Everything Was Possible

by Ted Chapin

  Michael and Bob had started the day doing more research on dance styles for “Uptown, Downtown.” Michael liked the song, but wasn’t sure how much he could get Alexis to dance. She was tall and had great legs, which he wanted to utilize as much as possible; but figuring out how to point up the difference between the two sides of the character in a decidedly low-down dance was a challenge. The chorus would go on doing the whole dance with their backs to the audience, but he was making certain that their steps remained active and interesting, and, whenever possible, that they commented on the lyrics. He also wanted a showstopper and knew that one way to get one was to build up to a section where one step could be repeated over and over. (Donna McKechnie told me years later that Michael would design dance numbers in such a way that he could determine the exact bar of music at which the audience would start to clap, and that repetition was one of the keys.)

  Jonathan Tunick had completed several full scores, and for a change he brought them to the studio himself. He watched “Uptown, Downtown,” took notes, and wondered whether this job would ever come to an end. He was having fun with the onstage band, however, and was proud of a moment he had finished in “Beautiful Girls” when the onstage band is overtaken by the entire orchestra, in the style of an old MGM musical. It came at the end of Roscoe’s verse, just before the first woman appears at the top of the stairs. He had orchestrated it to feel like a movie opening up to Cinemascope, with the full orchestra booming out for the first time all evening, and he couldn’t wait to hear it played by the full orchestra in Boston.

  Ethel Shutta was back and feeling fine. Some of the other older members of the company still had trouble remembering their words and staging, but she had retained hers. She now tended to be a bit mischievous, which the rest of the company adored. After singing “At my tiny flat, there’s just my cat,” for example, she ad-libbed, “Here, pussy, pussy.” She also illustrated the phrase “a spark to pierce the dark” with an imagined bow and arrow shot offstage left while raising her leg to help aim the bow. The line “From Battery Park to Washington Heights” often became “. . . way up to Washington Heights,” whispered in Jimmy Durante-style while she swung her arm way up. Today’s addition was a yelled “I can play the part!” after “making rounds all afternoon.” On days when she was annoyed, she would arch her finger right at Hal while she sang “Say, Mr. Producer, I’m talking to you, sir.” She didn’t enjoy participating in the group numbers; once while crossing the stage in “Beautiful Girls” she caught my eye and mouthed: “I hate this shit!” But her spirit was indomitable.

  Hal wanted John McMartin to perform “The Road You Didn’t Take” as if it were a Henry Higgins monologue, in speech-song style. He realized this song was Ben’s credo, in which he tries to convince himself that he has made the right choices, and he felt that Ben should be unsuccessful at doing so. “The Ben I’ll never be, who remembers him?”—this was the line Hal recognized as the most important character insight in the song. There isn’t going to be another Ben, the Ben who would be willing to go off with Sally. Hal wanted Dorothy to realize during the song that she isn’t going to get Ben for her own, that she is part of “The Road You Didn’t Take.”

  When the new dialogue for Ben and Phyllis in the Prologue was read through, Alexis got a laugh on “Who’s in love with you, Ben, your editor at Random House?” “My God,” she quipped, “a laugh!” Hal couldn’t resist, either: “What’s that funny noise? Laughter? Whatever it is, we don’t want it!” The general feeling was that the new dialogue was an improvement over the monologues.

