I'm starting to feel the same way about Anything Goes. As yet another example of its "adult content" (as if "love affairs with young bears" wasn't enough), Anything Goes skewers organized religion pretty aggressively throughout the show, often through very pointed satire.
The most obvious commentary on religion jump-starts the plot in the opening scene, as Bishop Dobson gets arrested in Moonface's place. Why is that funny? Nobody can tell the difference between a bishop and a gangster. Welcome to 1934 America. It's the first of dozens of swipes taken at American institutions, but at religion even more often than the others. And like several others, it's a swipe that stays with us all evening, because Mooney is dressed like a preacher till the very end. Throughout the show, Mooney repeatedly does immoral, illegal, and/or unethical things, and all as a clergyman. And no one notices.
Two of our three heroes, Reno and Mooney, have phony religious alter-egos. Reno is a "former evangelist" (i.e., con artist), now a nightclub singer whose songs have weirdly religious imagery; and Mooney is hiding from the Feds in the clothes of a minister, and soon he's called "Dr. Moon" by everyone aboard. Mooney spends much of the first act running around the ship in full preacher drag, stealing things and brandishing his tommy gun.
Reno talks in fake Biblical language periodically, showing us that she was once a religious figure, but also that they she didn't take it very seriously. She says to Mr. Whitney in the first scene, "I've got four fallen angels holding up the bar. Come, let us lead them beside distilled waters." When Mooney suggests blackmailing Evelyn, we get this Biblical-ish exchange:
Reno: Get thee behind me, Moonface. I kind of like the guy. He's different.
Moon: But Reno, you promised Billy.
Reno: Thou almost persuadest me to shoot the works. You know, if you weren't a friend of Billy's, I'd unfrock you.
In (almost) quoting Luke 4:8, Reno jokingly equates Mooney with Satan -- but also herself with Jesus. But she's also (almost) quoting , "Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." (Acts 26:28) This is someone with only a casual knowledge of Scripture, but enough for her purposes. And in comic counterpoint to her fake piety, the exchange ends with her threatening sex!
And these two fake religious figures, Reno and Mooney, will lead the comic revival meeting in Act II. As the meeting climaxes, Reno once again mashes together religion with pop culture, in this case, the language of radio: "Sign off with Satan and tune in with Heaven." I wrote in another blog post about Reno's big religious number "Blow, Gabriel, Blow":
The language of the "Blow, Gabriel" lyric is Religious Symbolism as a Second Language. This is an amateur, or more to the point, a religious outsider, leading this revival meeting -- with the help of the fake-minister "Dr. Moon." It's obvious neither of them are really believers, and that doesn't seem to bother the crowd a bit. And by the way, why do we want Gabriel to blow his horn? The Bible says that "an archangel with the trumpet of God" will announce the Second Coming, and people have assumed that's Gabriel, particularly since Milton made that connection in Paradise Lost.
So are these drunk, hard-partying passengers really cheering on the Second Coming -- and the Apocalypse? They are, but they have no idea that's what they're doing, because Reno and Mooney are first-rate con artists.
Both Reno and Mooney connect to other (not really) "religious" characters. Reno has her "angels," her backup singers, from whom we hear short, comic bits all evening, sometimes about their promiscuity. Do we assume they were also with her back when she was an evangelist, or are they just called angels as an ironic callback to Reno's last gig?
And Mooney's accidental sidekick Bonnie has her religious moment too, when she sings "Heaven Hop," a really interesting number transposed into Anything Goes only for the '62 revival. In its comic coupling of the sacred and profane (i.e., religion and jazz), the song connects to one of the show's two main themes, the transformation of religion into show biz and pop culture. This song is Bonnie's own personal theology, more joyful, more now-centered, distinct from the authentic theology of the Bishop, the phony theology of Moonface, and the commercialized theology of Reno and her angels.
But all the traditional symbols and conventions of human religion don't serve Bonnie's needs or hold her attention, so like Americans have always done, she forms her own personal religion, with fewer restrictions and lots more fun.
