Book Review: We Are What We Pretend to Be

(Borrowed from the Jackson Heights Library, along with God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian) Published in 2012, Vonnegut passed away in 2007. An early unpublished short story, Basic Training, and an unfinished novel, called If God Were Alive Today, along with a foreward by the author's daughter Nanette. Both are emblematic of their periods in Vonnegut's writing life. The earlier story is elegantly and soundly written, but a little to neatly tied up at the end. An teen aspiring pianist is sent to live with an authoritarian uncle on the latter's rural farm after his cosmopolitan parents are killed in an auto accident. Hard life lessons are learned, hearts are broken, metaphorical horses and cars play a big part. The young Vonnegut displays an expert craftsmanship in structuring the story. The ending is too tidy with everyone getting their just deserts which seldom occurs outside of fiction.

The second piece shows Vonnegut's progression into the dark satire for which he become renowned in the late 1960s and '70s with Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions. The central character is Gil Berman, a stand-up comic like Lenny Bruce and Vonnegut himself who dispenses uncomfortable truths in the form of wisecracks. This fragment is funny and details the comic's encounter with a deranged fan at a performance in Northhampton, Mass. We also are treated to Gil's visits to mental hospitals. A transcript of a session with a female pscyhiatrit reads like a Marx Brother routine. 

The two stories together show Vonnegut's progression from easy satisfying fiction to dangerous cynical commentary. It made me think of the main character in Bluebeard, the artist who gives up realistic portraiture for abstract expression. When his furious wife asks why can't be just paint pretty pictures everyone can understand and relate to (and therefore make more money) instead of the weird challenging, unprofitable material he's been churning out, he replies, "Because that's too easy." It was too easy for Vonnegut to make simple stories. The harder stuff was what he wanted to write.

Book Review: God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

(Taken out of the Jackson Heights library) From Jane Austen to Kurt Vonnegut is quite a leap. After watching a documentary on Vonnegut's life on Hulu, I found this slim volume at my local library. Many years ago I started reading Vonnegut (probably in high school, maybe junior high, I can't remember). I have completed all of the novels, but not the shorter, later essays and uncollected stories. I even met him once at a film critics' awards ceremony where I told him how much I enjoyed Galapagos, his most recent book at the time. He was very nice. This is a collection of short pieces (many only one page) imagining Vonnegut as a reporter from the after-life for public radio station WNYC. The titular real-life doctor who famously specialized in assisted suicide sends the author to the other side where he interviews dead people and then returns to life. Very brief, funny, full of Vonnegut's trademark sharp, cynical wit.

Book Review: Pride and Prejudice

(Read on my I-phone on the Libby app, digital edition borrowed from the NYPL) Another one of the 100 books the BBC says I should read before I die and this is the first time I have read a Jane Austen novel. I had seen several film and TV adaptations of Austen's original so it was fascinating to compare them to the original. As I suspected, Lady Catherine does not barge into the Bennett household in the middle of the night as she did in the 2005 version. (She arrives in the afternoon in the book.) Neither does she make up with Darcy right away and overcome her objections to his engagement to Elizabeth as she does in the 1940 MGM Hollywood version. The original is also much harsher on Elizabeth's parents. In the various film adaptations, they are well-meaning but bungling. Austen portrays them as dangerously naive, foolish and empty-headed. Worst of all, their marriage is one of misalliance.

Austen's classic is just as much about manners, protocol, and finance as it is about romance, offering a snapshot of upper-middle class British life in the early 19th century. The tension between Elizabeth and Darcy is palpable and you do feel great relief when they finally get together. The characterizations and dialogue are rich, especially of Darcy and Elizabeth, Mrs. Bennett and the flighty daughter Lydia. 

Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 41: All 3 Mattresses

Once Upon a Mattress is the satirical fairy-tale musical that put Carol on the map. The show with music by Mary Rodgers (Richard's daughter), lyrics by Marshall Barer and book by Jay Thompson, Dean Fuller and Barer began life as a one-act at the Tamiment summer camp and then expanded for a full-length show opening Off-Broadway in 1959, directed by the legendary George Abbott. It later transferred to Broadway, playing several different theaters, racking up a total of 470 performances. In a daring bit of casting, African-American actress Jane White brilliantly played the wicked queen and repeated her performance in two of the TV versions. A popular choice for high school and community theater, I worked backstage on a production at the Barn Playhouse in Jeffersonville, PA, pushing the mile-high mattresses on and offstage. A 1996 Broadway revival starred Sarah Jessica Parker and an Off-Broadway one in 2015 starred Jackie Hoffman and Jon Epperson (aka Lypsinka). Sutton Foster is scheduled to headline an Encores! presentation Jan. 24-28, 2024. There were three different TV versions, the first two headlined by Carol in her original role of Princess Winnifred the Woebegone. The role cemented Carol's early persona as a boisterous, belting comedienne, not conventionally attractive and always man-hungry.

Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 40: The Specials

Before, during and after her variety series, Carol headlined a series of specials available as bonus features on DVD collections or on YouTube.

