Nr 464: Oh, Brother!(1981)

Oh, Brother!
Broadway 1981, 3 perf.

Music: Michael Valenti
Lyrics: Donald Driver
Book: Donald Driver based on William Shakespeare’s The Comedy Of Errors (1591) which in turn was based on Plautus (254 B.C. – 182 B.C) play Menaechmi.

Tag line: Musical Comedy breaks out in the Middle East!

OH, BROTHER! takes place during a revolution in an oil rich Middle Eastern country on the Persian Gulf in a quaint resort town where its populace of merchants and revolutionaries mix Eastern tradition with Western consumerism. Into this volatile environment unwittingly stumbles a sweet old American named Lew. He is immediately surrounded by revolutionaries demanding he explain his presence. And the show starts with him telling his story:
Years ago, travelling in the Middle East with his wife, Lillian, she gave birth to identical twin boys. At the same time a dear black woman also gave birth to identical twin boys, but she died. Lew and Lillian adopted the orphaned twin boys to raise as brothers to their own. And for some inexplicable reason they only give each pair of twins one name so we have 2 boys named Habim and 2 named Mousada. When Lillian was well they booked separate flights home, separate flights to lessen the chance an air disaster might orphan any of their infant sons. Each parent took one twin from each set and departed for home. Disaster struck! The plane on which Lillian and her two charges were flying was hijacked to Iraq.
Lew tried to find them, but he never saw Lillian or the two boys again.
When Lew’s two boys grew to manhood, curious about their lost twins they prevailed upon old Lew to let them search the world to find them. Lew consented.
That was two years ago. Now they are lost too and he is searching for them.
And now the real story begins: of course Lew’s sons are in the same town at the same time as their father (unbeknownst to him) and, as faith would have it, it is in this very town their lost twin brothers live…
This leads to a series of mistaken identities where nobody knows which brother is which (they have the same name, remember) and that in turn leads to wrongful beatings, a near-seduction, the arrest of of one brother, false accusations of infidelity, theft, madness, and lots and lots of confusion and hilarious situations and a big chase. But all is solved in the end and they even find their long lost mother Lillian.

Well, that sounds like it could be a lot of fun, right? And it is quite funny for a half hour or so, but the whole ”mistaken identity” thing gets old and very predictable rather fast, and what’s left is a loooong wait for the cast to start the finale.
Thankfully the music is good. Some songs are even very good. And that saves the show from being a total waste. We have an old fashioned opening number that sets your toes tapping along (We Love An Old Story), a beautiful quartet for the two pair of twins (I Too The World), a romantic anthem that sounds like something Rodgers & Hammerstein could have written (That’s Him) and a very funny and definitely not politically correct song (How Do You Want Me).
And there was so much talent on the stage: Judy Kaye (the Phantom of the Opera, Mama Mia), Harry Groener (Cats, Crazy for You) and David James Carroll (Chess, Grand Hotel), just to mention a few of the more well known, who all went on to bigger and better things. It’s the book that let’s this show down. And the staging. And the sets. And the choreography. And the costumes. And… well, everything.

But as I mentioned before the music is worth a listening. Unfortunately you can’t find it on Spotify but maybe on Apple Music? But if you listen to the cast album you’ll get a couple of bonus songs. They probably recorded the album during try outs for two of the songs didn’t make it to the final show, and they’re good songs. A 60s flavored rock song called My World’s Coming’s Unwrapped and a funny ensemble number simply called Revolution. You could hear a little from the latter in the Entr’acte. Now, if you’ve read about this show somewhere else you may find my last statement a bit confusing: how could there be an Entr’acte as the show was in one act. Well, now it is, but during try outs it wasn’t. So therefore there was an entr’acte. But that one is not included on the cast album. Sorry, but the musical geek in me just had to point this out…

This isn’t the first musical version of The Comedy Of Errors, that was The Boys from Syracuse (1938) with book by George Abbott, lyrics by Lorenz Hart and music by Richard Rodgers. That show had the same problems as this one has, as far as the mistaken identity plot goes, but is all in all a better put together show and the music… Oh, the score is a real classic. You can read more about The Boys on this blog, search for entry no: 198.

This wasn’t Donald Drivers first attempt at musicalizing a Shakespeare play, he made Twelfth Night into the rock musical Your Own Thing in 1968. That show was a hit. Read about it at no: 438.

