In My Canoe

Thoughts on the Actors Fund benefit of On the Twentieth Century:

*Four words: Kathleen Turner in Applause. She's the first person I can think of who might actually be sound casting and make it run. (Well, be sound casting, at least.) We knew she was that funny...but who knew she could (sort of) sing?

*Jo Anne Worley was probably born just a little bit too late to become the star she should have been--a great schtick doesn't get you steady high-profile work in an age of better integrated entertainments. But the perennial B-lister delivered in spades with a loopy delivery of the lines, some wild comic business, and her trademark wild soprano mixed with gutteral belt tones, like Yma Sumac on happy pills. Broadway should see her in Hello, Dolly! and, god willing, Follies one of these days.

*Marin Mazzie was better than Madeline Kahn could ever have been. On a good day. I should have caught on when she brought the house down with "Ring Them Bells" at Bryant Park a few years ago, or when she pulled off Kiss Me, Kate while still mainly known in New York for big dramatic turns. As well as being a truly gifted singer, soprano and belt, the woman is a comic genius. No fooling. Her Mildred Plotka was Kahn reincarnate, and her seething Lily Garland was consistently on the level of Kahn's "flames on the side of my face" speech from Clue, and no, I'm still not fooling. Broadway can't make big stars anymore (unless you count small-scale critic's darlings like Kristin Chenoweth), but it's ample consolation to know that Mazzie will be staying with us for a long time.

*Christopher Sieber again ended up playing the Doug Sills role--Sills should have remembered that Kevin Kline took home a Tony for playing Bruce Granit, because the role is loaded with comic opportunities. Sieber didn't hit all of those dead on the mark, but he consistently held the stage in his scenes with Mazzie. Sills did not. He overdid the hammy bit that poured naturally forth from Mazzie, his diction was a little loose, and the part just doesn't fit his voice. (One big laugh must have been bittersweet for him--when he and Sieber shared a long sustained high note in "Mine," his voice gave out and and he took a breath before finishing.) Not a bad job for a quickly rehearsed benefit concert, no. I'm just disappointed that instead of the launching pad for his career, The Scarlet Pimpernel appears to be the standard he's unable to live up to.

*Lots of stuff isn't on the cast album! The dance break and operetta interludes in the title song, "Indian Maiden's Lament," extra verses in "Veronique" and "Babette," "Max Jacobs," the three reprises of "I Have Written a Play" (which were admittedly too repetitive to use), and probably some other things I've forgotten.

*What a nice staging for a concert--a flown backdrop to represent the train was already more than I had been expecting, but they topped it when the front of the locomotive rose out of the floor with Worley merrily clinging to it. Crisp period costumes (not a lot of changes, but enough). More "movement" than choreography, which isn't so suitable for a concert as it was for the original production with its lavish design concept, but then perhaps the show doesn't lend itself to huge dance numbers.

*The opening speech was given by Phyllis Newman. Do we not love her?

*And I've got to mention the cleverly staged overture; as the leading characters entered, porters carried on suitcases bearing their names. Seth Rudetsky got a well-earned conductor credit at the very end. There were two drawbacks to this idea, though: there were lengthy gaps in the staging (since every main character entered to his or her theme, and the characters ran out), and the leads got applause on their star entrances anyway, which felt odd.

*A few more good things to say (Brad Oscar and Brooks Ashmanskas were unusually solid henchmen, and four Altar Boyz alumni got to do a cute specialty turn in "Life is Like a Train") and a few bad (more blown notes in the orchestra than I cared to hear, and no staging for the curtain call like I'm told the original production had). The evening balances out to "fabulous."

It might be hard to capitalize, but I don't see why it couldn't be revived--if it doesn't have a famous name, it still comes armed with a marvelous score and a fine book. There's got to be a bit of value in that, right? Roundabout? Anyone?