  Monday was the last working day before Boston. Since “Live, Laugh, Love” was now blocked out, Hal could work the company step by step through the end of the Follies sequence, what was being referred to as the “chaos.” The idea was this: Ben comes out to perform his number in a completely debonair fashion—white tie, tails, top hat, and cane. He sings about pulling yourself out of your personal doldrums: “When the winds are blowing, That’s the time to smile. Learn how to laugh, Learn how to love, Learn how to live, that’s my style.” This is the successful Ben, who’s found his successful way through life. The beat is gentle—Fred Astaire comfortable. The dancers back him up with a gentle tap chorus, lined up on either side of him, also in top hat and cane, listening to his every word and responding. (John, it turned out, had to be cued through the number by Graciela and Mary Jane, who pointed their canes or threw a beat.) After a circular dance, the second chorus begins and, as cleverly constructed by Steve, Ben catches himself when he sings, “Me, I like to live, Me, I like to love, Me . . .” What he hears, of course, is: “I like to love me.” He stumbles and goes up on the words. The chorus continues dancing in line, but he’s forgotten his lyrics. He asks the conductor for his line, and briefly gets back on a solid footing, only to lose it once again, this time for good. Then he breaks down. He stops and yells, “I don’t love me!”

  What was to follow was the theatricalization of a total breakdown. Scraps of everything we’ve been seeing and hearing all night coming back at us. Hal began to stage it by assembling the entire company—minus the four principals, who don’t partake—and assigning each person a place onstage. Carlotta would stand up with the onstage band, singing “Can That Boy Fox Trot!” Hattie Walker would stand on one of the staircases, belting out “Broadway Baby.” Stella Deems would be on top of a platform, belting out “Who’s That Woman?” Hal positioned people, told them approximately what they would be doing, and tried to make sense out of it all. It was a bold, experimental thing to do, and even though the company had known that something like this was in the works, they all found it a little weird. Hal called for Michael, admitting cheerily that he should have had Michael stage it in the first place. Michael looked at what Hal had done, then said to the company: “To begin with, the only way this cacophony will work is if everyone will pick up his or her cue and do the scene as if you were down center and alone. Don’t try and play to the audience when you’re standing high on top of one of the platforms.” He asked that the dancers just keep dancing Ben’s number as if nothing odd were happening, even though Ben would exit discreetly in order to make a costume change for the last scene. He had the two men in drag from “Buddy’s Blues” come down and join the line of dancers backing up Ben. Bit by bit, he and Hal began to shape something that was either going to be quite startling and extraordinary or a big mess. At this early stage, it was hard to tell, but everyone was game to try to make it work.

  Dorothy had a costume fitting, and since I had some rehearsal skirts to be returned, I went down with her to the costume shop. Flossie had stopped by rehearsals from time to time and had attended a couple of the run-throughs, but since this was the first time I had been to the costume shop, she gave me a guided tour. The showgirl costumes were in their final stages of construction. Several women and a few men were sitting around large worktables, sewing, ironing, putting finishing touches on these big, beaded dresses (I had never seen so many beads in my life). Some dresses were hanging on model forms, with people sewing hems and sleeves. Birdcage hats, a large dress with three cherubs hanging on for dear life, different-colored skirts and dresses—the place looked like a fantasyland. With great pride, Flossie showed me the cape Alexis would wear for the opening, large and purple with applique patches of beaded strips in different colors. I found it hard to imagine anyone actually wearing it. It looked very regal, as if Phyllis were some sort of queen to Ben’s king, if you were willing to give the show royalist overtones. In fact, Jim Goldman’s most recent success had been The Lion in Winter, and I wondered whether he liked to think of his characters as kings and queens.

  After a generous lunch break, Michael and Hal ran the end of the Follies sequence from Sally’s “Losing My Mind” through Phyllis’s “Uptown, Downtown,” which was coming together, on to Ben’s “Live, Laugh, Love,” into the cacophony and through to the final scene with the four principals. Then Michael gave a pep talk: “I want everyone to really give. If you don
’t have the poles on the actual set to hang on to, find something or someone to hang on to so you can really sing out. I need to see if this thing is going to work or if I am going to have to go home tonight and figure out something else.” It seemed to work.

  The day ended early so everyone could get home and pack for Boston. New York rehearsals had officially come to an end. Next would be a new town, a real theater, dressing rooms, costumes, lighting, sound, the orchestra, the “ten out of twelves” when the show can rehearse for ten hours straight, and then, finally, on Saturday, an audience. In five days everyone would have a sense of how good Follies really was.