The composer of Oh. Brother! Michael Valenti, was actually one of the performers on Your Own Thing and he was also the understudy for the lead in the original Broadway production of How To Succeed in Business Without Even Trying (1961)

Press:
”Nonstop zaniness with perpetual motion belly dancers, burlesque turns, bad puns, gun toting Arab revolutionary chorus boys and other assorted sight gags, from a sneaker shod camel to a self propelled skateboard.”
– Women’s Wear Daily

… ‘‘Oh, Brother!” may be the only current Broadway musical that is discreetly amplified: we hear music instead of an electronic buzz. Let other producers note that this show’s sound system was designed by Richard Fitzgerald.
The rest of ”Oh, Brother!” – its book, lyrics, direction and ”staging” – is the work of Donald Driver. With the exception of the lyrics, which are adequate, Mr. Driver’s contributions encase the show in cement. It is his idea to reset a Plautus-Shakespeare longlost brothers farce in the contemporary Middle East, and a most misguided idea it is.
What’s funny about the Middle East today? Not much – unless you want to be completely tasteless. … but why bother to set a show in a region where there’s no room, right now, for humor? Thanks to its concept, ‘‘Oh, Brother!” is crippled before it even begins. Because he can’t bite any satirical teeth into his topical setting, Mr. Driver loads the show instead with hoary double-entendre gags and stale parodies of Hollywood’s old Arabian Nights movies. … some of them look and sound as though they were culled from 15-year-old back issues of Mad magazine. 
…
Mr. Driver doesn’t know how to pace or build his convoluted story of mistaken identities – it’s all conveyed frenetically in the same numbing shriek. The direction is of the same style. Mr. Driver has staged this show at a speed that kills. ”Oh, Brother!” runs one hour and 45 minutes with no intermission, and the actors are running the whole time. Energy is one thing -a relay race is another. Whiplash direction, much of it modeled on ”Three Stooges” comedies, is not a substitute for well-written fun.
– Frank Rich, The New York Times

Videos:
Tv review + We Love An Old Story + How Do You Want Me
A Loud and Funny Song

Nr 438: Your Own Thing

 

 

Your Own Thing (1968),
Off-Broadway 937 föreställningar
London (1969), 42 föreställningar

Music & Lyrics: Hal Hester, Danny Apolinar
Book: Donald Driver, löst baserad på William Shakespeares pjäs Trettondagsafton (Twelfth Night 1601-02)

This is a man, look at his hair
Not your idea of a he-man
Say what you will, what do I care
I just want to be a free man.
To be me, man!

”Love is a gas! It’s where it’s at! And if your own thing is against Establishment’s barf concepts, you can drop out and groove with it.”

The setting for the play suggests a Shakespearean stage. Whilst Twelfth Night was ”then”, Your Own Thing is very much ”here and now”.
Viola and Sebastian, a twin brother-and-sister rock duo, get separated when their boat sinks early in act 1, but both land in Illyria (in this case modern day New York), where Orson is a theatrical agent and Olivia the operator of a discotheque.
Viola, mistaken for a boy (she calls herself Charlie), meets Orson, the manager of a shaggy-haired rock group called the Apocalypse, which features four musicians who perform under the aliases Death, War, Famine and Disease. Because Disease has been drafted, Orson hires Viola as his replacement.
When Orson sends ”Charlie” with a love letter to Olivia, the familiar complications follow:
Viola and Orson develop romantic feelings for one another, Orson is thrown into a state of sexual confusion, which increases when he meets Sebastian (since the boat wreck, mistaken for a girl), and confuses him with Viola.  Olivia on the other hand falls for Sebastian who she thinks is a girl and therefore also get sexually confused. What follows is a plot with an emphasis on mistaken identities and wacky, fast-paced antics.
In the end Viola is engaged to Orson and Sebastian to Olivia.

En megahit på sin tid. Men också ett riktigt barn av sin tid.
Den hade fingertoppkänsla och stämde av allt som var ”hippt, nytt, ungdomligt och NU!” enligt pressen och den bredare massan. Den använde sig av alla den tidens hippaste slanguttryck som ”groovy”, ”far out man” och liknande. Kläderna var psykedeliskt mönstrade i orange, brunt och gult, håret var långt men välfriserat och de på scenen verkade kanske mer höra hemma i en hip tv-show som The Mod Squad eller The Sonny & Cher Show än i en ”with it” och  ”now” musikal.
Den var också snäll och så långt från revolutionerade, ”farlig”, nydanande och ”fräck” som Hair var.  I Your Own Thing användes inga svordomar och den sexuella förvirring var kittlande men ofarlig. Den här föreställningen var en slags familjevänlig version av Hairs hippies som man till och med kunde ta med sin gamla frireligiösa mormor på. Och musiken var mer The Monkees än rock.

