Review - No Place To Go & The Broadway Musicals of 1950

In the years between the fall of vaudeville and the rise of Comedy Clubs, Americans looking to enjoy some live stand-up would frequently gather at their local jazz venue, where rising stars like Lenny Bruce and Mort Saul would offer their observations in a rhythmic style that many would say mimicked the licks themselves. In his musical tale of losing his job, No Place To Go, playwright/composer/lyricist/performer Ethan Lipton tells the story of mounting disappointments in wry growls of spoken comical riffs that glide into an after-hours score heavily infused with jazz and blues.

Lipton and his terrific three-piece ensemble (co-composers Eben Levy, Ian M. Riggs and Vito Dieterle) appear on the Joe's Pub stage dressed in temp-worker corporate, and while I won't say director Leigh Silverman had an easy job of it, staging was not the most complicated of achievements, as our hero spends nearly the entire 90-minute episode standing center stage, leaning his husky tones into a hand-held microphone.

"My job is what they call permanent part-time," he explains, "which means I'm there for most of the work and few of the benefits. But it has kept me alive for ten years and I like the people I work with."

Lipton comes off as the kind of genial, low key everyman who exudes just enough funk to let you know he's hip. Exactly what he does in his position as an "information refiner" is a little vague, but so are all of the details in his story, allowing his tale to serve as one that an ever-growing number of Americans can relate to.

The gist is that his company is moving. To Mars, he says. (New Yorkers might interpret that as meaning Chicago or anyplace else that doesn't serve pizza by the slice.) The higher-ups promise that anyone willing to move with them can keep their jobs, but really they're counting on the majority of employees to stay put and have made the incentives to relocate as miniscule as possible.

And, of course, our hero has to consider what's best for his family and his modest career as a perpetually emerging playwright/singer/songwriter." ("By the time I die, I'll be rich - in anecdotes.")

Without a lot of plot to work with, the songs, which have their clever lyrical charms, serve as brief tangents and interludes into subjects like moving back with your parents, the advantages of self-incorporation and an ode to Harry Hopkins of the WPA. ("His heart pounded to a different beat / He said even artists need to eat!")

The episodic show does tend to lose steam in the last half-hour, when the dry, deadpan tone of the evening can't really sustain interest much longer. But then, Lipton has enough humorous observations to offer to keep the proceedings engaging till the finish.

Photo of Ethan Lipton by Joan Marcus.

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Though grand old-timers like Irving Berlin and Cole Porter still had plenty of first-rate songs to offer musical theatre lovers in 1950, it was that new kid, Frank Loesser, who upstaged all of Broadway at the tail end of the year.

After a charming freshman effort in Where's Charley? two years earlier, Loesser, along with bookwriter Abe Burrows, gave American popular culture what is still argued today to be the greatest of all musical comedies, Guys and Dolls.

That golden Loesser score certainly dominated the 1950 edition of Scott Siegel's long-running Town Hall concert series, Broadway By The Year, and there was plenty of golden musical theatre talent on hand to savor it.

Matt Cavenaugh crisply opened the show with "Luck Be A Lady," soon followed by Elizabeth Stanley and Alexander Gemignani (who directed) playing out the tentative flames of initial attraction behind "I'll Know." Bill Daugherty's full out Runyon eccentricity brought pathos and humor to his "Sit Down, You're Rockin' The Boat," (performed without a mic) and he, Bobby Steggert and Aaron Lazar teamed up for a raucous "Fugue For Tin Horns."

The special guest artist for the evening was Tony-winner Beth Leavel, who closed the first act with an "Adelaide's Lament" that got big laughs out of the character's growing rage at seeing her wedding dreams continually stalled. She and Steggert later paired up for a snazzy "You're Just In Love" from Berlin's Call Me Madam.

The only real problem with Cole Porter's score for Out Of This World, noted Siegel, is that it followed the composer/lyricist's masterpiece, Kiss Me, Kate. "You can't compete with perfection," sighed the host.

Still, "Use Your Imagination," sung by the full company, is a beautifully elegant ballad and Stanley showed why "Nobody's Chasing Me" is up there with Porter's best double-entendre list songs. Daugherty offered another comical highlight with the Lothario patter, "They Couldn't Compare to You" and Leavel belted the score's best-known tune, "From This Moment On." Real-life couple Cavenaugh and the very pregnant Jenny Powers were quite adorable in the candy-sweet, "Cherry Pies Ought To Be You."

Before Mary Martin first took flight in Peter Pan, Jean Arthur played the mischievous lad in a revival of James Barrie's original play, which in 1950 included new songs penned by Leonard Bernstein. His words and music were well served by unamplified performances of "Dream With Me" (Powers) and Build My House (Gemignani).

The exciting young tap dancer KendRick Jones, a Siegel regular, never ceases to dazzle with his sunny personality and logic-defying footwork. His show stopping self-choreographed routines accompanied "One! Two! Three!" from Alive and Kicking and Harold Rome's "Pocketful of Dreams" from Mike Todd's Peep Show.

As always, the versatile Ross Patterson led his Little Big Band through his lively arrangements.

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"My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a director."

-- Cole Porter

The grosses are out for the week ending 3/25/2012 and we've got them all right here in BroadwayWorld.com's grosses section.

Up for the week was: JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR (14.6%), PORGY AND BESS (11.7%), PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT (4.7%), GHOST (2.1%), MEMPHIS (1.5%), THE LION KING (1.3%), Gore Vidal'S THE BEST MAN (1.1%), JERSEY BOYS (0.8%),

Down for the week was: WICKED (-100.0%), War Horse (-96.3%), VENUS IN FUR (-63.8%), HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING (-13.0%), ANYTHING GOES (-9.3%), EVITA (-7.1%), OTHER DESERT CITIES (-7.0%), SPIDER-MAN TURN OFF THE DARK (-4.4%), THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (-4.4%), MARY POPPINS (-2.6%), MAMMA MIA! (-2.6%), SISTER ACT (-2.4%), CHICAGO (-1.8%), ROCK OF AGES (-1.7%), ONCE (-1.6%), GODSPELL (-1.1%), SEMINAR (-0.8%), DEATH OF A SALESMAN (-0.1%),

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