  6 “Why Am I Here? This Is Crazy!”

  ON TO BOSTON, FEBRUARY 16

  There is no place more theatrically prestigious in the United States than New York. “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere,” as Kander and Ebb once wrote. And because new plays and musicals aren’t hatched in a state of perfection, taking a show to some other city (or cities) before opening on Broadway is an age-old tradition. Traditionally, everyone on the creative team stays with the show during its pre-Broadway tryout, and work continues at whatever pace seems necessary. There are as many stories of shows being turned around because of what was learned from audiences and critics in Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, or Boston as there are stories of shows that closed ignominiously in one of those towns when everyone realized just how dire the situation was. No one tries to produce a failure, The Produces notwithstanding, but the surprises that come when first confronted by a paying audience can be enormous. Better to face those surprises in a place where the stakes aren’t so high, and there is time for changes to be made.

  To many within the Broadway establishment, Boston was a favorite stop. Its audiences were thought to be intelligent and fair-minded; somehow, they understood and enjoyed their role. They understood they weren’t getting a completely finished Broadway product, but that was part of the challenge. They felt part of the development process. One very New England cousin of mine, whom I saw only in the summers, took pleasure in describing moments of discovery. She relished telling her story of Mame, when the audience applauded the title song during the overture, not because anyone had heard it before, but because it just felt like a hit song. She remembered the moment when she realized that both halves of “You’re Just in Love” in Call Me Madam were going to fit together. She couldn’t wait for the next new show to open. But Boston audiences could also be tough and uncompromising.

  There were critics in Boston who were helpful. Elliot Norton, the chief critic for the Boston Record American and unofficial dean of American theater critics, was well-respected. He was always willing to meet face-to-face with the creative team of a new show and give his critique, including suggestions for how the show might be fixed. In his later years, he had a television program on Boston’s WGBH in which he would invite members of the creative staff for a very public, but gentlemanly, discussion. Kevin Kelly, a younger and often more acerbic critic who was coming into his own, had been one of the first to sing the praises of Company in the season before Follies. And as we will see, a then unknown young man—still an undergraduate at Harvard—not only surprised everyone connected with Follies with his astute and brilliantly written review, but he also became the first person to predict the legendary status the show would eventually achieve. He was Frank Rich.

  Boston has its own small theater district, downtown, just off the slightly seedy corner of the Boston Common. In 1971 there were three theaters that welcomed pre-Broadway shows and touring productions—the Shubert and the Wilbur, both on Tremont Street, and the Colonial, on Boylston Street. Hal Prince preferred the Colonial. Though built as part of an 1899 office building facing the Common, it had a bona fide marquee and a proper theater lobby, so once you were inside, it didn’t feel at all like an office building. It was also the most beautiful and ornate of the Boston theaters. There was plenty of marble and gold leaf in the lobbies, lounges, and auditorium; cherubs adorned the front of the boxes and balconies; and the ceiling was decorated with frescoes. The back of the stage opened onto a small alleyway named in honor of “Allen’s Alley,” the final segment of the popular radio program hosted by Fred Allen. Loading and unloading trucks full of scenery was tricky and decidedly a one-at-a-time proposition. Once a truck had backed into the alleyway, getting to the stage door meant sliding alongside with inches to spare.

