The Muny celebrates its 100th season this year! So I thought it would be nice to share this excerpt about our beloved Muny from my 2006 history book, Strike Up the Band. The Muny's origin story sounds a lot like the origin stories of New Line and tons of other small companies all over the country -- very humble beginnings, struggling against greater odds than a more generous God would have allowed (to quote 1776)...
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On June 16, 1919, one of America’s greatest temples to the musical theatre began its life in St. Louis, Missouri. Soon dubbed the St. Louis Municipal Opera Association, or more commonly, The Muny, it opened that June night with a performance of Reginald De Koven’s operetta Robin Hood for an audience of four thousand.
A previous production of Aida in the same location had spurred the idea.
Situated in historic Forest Park, site of the 1904 World’s Fair, the city fathers, led by Mayor Kiel, had decided St. Louis needed a municipal theatre. After some outdoor performances on a hill in Forest Park, a semi-permanent seating area and stage had been erected. The theatre sat nine thousand, and 1,620 of the seats were designated as free seats, a tradition that continues today. But just a week after the opening of Robin Hood, a torrential rainstorm overflowed the banks of River Des Peres, which, strangely enough, ran under and behind the Muny stage, and it literally washed away the Muny’s sets, orchestra instruments, pretty much everything. Kiel and his buddies chased it all down, dried everything off, brought it back, and re-opened the next night.
But it was a wet summer, and attendance was sparse. Someone jokingly suggested that Mayor Kiel go peddle tickets door to door. So he did. He approached nearly every businessman in St. Louis, asking them to buy blocks of tickets. Many of them did, and the first official season was salvaged.
Over the years, the Muny was outfitted with revolutionary “outdoor air conditioning;” a world class stage with a natural proscenium arch of giant trees and a ninety-foot wide revolve (the world’s largest) that could make a scene change in less than a minute; the most powerful stage lights ever created; a state of the art sound system; and permanent seating for 13,465, including about 1,500 free seats, making it the largest outdoor legitimate theatre in the world. From the very beginning and continuing today, the Muny began each show with “The Star-Spangled Banner” and ended each season with a sing-along of “Auld Lang Syne.”
In the early 1930s, J.J. Shubert (of the famous New York theatre family of producers) was named productions director of the Muny, and he said the Muny “offers hope for the development of a true national theater. Because it is fundamentally a project of the community, it is a direct expression of the people’s artistic desires and ambitions. Because it is of the people, it automatically makes high standards of performances available to all.”
The Muny became one of the nation’s showplaces for musical theatre, at first mostly opera and operetta, then later primarily Broadway musicals, at its peak running an eleven week season, with a new show each week, and performances seven nights a week.
During the 1960s and 1970s, many Broadway shows actually closed down for a week and brought the entire show, stars and all, to St. Louis to play a week at the Muny. So many shows brought their original casts to the Muny, including Ethel Merman and Call Me Madam, Zero Mostel and Fiddler on the Roof, Pearl Bailey, Cab Calloway, and Hello, Dolly!, Jerry Orbach and Promises, Promises, Joel Grey and Cabaret, Lauren Bacall and Applause, Yul Brynner and a revival of The King and I, and the entire original cast of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies. The Muny also sometimes serves as a pre-Broadway tryout for shows like Sugar Babies.
The Muny still stands today, now the St. Louis Municipal Theatre Association – still The Muny – as a place for the community to come together on a summer’s night, a place where families can bring their children without fear of content, and a place where future artists can not only learn about but actually see onstage the great musicals of the past, everything from The Desert Song and Show Boat to Cats and Miss Saigon.
Because of its enormity, it has never been about dramatic subtlety nor cutting edge work. It is about spectacle and special effects, about gigantic choruses and full sized Cotton Blossoms when Show Boat plays there. It is by its very nature mainstream and “safe,” but it is the greatest repository of Broadway’s musical past ever created and an invaluable training ground for tomorrow’s Broadway performers, directors, writers, and producers.
There is nothing else like it.
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I wrote this essay more than ten years ago, before Mike Isaacson took the Muny reins and launched a great new era of top-quality theatre, with some of the top talents in the American musical theatre. As a former Muny usher (eight seasons!), I've always loved the Muny, but I think it's in better hands now than it has been in decades, and it will live long after this impressive 100th birthday.
