Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 17

Season One: 

March 18, 1968: Tim Conway, Jack Jones, Ruth Buzzi

(The Lost Episodes Ultimate DVD Collection) Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In had debuted on Jan. 22,

Ruth Buzzi thinks Roger is "groovy"

1968, just two months before this episode aired. That may have been the reason Ruth Buzzi was not announced as a special guest. She had not caught on yet as a major TV comedy player on that series. Instead her name was read over the closing credits but she did get to sign Carol's book with Tim and handsome singer Jack Jones. (That was something I loved about Carol, the non-star guest actors were treated equally to the big names.) Ruth would appear on Carol's show twice more and was an official guest star. She also made a cameo as her Gladys character with Arte Johnson as Tyrone when Vicki and Don Creighton did a parody of their old-maid-dirty-old-man act. Here, Ruth uses her rubber-like features in the Carol and Sis sketch as Gretchen, a studymate of Crissy who has a crush on Roger. She also appears briefly as a jungle girl in The Jungle Kook, one of three brief sketches satirizing the Late, Late Show reruns of old movies, good or bad. The highlight of this triptych is Shut Uppa You Face, a hilarious send-up of Italian films because of Harvey's ludicrous accent and slipping moustache as well as Lyle's appearance in a tank top. The middle sketch--Sing Sing Dingaling was funny mainly because of Tim and Harvey's reactions to a door that wouldn't stay closed. In other sketches, Tim suffers physical abuse as a drunken matador and he inflicts it on Carol when they play a pair of clumsy castaways. 

The finale is a bizarre combination of camp and hoedown. Jack and Carol sing a medley of Texas-related tunes while the chorus cavorts in weird outfits. The boys sport yellow rubber chaps with ten-gallon hats while the girls are in black-and-white checked blouses and bonnets with daisies. It's as if Bob Mackie dropped acid while in a yellow taxicab.

B'way Update: Springsteen, Skeleton, Paradise, Lehman, etc.

The 2021-22 Broadway and Off-Broadway season continues to take shape with new productions and those postponed from previous seasons announcing dates and theaters. In the latest round of updates, Bruce Springsteen returns to Broadway, Manhattan Theater fills out its roster, a new musical set during the Civil War is slated, and The Lehman Trilogy finally makes the transfer from Off-Broadway to on with one cast change. 

Bruce Springsteen will return to Broadway
Credit: Rob DeMartin

The beginning of the season keeps getting earlier. Bruce Springsteen on Broadway will now be the first show to open since the theaters closed last March. The Boss's Tony-winning 2017 concert show is slated for a return engagement at the St. James Theater starting June 26 for a limited engagement through Sept. 4. Just last week Pass Over announced it was commencing performances in August. Springsteen's show is also the first to announce official COVID audience protocols. Theatergoers must show proof of COVID vaccination and fill out a health screening within 24 hours of attending. We'll see if anti-vaxxers and libertarians scream invasion of privacy or unconstitutionalism. Last time I check, you don't have a constitutional right to see a Broadway show.

Phylicia Rashad will also return to Broadway, headlining Dominique Morriseau's Skeleton Crew, set in a

Phylicia Rashad will star in
Skeleton Crew

Detroit auto factory in 2008, part of Manhattan Theater Club's season at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater. Rashad will play one of four workers at the endangered factory, facing economic instability. Skeleton Crew has previously been presented Off-Broadway at Atlantic Theater Company's Stage 2 in 2016 and regionally. This production will be directed by Reuben Santiago-Hudson who staged the Atlantic version and will also be appearing as part of MTC's Friedman season in his own autobiographical solo play Lackawanna Blues. Previews begin Dec. 21 in advance of a Jan. 12, 2022 opening. Morriseau is the book-author of Ain't Too Proud which reopens this fall. 

Rashad last appeared on Broadway in August: Osage County, is slated to direct a revival of Charles Randolph Wright's Blue and has just been named Dean of the Chadwick A. Boseman School of Fine Arts at her alma mater, Howard University. MTC has also announced Broadway dates for its revival of Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive with original stars David Morse and Mary-Louise Parker (previews March 29, opens April 19.) Off-Broadway MTC productions have also been announced for the company's City Center space: Morning Sun, Prayer for the French Republic, and Golden Shield.