  When Follies arrived, two pre-Broadway tryouts were already playing in Boston. And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little, the Broadway debut of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paul Zindel, was in the last week of a sold-out run at the Wilbur prior to moving to the Morosco Theater in New York. The Shubert was housing a new and interesting-sounding musical titled Prettybelle, by Bob Merrill and Jule Styne, who together had written the score to Fanny Girl and individually had had great success in a number of other musicals through the years. Gower Champion, who had twice won double Tony Awards as both director and choreographer (for Hello, Dolly! and The Happy Time), was in charge—the credit above the title read “A Gower Champion Production.” Oliver Smith was the designer and Alexander H. Cohen the producer. The star, with her name as large as the title, was Angela Lansbury, by this time a two-time Tony winner for Best Actress in a Musical. All these award winners made the Follies creative staff a little nervous. Since the Tonys were presented in April for a season that ran from mid-March to mid-March, Company, which had opened in April of 1970, would be competing with every musical that opened before March 16, 1971. Alexander H. Cohen, in a stroke of producorial and promotional cunning, had scheduled Prettybelle to open on March 15th, the last possible day for eligibility. It would therefore be directly up against Company, which was, so far, the perceived front-runner in the musical categories. Cohen, who also produced the Tony Awards telecast, was delighted at the prospect of a last-minute publicity-stoking challenge.

  Word was starting to drift back to the New York theater community, however, that Prettybelle was in trouble. Angela Lansbury played a proper Southern woman, unfortunately also an alcoholic schizophrenic, who seeks revenge on her late husband when she discovers he had been a brutal racist. At first she supports liberal causes (which gets her into enough trouble), but then decides to allow herself to be raped by a series of men of various non-white minorities. Not exactly the stuff of musical comedy, and not how the audiences who had been charmed by Angela Lansbury in Mame, or even Dear World, wanted to see her. It appeared that despite all the best of innovative intentions, the show was doomed. None of the collaborators did work of great distinction, and the production looked cheap. Halfway through the Boston run of Follies, Prettybelle put up a closing notice and canceled its New York opening.

  While the Follies cast was finishing up rehearsals in New York, a caravan of trucks loaded with equipment, costumes, props, scenery, and music had begun the journey north. Costumes constructed at Barbara Matera’s shop on Broadway and at Eaves Costumes on Forty-sixth Street, music copied at Chelsea Music on Sixtieth Street, lighting and sound equipment from Ninth Avenue, scenery from the Bronx—all were converging on a theater in Boston where everything was about to come together under one roof for the first time. Once in the theater, each department was going to need space in which to function: the lighting department had to have a large enough area to spread out and check all the lighting instruments and cables before they were hung. Barbara Matera needed enough curtain rods to hang all the costumes, now numbering close to two hundred, in addition to needing enough workspace to make alterations or even construct new costumes that might be needed during the run. The carpenters needed room to swing a hammer and adjust things in the set that didn’t quite fit. The sound department, pretty much a one-man operation, commandeered space in the auditorium for laying out its cables, speakers, and microphones prior to having them installed around everything else. Mathilde Pincus and the music department needed to set up all her equipment, which included a traveling ozalid copying machine and desks for the copyists, s
everal of whom would be on the scene the whole time. At least she didn’t have to be in the theater; a suite at the Bradford Hotel became her domain.

  Along with the tradition of Boston theaters is the tradition of Boston hotels. Because the idea was to stay as close to the theater as possible, it was a fairly small pool of hotels that served the visiting theater community; within that pool there was a clear pecking order: the top of the line was the Ritz-Carlton, an elegant hotel on the far side of and overlooking the Public Garden. Next came the Statler Hilton, a vast triangular affair closer to the theaters but also near the bus station. Lower down were the Bradford and the Avery, both short walks from the theater. The Bradford had decidedly seen better days but was large enough to have useful amenities, such as a large ballroom on a lower floor and a smaller one on the top floor. The Avery was on the edge of Boston’s “combat zone,” an area that seemed not to have found priority placement on any list of urban renewal projects. Its carpets were stained and its curtains frayed. Everyone was on per diems and could therefore decide how much to spend on a hotel. The thrifty ones suffered at the bottom of the heap; those whose comfort was more important to them went slightly higher. Of course those familiar with the road were quick with advice for the neophytes, like the showgirls from Las Vegas, for whom the whole experience was overwhelming. Since the management was paying for my hotel, having decided it would be useful to have me remain throughout the Boston run, they chose to put me in the Avery.