Like the movie Natural Born Killers, John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Bob Fosse's Chicago takes the form of the thing it criticizes, and it implicate us along the way. Chicago literally turns crime into entertainment, and then catches us being entertained by it. We prove Chicago's very cynical point by enjoying Chicago.
Unfortunately, the wildly successful, current revival short-circuits much of this, by pretty much eliminating the vaudeville metaphor.
Fosse knew vaudeville intimately. Though he wasn't born until 1927, when he came of age as a performer in his teens, the people he learned from were all vaudeville veterans, and many of the performers he shared the stage with in the sleazy burlesque theatres he worked were old washed-up vaudevillians. He danced old vaudeville numbers himself. He knew this world. And perhaps it's his teen years in those burlesque houses that created in him a profound distrust of show business, even though it was his chosen profession. He hated it even as he worshipped at its shrines.
Before the song “Razzle Dazzle” in Act II, Billy Flynn says to Roxie, “These trials -- the whole world -- all show business.” And he's right, after all. The trials, his and Roxie's whole world, is all a musical called Chicago, and even beyond that, they're all vaudeville acts. They are literally just show business. And yet, they're also far too real.
Every song and scene in Chicago is modeled on actual vaudeville acts and stars. When New Line produced the show in 2002, we wanted to make it as clear as we could that this story would be told in the form of a vaudeville bill. So I listed the songs this way in our program:
ACT I
The Big Open
And All That Jazz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Velma, Ensemble
The Torch Song
Funny Honey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Roxie
The Tango
Cell Block Tango . . . . . . . . . Velma, Ladies of the Ensemble
The Star Turn
When You’re Good to Mama . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mama Morton
The Fan Dance
All I Care About is Love . . . . . Billy, Ladies of the Ensemble
The Operatic Number
A Little Bit of Good . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . Mary Sunshine
The Ventriloquist Act
We Both Reached for the Gun . . . . . . . Billy, Mary, Ensemble
The Soubrette
Roxie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Roxie, Gentlemen of the Ensemble
The Sister Act
I Can’t Do it Alone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . Velma
The Anthem
My Own Best Friend . . . . . . . . . . . . . Roxie, Velma, Ensemble
ACT II
The Lament
I Know a Girl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Velma
The Kid Act
Me and My Baby . . . . . . Roxie, Gentlemen of the Ensemble
The Comedian
Mr. Cellophane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Amos
A Dramatic Tableau
When Velma Takes the Stand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Velma, Men
The Flash Act
Razzle Dazzle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Billy, Ensemble
The Classical Number
Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Velma, Mama
The Headliners
Nowadays/Hot Honey Rag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Roxie, Velma
In “All That Jazz,” Velma is playing Texas Guinan (also the model for Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes), inviting the audience in to drink and have a good time. She is our host for the evening.
“Funny Honey” starts out being an imitation of torch song queen Helen Morgan's song “Bill” from Show Boat, a song about an ordinary man, who's nothing special, but she loves him anyway. She even sits atop a piano, like Helen Morgan often did.
But then Kander & Ebb turn the Helen Morgan torch song on its ear, as Amos finds out just who the murder victim is and rats Roxie out. As Roxie gets drunker and drunker, as Amos finally tells the cop how it really happened, the lyric changes its tone and it ends with her calling Amos “That scummy, crummy dummy hubby of mine.” A perfect Fosse moment.
The “Cell Block Tango” is a tribute to the ethnic dances that were sprinkled throughout a vaudeville bill, but with a dark twist. And Latin dances were the most popular.
When Matron Mama Morton enters, with a big ring and a fur stole, she's playing one of the biggest stars of vaudeville, Sophie Tucker, and she sings “When You're Good to Mama,” a conscious parody of Sophie Tucker's equally racy “You've Got to See Mama Every Night.”
In scene 6, as Roxie metaphorically tap dances around Amos, lying through her teeth, trying to get him to pay for her lawyer, four male dancers enter and do a literal tap dance throughout the scene, in tribute to the hundreds of tap dance specialty vaudeville numbers.
Billy's “All I Care About is Love” is in imitation of band leader Ted Lewis, who would begin his act by saying “Is everybody here? Is everybody ready?”
As Billy sings the song, he strips, while chorus girls dance around him with giant feathered fans, á la the famous fan dancer Sally Rand. Rand would dance nude with two giant feathered fans, strategically choreographed to keep her covered, with just quick glimpses of flesh to tantalize the audience. She was, needless to say, a big hit.
