Remembering "Teddy & Alice"

I recently watched the 1955 movie The Night of the Hunter, a gothic thriller directed by the great actor Charles Laughton, about a psycho preacher terrorizing two kids. At the time of its release it was a critical and commercial failure but, since then, it has come to be regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made -- and highly influential on directors like David Lynch, Spike Lee, and the Coen Brothers.

This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the Stephen Sondheim musical Follies. Produced between his signature hits Company in 1970 and A Little Night Music in 1973, Follies was an odd and unconventional show about old-school entertainers reflecting on their broken lives. It was so unusual that, at the time, the critics hated it and audiences ignored it. But, in the intervening fifty years, Follies it has come to be seen as a classic, a proud entry in the Sondheim canon, with some brilliant songs like "I'm Still Here."

Sometimes something or someone is a failure in its or the person's time but becomes a great success later on. (Hopefully this blog will enjoy that same trajectory!)

This unusual fate has not befallen the Broadway musical Teddy & Alice. Produced in late 1987, it ran for two months before closing, an utter failure. Unlike some shows -- i.e. Chicago -- that failed in its original run but then was restaged to great success decades later, Teddy & Alice has never been revived on Broadway and remains totally forgotten.

So the ever-contrarian Mr NYC is going to remember it.

Recently I was strolling through Times Square and passed by the Minskoff Theater. I strained to remember that I saw a show there once, a long time ago, but couldn't remember it and then ... LIGHT BULB. I remembered the show! Teddy & Alice! It's a silly musical about President Theodore Roosevelt and his wild daughter Alice. The songs were adapted from John Philip Sousa and most of them are, well, forgettable. I don't really remember anything about the show itself but I remember that I saw it for two reasons: 1) A kid in my class was in it, playing one of Teddy's many children. He was telling everyone the show was about to close, and the tickets were super cheap, so my mom got two tickets and we went the night before it cloesd. 2) It was the first time I had ever heard of President Teddy Roosevelt and my impression of him was actually formed by this show. 

While the show itself was forgettable, the star of it was not -- Teddy was played by Len Cariou, a veteran stage and TV actor who was in the original run of Sweeney Todd. These days he's best known for being on the show Blue Bloods that's been running for about a decade. He was amazing as Teddy, he carried the show brilliantly, and it's too bad that he never got the recognition for it that he deserved. 

I doubt that Teddy & Alice will ever be revived -- it's one of those shows that came and went so quickly, that failed so quietly, that was not a "notorious" or controversial failure (like the musical version of Carrie that closed after one night), that it's just slipped out of the collective Broadway memory. So, in a way, having seen the show, puts me in a small and select circle of people who had an experience that was unique, a brief moment in time, and that will never be repeated.