Carol + 2

March 22, 1966: Lucille Ball, Zero Mostel

(Released on DVD on Carol +2: The Original Queens of Comedy, and as a Special Bonus Feature on The Carol Burnett Show: The Lost Episodes Box Set)

Lucy and Carol in the
Chutzpah musical number
in Carol + 2

This is sort of a pilot that CBS ran to see if Carol could carry a hour-long variety show but they insisted she have two top-tier guest stars to guarantee big ratings. Lucy was under contract to CBS to do at least a few specials in addition to her regular series The Lucy Show. Mostel had starred on Broadway and won Tonys for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Fiddler on the Roof, and the film of Forum was out this year. 

The hour begins with weird, mechanical music (it sounds like a 1960s idea of a computer spinning its tapes) and an announcer introducing the three principals as the camera zooms in on giant caricatures of each. Carol enters and lavishly praises her two guests. Like a bull or rhinoceros in a china shop, Zero breaks up the pleasantries by saying these self-congratulatory intros are ridiculous (Zero played a man who turns into a rhino in Ionesco's play). What if plumbers behaved the same way ("Oh, Irving what a lovely wrench. Is that a new plunger?") He suggests they shut up and get to work.

The first sketch features Carol and Zero as a bickering couple celebrating their tenth anniversary who rediscover their passion for each other when it seems they've never been legally married. The two master comics milk the physical and facial gestures for all they're worth. Zero's face changes from a blank stare to a devilish leer as he realizes his wife is now a single girl and the audience applauds. Carol is equally exaggerated in her horny reactions to Zero's offstage singing of love songs as she dons a revealing negligee. After the sketch, Carol sings in her character, "You're My Reason" written by MItzi Welch to a sleeping Zero. 

In "Goodbye Baby," Lucille and Carol are sisters quarreling over Carol's baby. Lucy urgently needs to catch a bus, but Carol strongly insists she not leave until the infant says goodbye. Zero then recreates his performance as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof with "If I Were a Rich Man." After a commercial break (you can see the commercials on YouTube), there's a brief sketch with Zero as a psychiatrist listening to Carol describe her brother who thinks he's a frog. Carol scratches her nose and Zero writes it down as a nervous tic. The central joke is Carol then spending the rest of the scene desperately trying not to scratch her nose, turning pratfalls and falling off the couch. Carol next sings a slow ballad version of "Wait Til the Sun Shines, Nelly." The set-up is she's a wardrobe mistress named Nelly in one of Hugh Hefner's Bunny Clubs, warbling of her thwarted attempts at romance with Zero as the club's bartender. Bunny clubs were exploitative nightclubs with women in skimpy outfits and rabbits ears serving drinks to sloshed tired businessmen.

The hour concludes with Carol and Lucy as cleaning ladies pretending to be show-biz big shots as they dust, mop and collect half-finished cigarettes at the William Morris Agency. When Carol doubts her illusions, Lucy peps her up with the specialty number "Chutzpah" by Ken Welch which sounds a lot like "Hey, Look Me Over" from Lucy's Broadway show Wildcat. The choreography is energetic and the two look like they're having fun. Before the end, Carol pitches sponsor American Motors' safety record. We get a second of Carol saying good night to the studio audience and asking them to watch the show when it's on the air to up the ratings.

The DVD Original Queens of Comedy also includes the 1972 version of Carol in Once Upon a Mattress, the 1959 musical fairy tale which made her a star on and Off-Broadway. I'll cover that show along with the other two televised versions in a later blog post.

B'way Update: Notebook Musical

Maryann Plunkett, Joy Woods, and
Jordan Tyson in the Chicago production
of The Notebook.
Credit: Liz Lauren 

The 2023-24 Broadway season is shaping up. Yesterday, we learned of the Spamalot revival transferring to the St. James and now comes word that a musical version of The Notebook, Nicholas Spark's best-selling novel which became a beloved 2005 film starring Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Garner and Gena Rowlands, is slated for the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater. Previews are scheduled to begin Feb. 6, 2024 with an opening of March 14. The show had a critically-acclaimed run at Chicago Shakespeare Theater in the fall of 2022. 

The score is by multi-platinum singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson with a book by Bekah Brunstetter (NBC's This Is Us). Michael Greif (Rent, Dear Evan Hansen) and Schele Williams (Aida, The Wiz) direct. The storyline follows the 50-year romance of Noah and Allie told in flashback as Noah reads from the titular notebook to an elderly Allie who is suffering from dementia. In Brunstetter's book, the story begins in the 1960s rather than the 1940s. Noah and Allie are played by three different sets of actors who embody them at different ages. Casting will be announced at a later date.

B'way Update: Spamalot Gallops to the St. James; Readings and Regional

Alex Brightman, James Monroe Iglehart,
Matthew Saldivar and the cast of Spamalot 
at the Kennedy Center. (Credit: Jeremy Daniel)

The Knights Who Say Ni, The Killer Rabbit, King Arthur and Patsy and all the other medieval maniacs are galloping back to Broadway. The Kennedy Center production of Monty Python's Spamalot will arrive at the St. James Theater with previews starting Oct. 31 and opening Nov. 16. Josh Rhodes (Bright Star, Cinderella) will repeat his direction and choreography from the Kennedy Center production. 

Based on the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Spamalot opened on Broadway in 2005 and ran for 1,575 performances, winning three Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Direction of a Musical for Mike Nichols, Best Featured Actress in a Musical for Sara Ramirez. Eric Idle adapted the screenplay which he co-wrote with other members of the Python troupe, as well as writing the lyrics and co-writing the music with John Du Prez.