Posted 5:22 PM by Gene

Notice anything...strange about this cover? We don't know where to begin, except to say Terry got us to think about it with his star-struck swooning. Maybe we should start by explaining Time once ran theater reviews from distinguished writers like T. E. Kalem and William A. Henry III (and the rag pretty well stopped covering theatre when the latter died at the ungodly age of 44). Newsweek ran theater reviews too, even if it was Jack...Dill? So here's the strange thing: Can you imagine a newsrag putting a Broadway show on the front cover? Even one as supremely good as How to Succeed in Hogwarts? Or Anyone But Muslims? There must have been a reason. The reason was The Music Man. It was a smash hit -- and not just any smash hit; it opened in a season that produced West Side Story, from an industry that created My Fair Lady not too long before, that went on to create Gypsy and The Sound of Music not long after. Now what else can you tell me about this cover? Well, there are three people on it, not counting American Gothic. Robert Preston, yes -- he was the star; it made his career after too many B westerns. Meredith Willson's there too -- he wrote it at the instigation of Frank Loesser, putative creator of Hogwarts. Oh yes, one other person. Now you might be able to identify her as Marian Paroo, the heroine. Sorry, wrong -- that's Barbara Cook. Terry had to remind me of a post from some time ago noting how he and Peter G. Davis couldn't agree on Kristin Chenoweth, a difference that renders all critical judgment suspect. How many outside theatah have heard of Kristin? Probably not very many. All right, how many heard of Barbara Cook in her prime? Hard to tell -- although Capitol made The Music Man into "one of the biggest cast album sellers of all time". We will say people who love The Music Man and the sound of Barbara Cook's voice in her prime don't have to make excuses. And as we've said before, there's a reason today's chief issuer of cast albums is called GHOSTLIGHT.

So what am I getting at? Plainly given Terry's swoon and that FANGIRL's and all the typists swooning over ABM lots of people within two miles of Branson East are excited about these two masterworks. There was a time when more people cared. I've already mentioned seven distinguished drama critics. Anyone hear of The Saturday Review of Literature? It ran an eighth distinguished critic, Henry Hewes. If I looked hard enough I could find half-a-dozen more. How many today? Don't mention Ben Brantley; he's not fit to shine George S. Kaufman's shoes. Popular magazines like Life and Look ran theatrical pictorials. Ed Sullivan had Broadway stars on his show -- he was (lest we forget) a Broadway columnist. Dorothy Kilgallen brought Broadway to What's My Line? New York's radio and TV stations had reviewers, and though they made Gene Shalit look good at least it was theater. There were theater magazines. Plays were regularly published in book form. People like Goddard Lieberson made cast albums of straight plays. A Broadway production of Hamlet was televised nationwide on closed-circuit in movie houses. Broadway hits regularly became film hits; the Pink Panther series (just one example) was based on A Shot in the Dark. Now we have Hogwarts and Anyone But Muslims. Half the commenters in the chat room of a popular Branson East site are twelve years old and half the avatars are Liza Minnelli and buff males. Puh-leeease. This is the very definition of irrelevance.

And the two miles around Branson East have shown their good judgment before. I'd hoped to save this for later but we're approaching the tenth anniversary of THE GREATEST MUSICAL EVER. I remember how supremely annoyed I felt at the nonstop plugging of this retread from a vulgarian. Can anything be that good? The first indication something was rotten in the state of New York came the day after the opening when Ben called the jokes "HOARY". The second indication came when its co-producers THE WHINER BROTHERS paid a hack from The Cute Little Pink Paper who'd raved the thing to type a puff piece for the cover of their late unlamented collaboration with TINA!!!!! A year after the hoary jokes it died. The Paper of Re-CORD promised fifteen! Oh yes, it continued for five more; but when THE BOYS quit the joke ended. Mel will spend his last days wondering why Osama had to attack him but then Osama didn't write the jokes. And he wasn't the casting director. The next Max Bialystock was from the West End and played it like Shylock. BOOM! The hit hit the fan. Mel could only bring his YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN!!!!! to life by bringing back THE BOYS, and in time they came to despise each other. Then in 2005 the film version detonated and that was all she wrote. Mel laid the joke to rest when he put on a two-hour Carol Burnett sketch in a barn (the same barn now hosting SPIDER-MAN -- TURN OUT THE LIGHTS!) and he and Bob "ELVIS!" Sillerman refused to disclose the grosses -- a sure sign they thought they'd close early, which they did. Fool me once.... So the two miles within Branson East have had these infatuations, and decades of outstanding theatre have taught us not to believe one adjective. Further note: Two days after THE GREATEST MUSICAL EVER opened Michael Vick placed first in the NFL draft. NUF SAID.