Detta är melodiös light-rock. Massor av låtar som snabbt klistrar sig fast i hjärnan. Mycket up-tempo och några snygga ballader. En musikal som verkligen är värd att återupptäcka för musikens skull. Men själva showen får nog ligga kvar i malpåsen. Jag skrev inledningsvis att den var ett barn av sin tid och det är den verkligen. Den fångade tidsandan och den tidens slang så exakt att den dessvärre åldrades oerhört fort. När den fick sin premiär i Chicago 1970 så ansåg kritikerna att musikalen kändes gammal, passé, att tiden gått den förbi och att den var ”a period piece”. Detta på bara 2 år! Ouch!

Kuriosa:
Föreställningen vann följande priser:
1968 Outer Critics Circle Award, Best Production
1967-1968 New York Drama Critics’ Circle, Best Musical
1968 Theatre World Award, till Rusty Thacker som spelade Sebastian
1968 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Playwright, Donald Driver

Showen var den första off-Broadway föreställning som vann en New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award  för bästa musikal. Den slog bl a Hair!

Det var den andra musikalen, efter Hair, att benämnas som ”rock musikal”.

Original titeln för showen var The London Look när den skrevs 1966, men när det var dags att sätta upp den så hade mods och ”Swinging London” blivit lite ute och ersatts med hippierörelsen så man beslöt att ändra titeln till det den har idag.

Titeln Your Own Thing är en parafras på Shakespeares egen undertitel till Twelfth Night vilken var What You Will.

Två av föreställningens sånger har text som är tagen direkt från Shakespeares pjäs. Det är Come Away, Death och She Never Told Her Love.

Det här var en, för sin tid, väldigt tekniskt avancerad föreställning. Man använde sig av 12 dia- och 2 filmprojektorer för att skapa de olika miljöerna som föreställningen utspelade sig i.
Det här var även den första showen där man använde sig av en ”voice over”, det vill säga att det fanns en förinspelad berättarröst som med jämna mellanrum berättade och förklarade saker för publiken.

Rollen Olivia, som i musikalen är ägare till ett diskotek, är baserad på Sybil Burton, Richard Burtons första fru. Hon startade en nattklubb 1965 som blev den tidens favorit kändisställe. Nattklubben, som fick namnet ”Arthur”, stängde 1969 och kan väl ses som en slags föregångare till Studio 54. Det var på ”Arthur” som man uppfann ”mixning” vad gäller övergången av musik mellan 2 olika skivspelare, detta enligt DJ:n Terry Noel som påstod att det var han som kom på eller uppfann det.

Filmrättigheterna till showen såldes för $500 000. Legendariske filmregissören Stanley Donen (Singin’ in the Rain m fl) skulle regissera den. Tyvärr blev det ingen film.

Upphovsmännen sa att de var ute efter att skapa en föreställning som var ”far-out” samtidigt som den var helt igenkänningsbar – ”a protest play that even tourists would enjoy”.

Manusförfattaren Donald Driver och en av skådespelarna, Michael Valenti, som också var kompositör, skulle försöka sig på ännu en musikal baserad på en Shakespeare pjäs 1981. Denna gång var det The Comedy of Errors som som musikal fick titeln Oh, Brother! Den spelades 3 gånger på Broadway…

I föreställningen spelades Viola av Leland Palmer, en musikalartist som kanske är mest känd för rollen som Audrey Paris (den frånskilda hustrun) i Bob Fosses självbiografiska film All That Jazz (1979). Förutom den rollen och den i den här musikalen så spelade hon Fastrada i original uppsättningen på Broadway av Pippin.

Press:
”…cheerful, joyful and blissfully irreverent to Shakespeare and everything else….The humor of the show is light-fingered and lighthearted, and its vitality and charm are terrific. The music is always engaging and far from consistently strident. People who like The Sound of Music rather than the sound of music do not have to stay away….”
– Clive Barnes, The New York Times

”… a swinging little show that I think I enjoyed better then I ever will  Twelfth Night itself.
…
(about this show as compared to other Generation Gap shows) ”What has been eliminated is the self-pitying chip-on-the-shoulder whine; instead the comment is both light-hearted and matter-of-fact, mainly dealing with the new transsexualism of the young.”
– Jerry Tallmer, The New York Post

It was a bright, highly entertaining show when the engaging little company took to song and dance – and it was a brutal bore when they had to wade through the story.
– James Davis, The Daily News

Video:
The Flowers