Your Own Thursday Headlines Are On the Marquis

 

Courtesy Dailymotion.

This week's notable opening night is July 9, 1986, when the Marquis Theatre's premiere engagement was concerts by Shirley Bassey. Shirley is seen in a performance that same year at London's Piccadilly.

As I've mentioned many times before, I have a dream of seeing a show in all 41 Broadway theaters. I've got 15 left to check off, including the Marquis and its fellow Nederlander venue, the Gershwin. Currently the home of Wicked, the Gershwin was where the Broadway version of Singin' in the Rain premiered on July 2, 1985, before settling in for a season-length run. When Shirley opened the Marquis, the Gershwin was vacant. It wasn't until the spring of 1987 that the Marquis and Gershwin both had tenants, and a pair of dueling British musicals, no less: Me and My Girl at the Marquis and Starlight Express at the Gershwin.

I've often heard that the Marquis is a barn of a theater, but it seems that in 1986, Shirley was too big for the room. "(She is) a relentlessly aggressive belter, whose mixture of hard-edged glamour and proud, unbridled egotism exemplifies the Las Vegas-Atlantic City pop ethos ... a glitzy camp diva, who affects the same bogus British upper-class regality that many Americans mistake for aristocracy. Ms. Bassey sings songs the way Joan Rivers dishes the dirt, pouncing on a lyric, seizing it with her teeth and shredding it to bits," Stephen Holden wrote in the New York Times. "In her Marquis engagement, the singer has only a small, brass-heavy ensemble as accompaniment, and it accentuated her vocal harshness. On Wednesday, both her voice and the instrumentation were miked to nearly earsplitting levels. Technically, Ms. Bassey was also far from her peak. Many notes rang not only abrasively but flat."

Courtesy YouTube.

For what it's worth, Singin' in the Rain didn't get much praise from Frank Rich. "(This) was a fantasy movie about the dream factory of the movies. Once transposed to the stage in realistic terms, the fantasy evaporates even as the rain pours down. No matter how much (director-choreographer) Twyla Tharp re-creates specific gestures from the film, they play differently in the theater. ... (I guess) it's easier to manufacture the rain made in heaven than the stars who are born there. Miss Tharp and company have turned a celestial entertainment into a mild diversion that remains resolutely earthbound."

Singin' in the Rain scored two Tony nominations, both of which it lost to The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Betty Comden & Adolph Green's book was an also-ran next to Rupert Holmes', while Don Correia's work as Don Lockwood lost to George Rose's work as Mayor Sapsea/Mr. Cartwright.

Courtesy YouTube.

Another notable opening for July 2 was:

Stars on Ice, which opened in 1942 at the now-demolished Center Theatre. More ice skating.

Notable Opening Nights returns Thursday, Aug. 6, with another musical playing at a Nederlander theater I still need to visit. For the record, I've only been to the Lena Horne (Six), Lunt-Fontanne (Sweeney Todd), and Nederlander (Honeymoon in Vegas).