Incidentally, why do I call it Branson East? Do I need explain? There are many differences between Branson and Branson East, not the least the location and the parking, and the latter's ever-present thrill of being mugged, HONORARY MAYOR MIKE notwithstanding. But Branson has over 50 theatres. So does Branson East. Branson has lots of hotels. So does Branson East. Branson has fine dining. So does Branson East. Branson has Silver Dollar City; Branson East has The Lion King and Wicked. Branson has tons of country has-beens; Branson East does gimmick casting. Branson has Christian tours; Branson East has the cult of Sondheim. Branson's entertainments are at their heart Audio-Animatronics. So are Branson East's. There is no difference between whoever's imitating Boxcar Willie this week and anyone with the notion he can lure Carol Channing from retirement.

Not to prolong the agony, but two more points: As Hogwarts is essentially a rebuild of the Promises, Promises theme park that everyone razzed because it jerked a late-sixties property back six years to be HIP, why did people rave this though it's been set as a period piece? There's a certain cowardice here. Never has Corporate America been more widely reviled, and Branson East answers it with an ultrabusy hammering of roustabouts that Brooks Atkinson (I believe) dismissed in 1961 as "a pencil moustache on the face of business." This too shows not just BE's irrelevance, but its impotence. THE GREATEST MUSICAL EVER had a canker in its soul as it took the safe, easy way into the crowd's wallets: it was set in 1959 and concerned a Nazi musical, a trope tired even in '68. Had it been set in 2001 and the subject an anti-Semitic RAP CONCERT it would never have opened. And the least Fodor's can do is get its facts straight -- it's World Wide Wickets, not Widget. In an age of Verizons and Altrias that joke's senescent too.

P. S. on 4/6/2010 at 10:55 a. m. I temporarily pulled this because I thought I was too harsh on that Branson East chat board. People in the biz work it, and their comments are almost always incisive; a few came down on Hogwarts hard. (I did not realize Ben basically panned it, perhaps to make up for a stupid rave of ABM. With Terry it was the opposite, leading me to believe his pan of ABM was politically motivated -- he technically works for the Wall Street Journals CONSERVATIVE Edition, and he's conformed his opinions to its editorial slant before. Whatever the case two cri-TICS have consigned themselves to irrelevance. I haven't read the comments for ABM.) Nonetheless a lot of the people -- and the comments -- are as can be expected.

P. P. S. on 4/10/2011 at 4:15 p. m. We should have quoted it from the get-go but here's a lyric from Hogwarts -- "Been a Long Day", as originally sung by Claudette Sutherland:

Hey!
There's a yummy Friday special at Stouffer's:
It's a dollar-ninety vegetable plate.
And on the bottom of the ad -- not bad!
"Service for two: three-fifty-eight.
To make a bargain, make a date!"

We wonder: 1. if they're using that lyric (probably) and 2. if so how many of the Harry Potter brigade giggle uncontrollably and incomprehensibly. We'd like to join one of the Branson East chat boards just to find out.

Also the song "Paris Original" revolves around a $39 dress.

P. P. P. S. When the same BERT LAHRSON who RAVED!!!!! THE GREATEST MUSICAL EVER THUMBS ABM DOWN it STINKS.

P. P. P. P. S. on 6/15/2011 at 7:30 p. m. The politics behind ABM's raves is underlined by this annoyance. I HATE POLITICS! Also TINA!!!!!'s COVER is not the same as it's just another of Her vapid fads and as She didn't review the masterpiece and She didn't directly put it on the cover -- just a Photoshop allusion with that whatisit from Mass -- and She wouldn't have done even that cover without the electricity of a fad. I HATE OVERRATED RAG EDITORS!

Incidentally, we just joined that Branson East chat board. If we post our avatar will be Lawrence Welk.