Mary Sunshine and her song “A Little Bit of Good in Everyone” are a direct imitation of Julian Eltinge, an extremely famous turn-of-the-century drag queen and vaudeville star, and Bert Savoy, his less classy successor.
“We Both Reached for the Gun” recalls vaudeville's requisite ventriloquist specialty acts.
“I Can't Do It Alone” recalls sister acts and acrobatic specialty acts.
Velma continues her role as Texas Guinan as she opens the second act with Guinan's famous line, “Hello Suckers!” “Me and My Baby” is sung in the manic style of Eddie Cantor..
“Mr. Cellophane” is a conscious imitation of Bert Williams, the well-known Black vaudeville and Ziegfeld Follies star, and his famous song “Nobody,” right down to Williams' over-sized clothes and white gloves, and unusually minimalist staging.
“When Velma Takes the Stand” and the entire courtroom scene are an imitation of the many courtroom comedy sketches, a staple of vaudeville and burlesque. Here's a TV sketch based on the classic vaudeville courtroom sketches.
“Nowadays” and Velma and Roxie's dance number “Hot Honey Rag” are tributes to Ted Lewis and his band. Lewis was a jazz clarinet player and band leader, known for his battered top hat and his cheerily forlorn songs.
The famous Broadway revival strips away almost all these period references, which is such a shame. The show in its original form is so much darker, funnier, more disturbing, and more satisfying. The revival is running on half a metaphor. The masterful score keeps the audience engaged, but most of them have no idea how much more they'd be engaged if it were done right.
The revival kept Fosse's dance vocabulary and style, but not his ideas.
When we did the show, even though we were in a blackbox, our set designer Justin Barisonek built a gold proscenium with a red velvet curtain. Most people who see Chicago now don't know what's missing, and they don't know how much funnier and more intense it can be.
I'd like to challenge anybody producing the show regionally to return to its brilliant, insightful, aggressive roots. It's worth it.
Yes, it's true, you may be a Hardcore Musical Theatre Fan if...
You know how many minutes there are in a year.
When anyone mentions Aaron Burr, you're compelled to add the "sir."
You know "Ya Got Trouble" by heart.
You've read the novel 42nd Street.
You have unusually strong opinions about the Best Musical Tonys in 1984 and 1988.
You know who Ethan Mordden and Peter Filichia are.
You know what a capybara and a phylactery are.
You've seen at least one major flop musical on Broadway.
Whenever you hear a reference to Austria, you sing in your head, "Austria! Count Ludovic of Austria!"
Your blood pressure rises when anyone uses the word soundtrack when they mean cast album.
You've seen and prefer the 1936 Show Boat movie, despite the fact that you have to fast-forward through the minstrel show.
You know the names of the plays that were the sources for Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The Fantasticks.
You own more than 200 cast albums.
You've seen Follies onstage more than once.
You've read Berlin Stories and/or Scenes de la Vie de Boheme.
You refer to the Oscars as "the Tonys for movie people."
You wish you could mention Avenue X without somebody saying, "You mean Avenue Q...?"
You hold out hope of seeing a live production of archy & mehitabel before you die.
You own at least two signed Playbills.
Anytime someone says, "God help us!" you say, "He will, John, he will."
You hate the Rent movie.
You often correct people on the pronunciation of entr'acte and reprise.
When you're alone at home or in the car, you sometimes sing "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going" and/or "I Can't Make This Movie" at the top of your voice.
You watched all of Smash.
You have back issues of Show Music magazine.
You know why it used lots of skills for Dana Andrews to pass runes.
When you think of God, you see the Hirschfeld cartoon of George Bernard Shaw on the My Fair Lady poster.
You know that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim share a birthday.
You know there was already a sequel to A Doll's House.
You've read all the Shakespeare plays, but only so you can catch all the references in Something Rotten and Return to the Forbidden Planet.
You've considered a pilgrimage to Cave City, Kentucky.
Sondheim's The Frogs is on your Bucket List.
You've got a thing for Elaine Stritch and/or Bernadette Peters.
You have a strong opinion about which Wild Party you prefer -- and you hate the other one.
You don't think Spielberg should remake West Side Story.
If you do suffer from these symptoms, there is help. If you live in the St. Louis region, you've got New Line. We're here to help with all the latest musical theatre treatments. Side effects may include insight, understanding, self-awareness, wisdom, and joy. Find out if musical theatre is right for you!
