Springtime For Somers: A Gay Romp with Suzanne and the Thigh Master on Broadway

Christmas came early to Broadway this year, and guess who they stuffed in our stockings -- Suzanne Somers!

Her Broadway debut, The Blonde in the Thunderbird, is a satiric masterpiece. It was shocking, outrageous, insulting and I loved every minute of it. Suzanne Somers is a theatrical genius!

The brilliance of this autobiographical solo musical is that it would have been so easy and obvious for Ms. Somers to attempt a sincere account of her tumultuous life, trying to inspire her audience to keep fighting through personal hardship. But instead -- perhaps because, having never taken an acting class, she lacks to the skill to convincingly play the role which she lived -- she uses her experiences as fodder for a ninety minute romp of ludicrously over-the-top dramatics, jaw-droppingly tasteless song-and-dance and gobs of glossy, rehearsed sincerity. It's a devastating parody of ego-driven, theatrical self-indulgence masked as a cleansing confessional.

So sharply pointed are her satirical darts that I daresay there hasn't been such an abundance of scintillating wit contained within theatre walls since the last time George Bernard Shaw attended a play by Oscar Wilde.

The script is adapted from her two best-selling memoirs, Keeping Secrets and Death of a Salesman After the Fall. Mitzie and Ken Welch, the co-authors and co-directors, have taken the serious subjects of alcoholism, parental abuse, low self-esteem, single motherhood and breast cancer and have matched them up with glaringly inappropriate interpretations of classics from The American Songbook. In an astounding display of bravery, Somers allows some very emotional and heartbreaking moments of her life to be trivialized into kooky entertainment, holding herself up as an object of ridicule as a way of commenting on others who would use their celebrity as a form of self-exploitation. It works on so many levels I bet Ionesco would be tempted to burn every copy of Rhinoceros and start again from scratch.

From the opening music, something that sounds like monks chanting alternating with Irish fiddle music leading into a disco version of "Wake Up, Little Susie", it's apparent we are to take none of this seriously, even when the show is at its most serious. Although much of the story is centered around Ms. Somers' battle with low self-esteem, she spoofs the point by appearing in a black, form-fitting outfit that suggests an annoyingly positive body image. When she announces her age as 58, she pauses, winks and turns to the audiences as if to cue their applause, just as, for example, an untrained actress who made a career getting by on her looks might do. Brilliant.

Her childhood was dominated by the fear of her alcoholic father, who is represented by a voice-over sounding a bit like James Cagney playing Darth Vader. Sound designer Robert Ludwig juices up growling verbal attacks like, "You're a big fat zero, fer Christ sake!" with so much reverb there's no question we're supposed to take it as a comic bit, especially when the 58-year-old Somers re-creates a horrific childhood memory by singing "If I Only Had a Brain" in the voice of a 5-year-old hiding in the closet while the muffled (but reverberating) sounds of daddy's abuse are heard from the kitchen below.

Speaking of reverb, the heavy-handed sound is also effectively used throughout the evening to mock musical actors who rely on electronics to make their singing voices somewhat acceptable. Somers rarely holds notes for more than one beat, filling up measures with lots of facial attitude while electronic echos make it seem like she's holding notes. When she does belt out a long one, the sound is usually hiked up so quickly that pitch becomes insignificant. This satirical bit is especially effective in an easy listening arrangement of "Fifty Percent", a song that the luminous Dorothy Louden performed so brilliantly in the musical Ballroom. Somers makes fun of non-singers who try to compensate for their musical limitations by "really selling" a song with lots of fierce looks where held notes might otherwise be, and a big finish that includes rhythmic head-jerking to numerous heavy downbeats before she speaks the final line.

Other great songs are misused comedically, such as "Take Back Your Mink", a number she sang in her high school production of Guys and Dolls when she discovered that developing into a 34C made it unnecessary for her to take acting lessons in order to have a career as an actress. Her feather-boa accented performance (a sly commentary on animal rights activism, using feathers instead of fur) alternates with voice-over scenes of daddy calling her a big zero once again and tearing up her prom dress, a juxtaposition which is made for no apparent reason at all, brilliantly spoofing misguided attempts at musical drama.

When she meets her future husband, the Bock and Harnick classic "She Loves Me" (sung as "He Loves Me") is performed with a physical manner that suggests she's about to pee in her pants at any moment.

Eddie Cantor's signature tune, "If You Knew Susie", is used as a sort of Wagnerian leitmotif. First heard as a peppy celebration with special lyrics by the Welches ("In the kitchen she is a champ / She's so bitchin' she's a lady and a tramp!"), the theme lingers in the background during self-revealing moments, climaxing with a nightmarish vocalization by Somers in a dramatic singing voice that seems modeled after Linda Blair's possessed utterances in The Exorcist.

But when the Great American Songbook doesn't quite supply the proper amount of misguidance, Mitzie and Ken Welch pen their own tunes. Stephen Sondheim fans will especially appreciate "How Do I Say I Love You", a 50's style number that has Somers rehearsing the one line ("I love you") she had in her breakout role as "The Blonde in the Thunderbird" in the George Lucas film American Graffiti. Her indecision on how to approach those three little words mimics the plight depicted in the Follies number, "Buddy's Blues", and to bring the point home, Somers appears wearing a strap-on vaudevillian automobile just like Buddy does in that classic musical. It's a subtle joke that not everyone will get, but for those in the know it really hits home.

In a hilarious running gag, set designer Roger Ball places a coat rack on the nearly empty floor for Somers to quickly do numerous on-stage costume changes. The joke is there are no costumes for her to change into and she mimes the whole thing. A fabulous commentary on shows that charge top dollar but look cheap.

Ball's other running gag is to have two large TV screens on either side of the stage, giving playgoers the opportunity to forgo the entire live experience and watch the whole show on television while sitting in a Broadway theatre. Genius! And as a bonus, the TV screens also allow audience members who don't wish to give a standing ovation the opportunity to stay in their seats without missing any of the curtain calls. Double genius! Let's get them installed in every Broadway theatre immediately!

In a sharp commentary on performers who continually wheel out the same old material, Somers literally wheels out a cart full of the merchandise she promotes for 25 hours a week on the Home Shopping Network. The star attraction, her signature tune, so to speak, is the Thigh Master. When she places one of those contraptions between her knees and starts squeezing for all she's got, the audience responds with the same unabashed joy usually reserved for a Barbara Cook encore of "My White Knight" or an Elaine Stritch rendition of "The Ladies Who Lunch". She mocks her own audience by making them cheer. Theatre of Cruelty comes to mind.

And speaking of cruelty, in case you were wondering if she has any juicy tidbits to reveal about the television show Three's Company... the job that made her famous enough to be on Broadway in the first place... the role that people really remember her for, as opposed to that Thunderbird thing... She devotes as much time talking about it as it takes to read this paragraph. Ha! Take that, audience!

Although Ms. Somers' husband Alan Hamel is the only credited producer of The Blonde in the Thunderbird, rumors have been circulating among Broadway insiders that the producing team of Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom have been involved to some extent. A representative from Bialystock and Bloom would not comment on this rumor, but did state that the two have been out of town for the past week attending to business at their office in Rio. He then muttered something about not taking any chances this time.

Photos of Suzanne Somers by Paul Parks.