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. 

Remembering "Chess" on Broadway

Recently I blogged about a failed Broadway musical called Teddy & Alice. It ran for about two months in late 1987 and early 1988 and has been forgotten and never revived since. Another show that also had a brief run around that time has had a more interesting afterlife -- Chess.

Chess was the brainchild of the musical savant Tim Rice (former partner of Andrew Lloyd Webber, the scribes of Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita) who wrote it with Bjorn Ulvaeus, the genius who wrote most of ABBA's big hit songs. The concept of Chess was certainly of its time: set in the depths of the 1980s Cold War, it's about American and Soviet chess masters, facing each other down in world-wide competitions, with money, women, and international politics getting in their way. 

Summarizing the plot is hard because originally the musical started out as a concept album in 1984 and, once staged, apparently the 1986 London stage show in the West End had a different story than the 1988 Broadway version. The plot was constantly being re-written and revised. In its original previews on Broadway in 1988, Chess had running time of 4 hours and then was cut-down to 3 hours 15 minutes when it finally opened in late April. Needless to say the length made it less than appealing to ticket-buyers. Chess also failed quickly because it cost a fortune to stage, full of fancy lighting and special effects and moving stages. It needed to gross a ton of money each week to stay afloat -- and didn't. The 1980s was the era of spectacle musicals like Starlight Express that aimed to dazzle the auidences' eyes as much as satisfy their ears. Chess was another entry in this genre that has mostly faded away -- people just didn't want to spend their time seeing a show of German opera-like legnth that assaulted their senses all night long. 

The reviews in London in '86 had been mixed but the reviews in NYC in 1988 were scathing -- Frank Rich in the Times said it had an "ostensible story ... the evening has the threatrical consistency of quicksand", and that the show just hammers home the analogy that the world is basically one big chess game and we are all its pawns. The show-stopping song is called "Nobody's Side" where the heroic lady chessmaster manager, who works for the American player but is in love with the Russian player (c'est la guerre!), croons away "And when he gives me reasons/To justify each move ... Everbody's playing the games/But nobody's rules are the same/Nobody's on nobody's side."

Ya' dig?

Some other deep meaning, powerful lyrics: "I cross over borders but I'm still there now ... Let man's petty nations tear themselves apart/My land's only borders lie around my heart." 

Huh? (Still, you get chills when you actually hear it sung.)

In the 30+ years since Chess bombed on Broadway, it has actually had a rich afterlife with revivals and "concert musicals" done around the world. In 2009 I saw a concert version on TV that had been recorded in London in 2008, featuring Idina Menzel, Josh Groban and Adam Pascal from Rent. They were brilliant but my impression, even from this version, was that while the show had some powerful, beautiful, really great songs, the story was a confusing boring mess. 

I can't resist: musically, Chess is great; plotwise, Chess is ... a mess!

So far Chess has never been revived on Broadway -- besides its story problems, the show became immeadiately and painfully dated in the 1990s when the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Maybe one day it'll come back to Broadway, if the plot can be brought under control and if there is interest in a show about something that clearly is now a historical era.

And it does have some great songs that stand the test of time so, in many ways, Chess will continue playing (haha get it?) for decades to come.  

P.S. The big opening song to the second act, "One Night in Bangkok" was actually turned into a music video that got some play on MTV and as a radio single. That was always the problem with the show -- it was a bunch of singles strung together to tell some kind of story ... that no one understands to this day. 

A Brooklyn Twofer

If you're looking for a pleasant excursion in Brooklyn that gives you both the glorious history and current glory of the borough, allow me to suggest the following agenda: a visit to Greenwood Cemetary followed by another to Industry City.

Greenwood Cemetary is a nearly 500-acre park-like beauty with some of the most head-snapping Gothic Revival architecture ever constructed. Located at the intersection of Park Slope, South Slope, Windsor Park, Kensington, and Sunset Park, Greenwood is a lush and hilly preserve that stuns the eyes while also calming the senses. (The place became so popular in the 19th century that the cities of New York and Brooklyn were inspired to construct two new parks you may have heard of -- Central and Propsect Parks.) Interspersed amongst the many gravestones are stone chapels, memorials, and mausoleams of breathtaking and intricate design. Amongst the grassy hills, you'll see various nature projects (like bee-keeping and grass-cutting experiments) as well as ponds and lakes with benches where you can sit in the shade and relax. Greenwood is a stunning, gorgeous place, and is not too full of people, even on a Saturday afternoon. You can also seek out, if you want to, some of the famous "residents" of the cemetary: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Leonard Bernstein, DeWitt Clinton, Horace Greeley, Townsend Harris, Alice Roosevelt (Teddy's first wife), Henry Steinway (founder of the Steinway Piano company), Louis Comfort Tiffany, and many others. Here is the cemetary's website for more info. 

Then, a short walk way in Sunset Park, is Industry City. This is another all-consuming experience but an extremely modern one. Like in other parts of the city, it is a prime example of "repurposing" where old factories and industrial infrastructure (like the Highline) was transformed into something more genteel. In this case, Industry City consists of a vast complex of 16 buildings originally constructed in the 1980s as "Bush Terminal", a manufacturing and distribution hub on the waterfront that was convenient for shipping. In the 1960s it was largely abandomed as manufacturing vanished from the city. After around 50-year of lying empty, the buildings were developed into a "mixed-use" complex of office space, tech/production hubs, restaurants, retails stores, and a whole array of businesses. When you get there, you can walk from building to building to building, taking in the offerings, and each building is seperated by a small courtyard with sitting areas and activities. Even if you don't stop and buy or eat or drink anything, or partake in any activities, it's a fun stroll through a notable part of this of Brooklyn's past and present.