I still can't believe I got to return to Anything Goes, the first "real" musical I was ever in, my Freshman year in high school, a show I love so very deeply, a show I really never thought I could produce with New Line... until I wrote about it a few years ago and I realized it's actually a fierce, craftily built sociopolitical satire, not just a silly excuse for great songs and tap dancing.
And whether it was the context -- seeing the show at New Line, a company known for sociopolitical content -- or the choices we all made in creating the production (most likely it was both), our audiences saw Anything Goes through fresh eyes, and saw for the first time the wicked genius of its satire. Maybe it was also the difference between seeing the tour at the Fox and sitting six city blocks from the actors, versus seeing our production at the Marcelle, where there are only seven rows and you walk across the stage to get to your seats.
A lot of people -- I mean, a LOT -- told us this was the best and funniest Anything Goes they'd ever seen. And it was in a blackbox with a cast of sixteen and a six-piece band! And all we did to the show was take its text, its characters, its story, and its themes seriously. And the result was high, pointed hilarity. Our reviews were extraordinary, we sold out most of the run, and we couldn't have asked for a more enthusiastic response from our audiences.
So here's my quirky thank-you to our cast, musicians, and staff, and also to Cole Porter and all the various writers who contributed to the brilliant 1962 version of the show we had the great privilege of working on. It's really amazing material.
(with apologies to Mr. Porter...)
Times have changed,
But be honest, not all that much;
We've evolved, yeah, but just a touch;
We're still hypocrites, drunks, and such.
But today,
Ol' Cole Porter could freely cuss;
'Stead of writing 'bout planes and coke,
Cole might write his songs 'bout us!
When this old show, with New Line helming,
So freaky and overwhelming,
Gets standing O's,
Anything Goes!
When Aaron Allen un-retires
To play Mooney, who inspires
Great big Ho-Ho's,
Anything Goes!
What raving reviews for us,
Who enthuse for us!
How they raved for us!
So depraved for us!
And our audience
Ain't been so bawdy since Jerry Springer had to close!
When we have two Nic(k)s, one Larissa,
Three Sara(h)s, an Erin, Aaron, Alyssa
Knows
Anything Goes!
[dance break]
When Even gets enthusiastic
And breaks all the wood and plastic,
And front two rows,
Anything Goes!
When Miss Colene can come design for us,
So Sarah P. can shine for us
In our shows,
Anything Goes!
We gave them great gags galore
Till their sides were sore;
Also intellect
They did not expect;
So surprised, in fact,
That all our actors act,
Like in more "serious" shows.
The New Liners are fierce -- don't cross 'em!
And Anything Goes was awesome,
'Cause New Line knows
Anything Goes!
Anything!
Anything!!
Anything Goes!!!
Thanks for such an amazing run, St. Louis! And my deep, deep thanks to our actors, musicians, designers, staff, and my intrepid co-director Mike Dowdy-Windsor. What a freaking joy it has been. Now on to Yeast Nation!
There are too many people doing comedy on stage who aren't funny. As they say in one of my favorite movies, Funny Bones, "Some people do funny, but some people have funny bones." Those who aren't funny only understand humor intellectually; it's not in their bones. They imitate funny.
As I've written about before, those un-funny sorts don't understand that all good humor does two things: it surprises us and it tells us the truth. Great humor does more than tell the truth; it reveals the truth. And the Second Law of Comedy is: nothing is less funny than the effort to be funny. If we can see you working hard at making us laugh, if you're begging us to laugh, that kills the laugh.
Over the first four performances of New Line's Anything Goes, people have come up to Dowdy and me both, saying almost exactly the same words: "I've always loved Anything Goes, but I don't remember it being so funny!"
WTF?
First of all, you've always loved a musical comedy that wasn't very funny...?
Second, I know the songs are great, but Anything Goes would not be a very good show if it weren't funny. Third, what are these other productions doing to diminish -- ignore? -- the rowdy, wacky, subversive comedy the pervades 80% of the show? The only serious moments in the whole show are "I Get a Kick Out of You" and "All Through the Night."
One guy who saw our show commented on Facebook that ours was "first time I've seen Anything Goes where the book and lyrics were really concentrated on!"
I'll say it again. WTF?
