Stairway To Paradise: Glorifying The American Revue

Long before video killed the radio star, the television variety show pretty much knocked off the original Broadway revue.  During the first half of the 20^th Century some of musical theatre's greatest stars (Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor, Bert Lahr, Ethel Waters…) spent far more time appearing in revues like the lavish Ziegfeld Follies, the intimate Music Box Revues and the racy George White's Scandals than in book musicals, often performing material written specifically for their own unique styles.  Songwriters like Irving Berlin, Eubie Blake and Andy Razaf, Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz, Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields and Harold Rome contributed some of their best work to musical revues until Milton Berle's Texaco Star Theatre, Sid Caesar's Your Show Of Shows and other popular television variety programs started plopping the same format of stars, songs and sketches into America's living rooms for free.  It didn't help much that by the late 1940's the book musical was entering its zenith years, inspiring audiences to demand full-length stories and well-crafted musical plays for their $3.30.  And though the revue format isn't completely dead, its most recent appearances have been in smaller productions like Off-Broadway's Newsical, Broadway's Martin Short:  Fame Becomes Me and the 800 anti-George Bush topical reviews that have played Off-Off Broadway in the past five years.

But with Stairway To Paradise: 50 Years of Revues In Review, Encores! takes a brief detour from its normal route of presenting concert versions of book musicals to explore the riches to be found in the catalogue of Broadway revues from 1901's The Little Duchess to 1951's Two On The Aisle.  There's a little forgivable fudging involved with the inclusion of some revue-style material that actually came from long-forgotten book musicals like Stop! Look! Listen! and Show Girl (the 1929 Jimmy Durante one, not the 1961 Carol Channing one), but as conceived by Jack Viertel and directed by Jerry Zaks, Stairway To Paradise is a stunning and stylish evening full of wit, charm and so many showstoppers you'd swear they must be paying the stagehands triple overtime.  For two and a half glorious hours your only care in the world should be deciding which of the magnificent songs you'll be humming on your way out of the theatre.

With the two acts progressing at a reasonably chronological pace we hear the changes in American popular song from musical styles to subject matter to point of view.  Jonathan Tunick's orchestrations effectively recreate a variety of period sounds under Rob Berman's baton and Warren Carlyle's choreography provides it's own history lesson with finesse and exuberance.

The bulk of the material goes to Kristin Chenoweth, Kevin Chamberlin and Christopher Fitzgerald, who you might say are playing the roles of "star", "lead comic" and "second banana", respectively.  The chemistry between the three is just stupendous as they clown around in the famous Dietz and Schwartz "Triplets" number and the lesser known Jimmy Durante-penned "I Know Darn Well I Can Do Without Broadway."  The latter song, where Chamberlin plays The Great Schnozzola in a scene where he's called on to replace Al Jolson in a show, segues into a bit where Chenoweth imitates a thickly Jewish accented Fanny Brice singing "I'm an Indian" ("Two ethnic slurs for the price of one!") and Fitzgerald doing his impression of Beatrice Lillie singing her signature "Get Yourself A Geisha."  The bit is an absolute scream.

Also a scream is a comedy sketch by Paul Gerard Smith where the three of them are highly allergic actors trying to play a serious scene on a stage filled with blossoming goldenrod and a Walter and Jean Kerr bit where Chamberlin is a jungle movie director trying to get a decent performance out of his bubble-headed starlet (Chenoweth) while Fitzgerald plays a trained gorilla who knows his part perfectly and is annoyed by her unprofessionalism.

Individually, Chenoweth grandly displays her operetta chops with Victor Herbert and Henry Blossom's "If I Were On The Stage" (better known as "Kiss Me Again") and finishes the first act with an exquisite "Dancing In The Dark."  Harold Rome's "Sing Me A Song With Social Significance" is given a quirky twist as Chenoweth, Emily Fletcher and Renee Klapmeyer play three glamorous showgirls longing for meatier material.  The only real misfire is a rather rushed "Guess Who I Saw Today" placed in the 11 o'clock spot.  The intimate Murray Grand/Elisse Boyd piece seems out of place as a star's final solo in a big, boisterous show.

Chamberlin's solo of "Brother Can You Spare A Dime?" is a dramatic highlight but it's Fitzgerald who pretty darn near steals the evening.  His wearily cherubic rendition of Irving Berlin's "Oh, How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning" helped score major laughs from a very familiar lyric and his wildly manic performance of an Eddie Cantor signature tune "Josephine, Please No Lean On The Bell," imitating immigrant Italian parents losing sleep over their daughter's habit of leaning against the buzzer while kissing her date goodnight, brought down the house.

Shonn Wiley and Jenn Gambatese are adorably scrubbed up wholesome as the young song and dance team with humorous and frothy performances of Rodgers and Hart's "Manhattan" and Dietz and Schwartz's "Rhode Island Is Famous For You."  Michael Gruber, as the lead dancer makes a play for the girl with another R&H standard, "Mountain Greenery," but when she refuses to stray he consoles himself with a slick and graceful "I Guess I'll Have To Change My Plan."  Later, he leads the chorus in "I'll Build A Stairway To Paradise," performed in a beautiful sea of tuxes, top hats and white carnations.

For want of a better phrase Capathia Jenkins is on hand to perform the material that would be reserved for a featured black singer.  (This was a time when, aside from big stars, black performers were generally segregated to revues with names like Shuffle Along and Hot Chocolates.)  She's great fun in the Irving Berlin jazz gospel "Pack Up Your Sins And Go To The Devil" and Blake and Razaf's "My Handy Man Ain't Handy No More," but there's a lack of dramatic feel in her performance of Irving Berlin's "Suppertime," where she plays a woman trying to go about the normal business of feeding her children after her husband is lynched by a white mob.

Likewise, Ruthie Henshall, as the featured torch singer, manages little more than the requisite elegance for "Memories Of You," though her "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" is far more satisfying.

Another show stealer is rhythm tap dancer Kendrick Jones, who not only flashes the kind of personality, dash and crackling-crisp footwork with his first act number (McHugh and Fields' "Doin' The New Low Down") that makes audience members frantically search their programs to find out who is this guy?, but causes an eruption of cheers with a second act military number tapping out cadences and counter rhythms while weaving in and out of a line of singing soldiers.

In these days where more often than not the show is the star of the show, it's rather exciting to visit a genre that demanded that stars be stars.  Musical revues were welcome homes for the quirky and unique.  And who knows… with the attention span of the average American growing shorter every year, perhaps brand new multi-starred song and sketch revues are in Broadway's future.

A pretty girl… is like a gangsta rap…

Photos by Joan Marcus:  Top:  Christopher Fitzgerald, Kristin Chenoweth and Kevin Chamberlin

Center:  Jenn Gambatese and Shonn Wiley

Bottom:  Kevin Chamberlin, Kristin Chenoweth and Christopher Fitzgerald