Your Own Sweet Thursday Headlines

 

Courtesy Ron Fassler.

This week's Notable Opening Night is April 9, 1972, when Sugar opened at the Majestic.

"Rarely in show business history has so much been done by so many for so little," Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Times. Produced by David Merrick, directed-choreographed by Gower Champion, headlined by Robert Morse (back on Broadway after nearly a decade), Tony Roberts, Elaine Joyce, and Cyril Ritchard, with a score by Jule Styne & Bob Merrill and a book by Peter Stone from Billy Wilder & I.A.L. Diamond's 1959 film Some Like It Hot, Sugar was something of a pioneer in the field of "Why is this a musical?"

"The story line of a movie is far more complex and subtle than can be accomodated within the framework of a musical. This is the central flaw in this bitter cup of Sugar," Barnes wrote.

Courtesy YouTube.

Barnes might not have liked Sugar as a whole, but he adored Robert Morse, who played Jerry/Daphne, Jack Lemmon's role in the movie. "Morse is absolutely brilliant ... any evening spent with the slyly irrepressible Robert Morse can be recommended at its own level." Sugar went zero for four at the 1973 Tony Awards (in those days, the awards didn't wait for the end of a season to be given out), with Morse losing to Ben Vereen for Pippin. Champion lost as both a director and a choreographer to Bob Fosse for Pippin, while Sugar itself lost Best Musical to A Little Night Music. 

Tony Roberts, who played Joe/Josephine, the Tony Curtis role, wasn't outright panned, but he might as well have been. "(He's) less spectacular than Mr. Morse, but in his way hardly less effective," Barnes declared. Elaine Joyce, meanwhile, received this assessment for her work as Sugar Kane, previously played by Marilyn Monroe: "Deliciously nubile and starry-eyed."

"As an evening of musical comedy there is a certain flatness that the most devoted efforts of the staging can never really disguise," Barnes wrote. Sugar opened on Broadway just a few days before the 12th anniversary of Gower Champion's first job directing-choreographing a book musical, Bye Bye Birdie. He was one of the, well, champions in his field in the '60s, with hits like Birdie, Carnival, Hello, Dolly!, and I Do! I Do! That said, Gower Champion never had a hit directing plays, and he spent ten years mostly with musicals that either underwhelmed or outright flopped (The Happy Time, Sugar, Irene, Mack & Mabel, Rockabye Hamlet, The Act, A Broadway Musical). There was also a 1977 L.A. production of Annie Get Your Gun that reunited Debbie Reynolds and Harve Presnell. (Oh, if only it had made it to Broadway.) Champion himself reunited with Merrick for 1980's 42nd Street, which was a big hit. Alas, Gower Champion couldn't enjoy his success, as he died the day it opened.

Sugar, meanwhile, ran for more than a year, played the West Coast in the mid-'70s, and had a short-lived West End run in 1992. Led by Tommy Steele, the show was now known as Some Like It Hot. That's also the name the property used in 2002-03 when the 1959 film's last surviving headliner, Tony Curtis, toured in a revival. This time around, Tony played Osgood Fielding Jr. Fast forward to 2022, when Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman, Matthew López, and Amber Ruffin's Some Like It Hot opened on Broadway. This time around, Jerry/Daphne's portrayer (J. Harrison Ghee) scored the Tony, and Joe/Josephine's portrayer (Christian Borle) was actually nominated.

Other notable April 9 openings include:

The Father, which opened in 1912 at the now-demolished Berkeley Lyceum. This was the first American production of an August Strindberg play. Strindberg would die one month later.

Courtesy YouTube.

Volpone, which opened in 1928 at what is now the August Wilson. Another belated American premiere of a European classic, this time Ben Jonson's comedy of a man seeking to humiliate his would-be heirs.

Diamond Lil, which opened in 1928 at what is now the Bernard B. Jacobs. Mae West wrote and starred in this play that the New York Times called "lurid and often stirring." Set in the 1890s, it's the story of a "scarlet woman ... attached at the moment" to the big boss of the Bowery, a saloonkeeper and human trafficker. "She is a good actress, (this) Miss West, even though her playwriting is a bit thick."

Hamlet, which was revived in 1964 at the Lunt-Fontanne. The sixtieth of Broadway's 66 productions to date of Shakepeare's tragedy, this makes my list because Richard Burton and Hume Cronyn scored Tony nominations. Cronyn, who played Polonius, won as a featured actor. John Gielgud's cast also included Alfred Drake as Claudius, Eileen Herlie as Gertrude, John Cullum as Laertes, and Linda Marsh as Ophelia.

The Ride Down Mt. Morgan, which opened in 2000 at the Ambassador. A short-runner, this is notable for being Arthur Miller's last new work for Broadway. It starred Patrick Stewart, Frances Conroy, and Katy Selverstone. Frances received a Tony nomination for this play about a hospitalized man being revealed as a bigamist.

Next week, the first show to play the Walter Kerr.