This show isn't a revue or a paper-thin jukebox musical. It's a smart, razor-sharp satire. This plot is a masterpiece of romantic farce, as I've mentioned before, using the S.S. American as Shakespeare's Woods, where our characters escape from the rules of The City, where they can de-couple from the wrong partners and re-couple with the right ones. (There are also Shakespearean disguises and cross-dressing.) The characters are well-drawn and full of surprises, and the social satire is pointed and insightful. Americans still turn religion into show business, and we still turn criminals into celebrities. Nothing much has changed.
But why would anyone do a brilliant satirical comedy if they're going to ignore the brilliant satire? Why share the adult genius of Cole Porter's dense, hilarious lyrics -- or the rich, complex emotion of "I Get a Kick Out of You" -- if you're not going to take the time to understand them and communicate that understanding to the audience?
So many people expected us to impose something on Anything Goes, to change it, but that's not what we do. We take excellent, though often under-appreciated (and/or misunderstood) material and we treat it like it's Shakespeare, Albee, or August Wilson. We take the characters and story seriously, we research period, we research all the unfamiliar language, we get to know the artistic and pop cultural contexts of the story, we explore backstories, relationships, motivations, textual themes, all that stuff.
In other words, we take the work seriously.
If a comedy is really great, treating it this way will make it much funnier than trying to think of funny gags of your own to insert into the script, the way too many directors do. So many directors and actors think you don't have to take comedy seriously. But you do. Even the most outrageous musicals, like Little Shop, Bat Boy, Urinetown, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Yeast Nation, Jerry Springer the Opera, are funnier if you take them seriously.
But you also have to get out of the way -- you can't make a great comedy funny, as too many directors and actors seem to believe; you have to let it be funny.
I'm starting to believe that our production of Anything Goes may serve as an unintentional master class in doing classic musical comedy. You don't condescend to it, you don't wink at us over its "flaws," you don't impose a phony meta-style on it, you don't "excuse" it and yourself by letting us know you know it's dumb.
No, you respect it, you follow where it leads, and it you let it work its magic.
One of my primary agendas as director was to follow George S. Kaufman's rule of comedy, to never allow silence, unless you use it; and even then, only sparingly. We have wrung nearly every pause out of this dialogue, and I think that at this breakneck pace, the satire is more pointed, the corny jokes more about character, the lyrics more playful, and the chaos so relentless, so deliciously overwhelming.
But it shouldn't be a surprise to find out Anything Goes is funny. It shouldn't be radical to treat a classic musical comedy with respect. It shouldn't be shocking for a piece of musical theatre to focus on character and story.
Look at the critical reaction so far...
"Funnier, sharper and smarter than you may remember. . . a spectacular treat for lovers of modern musical theater. . . .not to be missed. . . non-stop entertainment." -- Judith Newmark, St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Sharper, tarter and more satisfying than you'd think possible." -- Paul Friswold, Riverfront Times "A triumph!" -- Steve Callahan, KDHX "The entire cast of Anything Goes is simply marvelous. . . Everything about the show is extraordinary. . . New Line has yet another hit on their hands." -- Kevin Brackett, ReviewSTL "Kicky and kooky. . . .a buoyant blast from the past that revitalizes one of the great, grand old musicals with charm, humor and style." - Lynn Venhaus, St. Louis Limelight "It's bound to leave you with a smile on your face." -- Andrea Torrence, St. Louis Theatre Snob "As usual, New Line gets it right. . . this is Anything Goes as it’s meant to be performed and witnessed." -- Jeff Ritter, Critical Blast "Silly comedy, stylish music and effervescent performances in a winning combination." -- Mark Bretz, Ladue News "Energetic, smart, and very very funny. . . a sharp, witty, tuneful, and well-cast production that’s a delight from start to finish." -- Michelle Kenyon, Snoop's Theatre Thoughts "It surely is a great deal of fun, especially if you have the least bit of romantic in you." -- Ann Pollock, St. Louis Eats and Drinks
As I have been before from time to time, I am surprised and amused that treating a great piece of theatre like a great piece of theatre is cause for celebration. Shouldn't that be a bare minimum job requirement for all of us...?
Though I can't complain, can I? Apparently, all those mediocre productions of Anything Goes in the past are just making us look brilliant. And we're selling out!
Before we opened, I wouldn't have said this, but if you haven't seen our show yet, you probably haven't seen Anything Goes as it was meant to be. So get your tickets now. We run through March 24. According to our audiences and the critics, this is an Anything Goes like you've never seen before...