Notice throughout the lyric how Bonnie blends together traditional religious symbol with her own secular ones. Just in the first few lines, Bonnie (and Cole Porter) tells us this is a different kind of heaven from what we're used to. No laying on clouds strumming lyres in Bonnie's heaven. This song is originally from another Porter musical, so the reference to portals in the first line is just a happy accident in this story set aboard a ship.
Up in Heaven's happy portals,
Where the parties never stop,
All the debonair immortals
Do a dance called the Heaven Hop.
In that big celestial center,
Its the only dance they do;
So before you try to enter,
You better start doin' it too!
Notice the great alteration of the title phrase obviously, but also Heaven's happy; portals and parties; debonair and do a dance, and later, dance they do; and celestial center. Those last couple lines are subtle but potent jabs at "revealed scripture," the idea that only one religion has the true Secret Knowledge. Only by being In the Know can you enter Heaven. But here, that Secret Knowledge is a new dance.
Then, like lots of other pop songs in the 1920s and 30s, Bonnie introduces a new dance, by giving us the choreography. The first two lines are so rich -- first you move like an angel, then you move like a musical comedy star:
Spread your wings and start them flappin',
Lift your feet and set them tappin',
Start right now and do the Heaven Hop,
Hop, the Heaven Hop!
Wag your ankles to that meter,
Let your shoulders gently teeter,
If you want to, please Saint Peter,
Take up the Heaven Hop!
The reference to St. Peter is extra funny because he's regarded as the first pope. You couldn't pick a more traditional religious figure than the first pope, but that's who Bonnie wants to dance with. And why not? Or is Bonnie just assuming that St. Peter won't be able to stop himself?
Some versions of the song have the comma before "please Saint Peter," and some don't. With the comma, Bonnie's inviting St. Peter to join her; without the comma, it's about dancing in order to "please" (i.e., make happy) St. Peter. Similar, but different ideas...
There's a short bridge and we get a better glimpse into Bonnie's heaven, and the most explicit example of the sacred-profane mashup. It starts with humility and reverence:
When the angels play low
On their harps of gold,
Kneel and pray low,
But the sacred is immediately short-circuited in favor of the profane:
Then get up and shake your halo!
Again, act like an angel (play a harp, kneel and pray), then act like a jazz baby (shake your halo). First a humble act, then a show-off act. Maybe Bonnie's heaven is more like the Underworld of ancient myths, the place everybody goes when they die, whether "good" or "bad."
Let that rhythm filter through ya
Till you holler, "Hallelujah!"
Start right now and
Do the Heaven Hop.
"That rhythm" is show biz, jazz, but "filter through ya" sounds more like religion. Exactly. Just like "Blow, Gabriel, Blow." America has a long, weird tradition of greatly altering religious traditions to fit our own needs, and this is just a comic distillation of that habit.
But is "Heaven Hop" a song Bonnie just knows? Or is it one of Reno's songs, and Bonnie knows all of Reno's songs? It's pretty safe to assume that Bonnie and Snake Eyes would patronize Reno's speakeasies throughout Prohibition. Is Bonnie Roxie Hart to Reno's Velma Kelly? Reno and Velma were both based on Texas Guinan, after all...
Act II opens with the mock religious hymn, "Public Enemy Number One," full of religious fervor, raising murderer Snake Eyes Johnson to Christ-like stature. That's a pretty fierce poke at American culture -- then and now. It's also one of dozens of moments in the show that illustrate its title -- literally Anything Goes.
And there's the crazy revival meeting in the middle of Act II, with broken and mismatched religious imagery swirling around, all of which devolves into nonsense. Finally, after many calls for a confession, Billy makes one and is immediately arrested. And then the same thing happens to Mooney. In this religious space, it doesn't pay to confess. In this world, religion is broken.
Maybe all this satire is lost on the high schools kids who do this show all over the country every year (I was one of them in spring 1979), and if it's lost on the actors, it's probably lost on their audiences. But it's all right there in the text. And it's really funny.
And that's why it still works.
I've worked for quite a while now on understanding how and why this show works, and we'll know how successful we've been at putting it into practice when we get our audiences next week. The adventure continues...
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
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