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ON THE RECORD: LPs not on CD, Part Three—Off-Broadway Shows
By Steven Suskin
28 Sep 2009
We finish our survey of cast albums that we would like to see transferred to CD with a stop Off-Broadway. Riverwind, anybody?
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Let's examine two especially strong scores for long-forgotten musicals. Both were written by first-time composer-lyricists, who came to town with these highly impressive showings. Both musicals had decent runs for the time, after which the two songwriters in question all but disappeared.
When I went to store away my LP collection for the final time, I noticed Man with a Load of Mischief [Kapp KRL 4508] still unsealed (with a $1.99 remainder sticker). A six-character 1966 musical set in the early 1800s based on a negligible two-week failure of a 1925 play, Mischief had all the markings of an excessively dreary listen; and the "antique" cover artwork was so unpromising that I simply never bothered to split the seam and put it on. Back in 2003, the York Theatre presented a concert version of the show for a benefit, leading one to wonder — Why? When I went to review the resulting recording, though, I was surprised to find an infinitely worthy score. I decided it was worth my while to track down the original LP, and was rewarded: Man with a Load of Mischief quickly made it onto my most favored list of '60s musicals. Nobody seems to do the show, nobody seems to know it (except highly discerning collectors). Put this one on CD, I say.
The story tells of six people in a country inn: a Lady, fleeing from her lover (the Prince, who is spoken of but not present); a traveling Lord, who stops to help and tries to seduce her; their servants, one each; and a married pair of innkeepers. What makes this all not only palatable but exhilarating is the work of one John Clifton, who wrote the music and is credited as co-lyricist with librettist Ben Tarver. Where Clifton came from, and where he went, I don't know; but he provided a wonderfully inventive and, in places, wonderfully romantic score. (Actually, a jaunt around the Internet tells us that Clifton came from Pittsburgh; played an early summer stock tour of The Fantasticks that featured Liza Minnelli and Elliott Gould; and wrote Mischief while serving as rehearsal pianist for Man of La Mancha. Subsequent theatre work included composing new songs for Phyllis Newman's My Mother was a Fortune Teller and writing the music for the 1981 Off-Broadway failure El Bravo.) Leading the way are two soaring beauties, "Come to the Masquerade" and "Make Way for My Lady." The surprise of the LP, along with the excellence of the score, is the identity of the tenor who sings them so persuasively in the role of the servant who gets the Lady: Reid Shelton, of all people. We know him from his chorus days ("Wouldn't It Be Loverly," in which his doctor recommends a quiet summer by the sea) and from his Tony-nominated turn as Daddy Warbucks in Annie. But as a romantic lover? Here, Mr. Shelton is very convincing.
Singing opposite Shelton in what is probably the leading role of this ensemble piece is Virginia Vestoff, best-known to theatre fans for her Abigail Adams in 1776. She is very good here — actually, it seems like she was always very good — and helps make this such a special piece of Mischief. Alice Cannon, as the Lady's maid, scores with "Once You've Had a Little Taste," while Mr. Clifton gives some of his most charming numbers to the old folks ("Any Other Way," "What Style"). Playing Mr. Shelton's master, and not exactly standing out, is Raymond Thorne, who later joined Reid in Annie as FDR. There is also the touching "Lover Lost," the lovely "A Wonder," an atmospheric "Hulla-baloo-balay," and a grand sextet called "Romance!"
Man with a Load of Mischief opened on Nov. 6, 1966 — between The Apple Tree and Cabaret — at the Jan Hus on the Upper East Side and ran for seven months, which was not bad for Off-Broadway at the time. The original cast album, on Kapp Records (which also recorded Man of La Mancha) is, indeed, quite wonderful. The recent studio cast recording [Original Cast OCR 6100] has expanded material and composer Clifton singing the role of the tavern keeper; it is hampered, though, by the synthetic sounds of a synth. The original 1966 production featured Clifton's fine orchestrations for piano, flute, clarinet and cello.
How did Mischief manage to slip out of the collective memory and disappear? Don't know, but here's a score that you'll want to search out.
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An equally important recording is the enchanting Riverwind [London AMS 78001]. This came from John Jennings, of small-town Indiana; the show opened Dec. 12, 1962, at the Actor's Playhouse and ran for more than a year (443 performances, to be exact). It is somewhat more problematic for today's audiences; the book was never one of its strong points, and some of the relationships might seem hopelessly dated to current audiences. (Women, in Riverwind, were meant to sit around cooking, cleaning, and putting up preserves.) But don't hold that against the score, which might be described as Greenwillow without the whimsy. A high compliment; Frank Loesser, in fact, had one of his companies publish the music.
The plot tells of a rundown tourist camp (called Riverwind) on the banks of the Wabash. The personae include the landlady (Helon Blount) and her teenage daughter (Dawn Nickerson); the teenaged hired boy (Martin J. Cassidy), who seems to be a stand-in for composer-lyricist Jennings; an unwed couple (Brooks Morton and Lovelady Powell) who live on the premises in sin; and another couple (Lawrence Brooks and Elizabeth Parrish) who return to Riverwind — the site of their honeymoon — to try to rekindle their broken marriage. As can be easily divined, the hired boy loves the girl but cannot tell her so (he actually sings a song called "I Cannot Tell Her So") so the girl — looking for adventure in the lively "I Want a Surprise," which signals early on that there is life in this score —latches onto the worldly middle-aged man who is tired of his wife. Or only thinks he is; while he toys at romance with the teen (like El Gallo and Luisa going "Round and Round" in The Fantasticks), he realizes at curtain's fall that he really does love his wife ("I'd Forgotten How Beautiful She Is").
It is the songs that make Riverwind so very special. Best of the lot are a lively, bouncing waltz, "Pardon Me While I Dance"; an astoundingly good quartet called "Wishing Song," which is something like South Pacific's "Twin Soliloquies" times two; and another wonderful waltz duet, "Sew the Buttons On," which sweeps along in the best Richard Rodgers manner (a la "Lover" or "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World"). There are also a pair of amusing songs for the comedy couple, "American Family Plan" and "Almost, but Not Quite." Add to the list the gentle hymn that serves as the title song and the girl's opening song, referred to above.
I don't expect that I'll ever get around to writing the David Merrick biography I started researching years ago, but let me point out that the girl in Riverwind, Dawn Nickerson, is the one that got away. Had Merrick made her wife #2, as sources tell me he seems to have seriously contemplated in 1962 (while she was standing by for Carol Lawrence in Subways Are for Sleeping), he might have saved himself from 40 years of turmoil. Or perhaps not.
Abba Bogin, Frank Loesser's right-hand-man at the time, orchestrated Riverwind and provided expanded arrangements for the recording. And very nice ones, alternatively woodsy and swinging. John Jennings, meanwhile, not only wrote the songs for Riverwind; he wrote the libretto (originally credited as "Joseph Benjamin") and co-produced it as well. The show opened during the 1962 newspaper strike, causing the good reviews to go mostly unread; news reports tell of the author publicizing the show by singing the songs from a flatbed truck in Shubert Alley. Riverwind was a success in its day, but appears to be the only major work by Jennings (who died in 1988). Continued...
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