REVIEW: BROADWAY BY THE YEAR-- 1949

If 1949 had only brought Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and South Pacific to Broadway, we'd count the year as blessed. But, as Scott Siegel displayed last week in the most recent edition of his hit Broadway By The Year series, 1949 had much more to offer.

The concert featured such impressive talent as Tony winners Karen Ziemba and Cady Huffman, nominees Marla Schaffel and Robert Westenberg, cabaret stars Lennie Watts, Scott Coulter, and Martin Vidnovic, and for the second edition in a row, Nancy Lemenager and Noah Racey. With such dance luminaries as Ziemba, Huffman, Lemenager and Racey, the show was much more physical than other editions, with choreography ranging from soft-shoe to waltzes to sassy posing by Huffman. Mr. Racey and Ms. Lemenager choreographed the bright "No Time For Nothin' But You" from All For Love themselves, and Ms. Ziemba and Mr. Racey were elegant and graceful as they sang and danced "Let's Take An Old Fashioned Walk" from Miss Liberty.

There was attitude and innuendo to spare in many of the numbers. Cady Huffman kicked the temperature through the roof when she performed the flirty "Call It Apple Fritters" from the little-known revue Along Fifth Avenue, and Marla Schaffel was pure sass with the Irving Berlin "Mr. Monotony," which was cut from both 1949's Miss Liberty and the 1948 movie Easter Parade. Later in the evening, Ms. Huffman draped herself over Ross Patterson's grand piano to sing a sweetly sexy "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" from Gentlemen, and Ms. Schaffel sang "I Love What I'm Doing (When I'm Doing It For Love)" from the same show, without a microphone, continuing the BBTY tradition.

1949 wasn't all sass and sin, of course. Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson's Lost in the Stars, a short-lived musical version of Cry the Beloved Country, arrived that year, with beautiful thought-provoking ballads. Robert Westenberg (performing valiantly through a cold) sang two of the ballads– "The Little Gray House" and "Stay Well," while Martin Vidnovic performed the haunting title song.

Of course, South Pacific was the biggest hit of the year, and it's only right that its songs should be the standouts of the evening. Vidnovic performed two of the show's most popular numbers– "This Nearly Was Mine" and "Some Enchanted Evening" unamplified, letting us experience not only his impressive voice, but the power of the songs themselves. All of the men gathered to sing the rousing "There Is Nothing Like A Dame" (Mr. Westenberg earned a special chuckle when he sang the line "We feel hungry as the wolf felt when he met Red Riding-Hood"), and they were later joined by Messes. Huffman and Schaffel to sing a glorious choral version of "Bali Ha'i." Karen Ziemba made three of the show's standards her own, and brought incredible intensity to "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught." Her long pause after she cried out "to hate" let the true awfulness of the lesson sink in, and made for a frighteningly effective moment. The joyful innocence expressed in "A Cockeyed Optimist" and "A Wonderful Guy" were equally palpable, and she effortlessly made the mood of the songs quite contagious.

The final Broadway By The Year of the season will be on June 14^th, and will showcase the musicals from 1963.