B'way Update: Pass Over and Tonys Announce Dates

John Michael Hill and Namir Smallwood
in Pass Over
(Credit: Jeremy Daniel)

The new post-quarantine Broadway season keeps getting earlier and earlier. Pass Over, Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu's play focusing on two African-American men dealing with pervasive discrimination, will now begin performances at the August Wilson Theater on Aug. 4 with an opening set for Sept. 12. The production will have a limited run until Oct. 10. This beats the previously announced Hadestown's date of Sept. 2 by nearly a month as the earliest starting date for a Broadway show since all 41 Main Stem theaters closed on March 12, 2020. Inspired by Waiting for Godot and Exodus, the 85-minute play is about two young black men, Moses and Kitch, and their encounters with white police oppression. Pass Over will star Tony nominee Jon Michael Hill (Superior Donuts), Namir Smallwood, and Tony winner Gabriel Ebert (Matilda), recreating their roles from an Off-Broadway production at Lincoln Center's LCT3 Theater in 2018. Danya Taymor will repeat her direction. An earlier staging at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater Company has been filmed by Spike Lee and is available on Amazon Prime. The playwright has made changes since the earlier staging. In the previous version, one of the two main characters dies. Nwandu has stated she will make the new ending more positive. 

Finally! The long delayed Tony Awards for the abortive 2019-20 Broadway season will be presented on Sept. 26 in a two-part ceremony. The main event will be a two-hour TV spectacular called The Tony Awards Present: Broadway's Back on CBS from 9-11pm. Only three awards will be presented: Best Musical, Best Play and Best Revival of a Play (there were no musical revival nominees.) The rest of the show will be taken up with musical numbers from classic shows and currently running ones. The bulk of the accolade distribution will be done from 7-9pm in a pre-broadcast ceremony available on the Paramount Plus streaming service. 

B'way Update: Hadestown Opens Early, Girl, Blues, Thoughts Announce Dates

Amber Gray, Patrick Page, and 
Reeve Carney in Hadestown
which will begin performances on Sept. 2.
Credit: Matthew Murphy

Since my last Broadway update, several more shows have announced firm opening dates and one has leapt ahead of all the others. Hadestown, the 2019 Tony Best Musical, will reopen its gates at the Walter Theater on Sept. 2, nearly two weeks before the big-ticket, box-office blockbusters Hamilton, Lion King Wicked, and Chicago do on Sept. 14. It seems an odd choice since the earlier date falls before Labor Day and the Jewish holidays, a traditionally slow time for theater going. The Hadestown producers may be counting on the pent-up demand for theater since we will have been starved for it for a year and a half. Perhaps more shows will follow and announce early openings, hoping to beat the Hamilton-Lion King-Wicked bandwagon. Of the opened shows which shuttered because of the COVID pandemic, we still have to hear from The Book of Mormon, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, To Kill a Mockingbird and West Side Story about their opening dates. Unopened 2020 productions which were planning to open and now have no firm dates include American Buffalo, Plaza Suite, The Lehman Trilogy and Sing Street.

Broadway's Post-Quarantine 2021-22 Season

With COVID infections dropping and vaccinations reaching higher levels, the New York theater is poised to reopen after a year and a half of lockdown. Both Governor Cuomo and Mayor DeBlasio have touted that the city will be open for business this summer and Broadway has followed suit. It started with a trickle of press releases but now the floodgates have opened with multiple shows announcing their return starting on Sept. 14. On that date, the three biggest money-makers--Hamilton, Lion King and Wicked--and longest running American show in Broadway history--Chicago--are opening their doors. 

There are still a lot of questions. Will audiences have to wear masks? Will temperatures be taken at the door, adding another layer of delay for just getting into the theater buildings? (Don't forget we will still have to have our bags searched.) Must theatergoers display a negative COVID test or proof of vaccination? How would that work? Will there be a phone app or a vaccine passport? And how will that be verified? Or will it just be an honor system? The CDC has just announced that the fully-vaccinated do not have to wear a mask indoors or outdoors, but what about the unvaccinated? It appears that herd immunity is a pipe dream because of variants and the high percentage of anti-vaxxers and hesitators. 

But the biggest question is will enough tourists feel comfortable to squeeze into those sardine-can seats for two and a half hours for the producers to turn a profit? Several shows will be playing fewer than the standard eight performances a week in hopes of limiting supply if demand is not great. 

Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 16

It's been a while since I've viewed any episodes of the Carol Burnett Show on the various DVD collections received as Christmas or birthday gifts or on the various platforms that display chopped-up 22 min. versions of the originals. A few weeks ago, I attempted to view missing material at the Paley Center in Manhattan, but it's still closed for COVID. In the first 15 installments of this series, I just went after episodes that contained sketches that interested me, such as all of Carol's brilliant movie parodies or segments from the first five seasons previously unavailable. So, until the Paley Center re-opens, my only option is to go back to my DVDs and online and analyze the episodes I haven't gotten to yet, perhaps in chronological order. Maybe I'll find unexpected gems.

Season One
Sept. 11, 1967: Jim Nabors

Carol with Jim Nabors during 
one of his many appearances on the show

Carol's very first show in its entirety is contained on both the Best Of and Lost Episodes collections. There's nothing particularly outstanding here, expect, obviously, for a bunch of firsts. The debut of Jim Nabors' annual premiere appearance of each season, the first Carol and Sis sketch, the first Q&A with the audience, Carol's first awkward drooling over Lyle, etc. During the opening, we learn the show is on opposite I Spy and The Big Valley and Carol jokes that she might have Pearl Bailey on so they can do a take-off on I Spy's interracial casting. (This idea was done later with Carol and Barbara McNair.) Carol does the first of many VIPs mock interviews with Harvey as a newscaster. Here she is Shirley Dimple and there are gag references to the foray into politics of the real-life Shirley Temple and other show-biz has-beens like George Murphy and Ronald Reagen. The most interesting and revealing bit comes during Carol's Broadway duet with Jim. After partnering on songs from West Side Story, How to Succeed, and Annie Get Your Gun (with Carol imitating Merman), they switch gender roles and Carol warbles Billy Bigelow's Soliloquy from Carousel. Naturally, this leads to Jim holding his hands primly and intoning "When I Marry Mr. Snow." The audience laughs at the absurdity of big, tall Jim acting like a coy girl. But Nabors' gay sexuality makes the joke doubly significant. Especially when Carol then asks "What about Rex Harrison?" 

"Well, I guess he'll do if I can't have Mr. Snow," Jim replies. Were Carol and Jim winking at the audience and having a laugh between themselves about Jim Nabors' really wanting a Mr. Snow of his own? 

B'way Update: Diana, Game of Thrones, etc.

The COVID-19 pandemic appears to be waning with vaccinations increasing, but we're still not out of the woods. Variant strains of the virus are on the rise and Republican governors are dropping mask mandates and restrictions too quickly. This could mean more infections and deaths. In any case, the re-opening of Broadway is still a long way off with fall 2021 as the earliest possible date. Hamilton had announced July 4 as a target re-opening, but that appears unlikely. While movie theaters are re-opening at reduced capacity, Broadway producers have stated they cannot make a profit with less than full houses. (On the other hand, London theaters can play with reduced seating and still get by because of lower expenses.) We will have the non-profit Shakespeare in the Park with one production this summer and a few shows including MJ, the Michael Jackson musical, Lackawanna Blues, Caroline or Change and Trouble in Mind have previously announced vague fall opening dates.

Jeanna de Waal in Diana: The Musical
Credit: Evan Zimmerman/
MurphyMade

But the musical Diana has just become the first Broadway production to set a specific opening date for 2021. The musical about the troubled late Princess of Wales was to have opened on March 31, 2020 at the Longacre, but all the theaters were shut down on March 12 because of the pandemic. The production was captured on film in an empty theater and the results will now be shown on Netflix starting Oct. 1 in advances of its live opening on Dec. 16 with previews commencing Dec. 1. This is the first time a complete Broadway show will be available to the viewing public before it debuts on stage. The question is will audiences be willing to pluck down the big bucks for a property already available to stream into their living rooms? The show's producers are banking on the Netflix airing to drum up interest in Diana. The Netflix series The Crown and Oprah Winfrey's ratings-shattering interview with Diana's son Prince Harry and his wife Meghan should also contribute to the box office buzz. The book and lyrics are by Joe DiPietro and music and lyrics are by David Bryan. They previously collaborated on Memphis and won Tonys for their efforts.