk, Victoria Clark, Audra McDonald, Kristin Chenoweth, Idina Menzel, Sutton Foster, Laura Benanti, and Tonya Pinkins.

The interviews are long enough to give a sense of each woman's personality and attitudes. Each women talks about her career, her hopes and dreams, and her triumphs and disappointments. While more than one interviewee feels hard-done-to by the world of theatre, others wake up grateful each day for all that theatre has given them. Many evince a surprisingly large amount of insecurity and others a breathtaking amount of ego. There is general agreement that awards are overrated (though welcome!), that Stephen Sondheim is a nice genius, and that Jerome Robbins was a nasty genius. Many talk about how hard it was to learn to advocate for themselves, and more than one talks about the difficulties of mixing motherhood and eight shows a week. There is much discussion about reviews, professionalism, missing performances, and the living mass that is the audience. They have a great deal of praise for each other--and for Ethel Merman. And, yes, there is a fair amount of dirt.

The book includes about a million interesting quotes. Here are a few:

Elaine Stritch

I had no idea what I was talking about, singing "The Ladies Who Lunch," but I just grew into it. I grew into that song. And I looked like I knew what I was talking about. I think that meant that I did know what I was talking about, but I just couldn’t explain how it was hitting me. I just could do it.

I don’t like the way you said that. I had a couple of drinks before I went out onstage, but "your first show sober?" I don’t think you’re not sober with a drink or two in you. It’s an unfortunate way of putting that.

Newsies

As the lights come up on the first scene, a young man with a bum leg and his stronger, abler friend awaken to greet another gray, dirty summer morning on the Bowery. From the rooftop they've been spending warm, rain-free nights on, they contemplate their dismal future, soon bursting into a song about how wonderful it would be to leave New York City for a cleaner, greener, less complicated place. Once the song ends and they return to their grim reality, they climb down from the roof and force themselves to face another tough day in the urban jungle.

Before I continue, I feel compelled to tell you that I am not describing a musical adaptation of Midnight Cowboy (although why no one has yet attempted a musical adaptation of Midnight Cowboy is beyond me.). Rather, I'm recounting the opening scene from the Broadway production of Newsies, which is sort of like Midnight Cowboy, at least in its vaguely homoerotic treatment of the gritty, male urban underclass. But lest you are thinking of cancelling your plans to bring some kids to see the show next time you're in town, please know that all comparisons end there: Newsies features no disturbing scenes of male hustling, no death by tuberculosis, and not a single weird woman rubbing a plastic rat all over her face in a Times Square automat at 3am. Also, it's not set in New York City in the late 1960s, but in 1899 (an equally grimy, if perhaps not quite as sleazy, time in the city's history). Unlike Midnight Cowboy, Newsies is good, clean fun--a sweet, upbeat story filled with likable, hard-working, earnest young idealists who support each other through thick and thin, join together to fight (usually peacefully) for what's right, and end up making the world a better place as a result of their pluck, ingenuity, and old-fashioned hard work. In short, Newsies is your typical Alger myth, tied up in shiny, cheerful Disney wrapping.

Intimacy

I guess Thomas Bradshaw was aiming for satire when he wrote the dreadful and stupid Intimacy, but satire requires a point of view, intelligence, and more discernment than shown by, say, a bunch of 11-year-olds telling dirty jokes. Scott Elliot's heavy-handed direction helps not at all. 

Intimacy is about sex, and a great deal of sex occurs during its long two hours. The sex involves various organs, positions, and people, including family members, and is performed on stage, on film, and with various prostheses. I guess it's supposed to be funny; it isn't. I guess it's supposed to be shocking; it isn't. I guess it's supposed to mean something; nope.

I like one idea that manages to poke through, that sex can be healing. And I thought the ejaculation mechanism was far superior to the vomiting mechanism in Gods of Carnage. That's it for positives.

Intimacy is puerile, pointless, empty, and stupid. My tickets were free, but I'd sure like the two hours of my life back.

(press ticket; in the theatre, unfortunately)

Row After Row

Jessica Dickey's Row After Row sneaks up on you. The story seems simple: three Civil War re-enactors share a table in a bar following a re-creation of the battle of Gettysburg. Tom and Cal are old friends and experienced re-enactors. Leah is new in town and has joined the re-enactors in a bid to meet people. Cal is horrified both at her having played a soldier and at her having done so in non-period-appropriate clothing. Leah explains, "I didn’t feel like playing the serving wench or a widowed bride or whatever." Cal is derisive and downright rude, calling the new rules that allow women to dress as men, "mamby pamby bullshit." He also explains that it can cost thousands of dollars to get all of the necessary garb and equipment to be an authentic re-enactor. Tom adds, "Most people don’t realize the commitment goes beyond sleeping in a tent and wearing wool in July." Leah and Cal spar, with Tom trying to play peacemaker.

Rosie Benton, Erik Lochtefeld. P.J. Sosko
Photo: Carol Rosegg

Cal is recovering from a brutal breakup and isn't quite the jerk he seems. For all of his belligerence, he listens when Leah speaks.  Leah, who chose to move to Gettysburg by putting her finger "on the map one drunken night about three weeks ago," is mourning her vanished career as a dancer. Tom, a teacher with a son about to be born, and barely scraping by, is deciding whether to go on strike with his union, torn between loyalty to his family and to his coworkers, between principles and fear.

Although the play initially seems to be an entertaining battle of the sexes, with feminist flavoring and even a touch of "meet cute," Dickey has more on her mind. By its end, Row After Row has revealed itself as a serious, thought-provoking, and occasionally chilling examination of bravery, integrity, manhood, and womanhood that is also very funny.

The Bridges of Madison County

It's the moment. The lonely Italian-born Iowan housewife and the dashing photographer dance. And the audience's focus is pulled onto a neighbor, singing.

It's another moment. Their love is growing. And focus is pulled onto a skeletal faux bridge being lowered.

Still another moment. And focus is pulled onto the four store fronts being rolled onstage. Or the kitchen coming in. Or the fake car being put in place. Or the people at the country fair. Etc, etc, etc.

The Bridges of Madison County in its various incarnations is a testament to mush. It's cliched, silly, predictable, corny, and trite. Well-done, it can also be ridiculously affecting, a major tear-jerker. But you have to embrace the mush, focus on the mush, honor the mush, trust the mush.

The often-brilliant Bartlett Sher, director of the musical version of The Bridges of Madison County, does everything he can to distract from the mush. His direction is busy, overthought, and overdone. It takes the slight but sweet story at the center of the show and buries it under motion and scenery and tangents. Composer/lyricist Jason Robert Brown and Marsha Norman are guilty as well; they have stuffed this souffle of a show with so many ingredients that it has no chance of rising. But Sher makes it even worse, never letting the story settle for even a minute or two.

Grounded

Hannah Cabell
Photo: Rob Strong

The Pilot's name doesn't matter because being a pilot is absolutely what she is, over all other forms of identification. She lives to fly "My Tiger/My gal who cradles me lifts me up." She also rains destruction

on the minarets and concrete below me
The structures that break up the sand
I break them back down
Return them to desert
To particles
Sand
At least I think I do
I'm long gone by the time the boom happens
Tiger and I are on to another piece of sky

She doesn't date much: "Most guys don't like what I do/Feel they're less of a guy around me/I take the guy spot and they don't know where they belong." But then she meets Eric:

This one’s eyes light up
This one thinks it's cool
This one kisses me in the parking lot like I'm the rock
star I am