New York -- "Show Boat" and "Sunset Boulevard." On the surface, they don't appear to have much in common -- besides the coincidence of being the only two musicals to open on Broadway in the first half of a paltry season.
But just beneath the surface lies a shared theme that is one of the strongest and most enduring in the history of musical theater. Both "Show Boat" and "Sunset Boulevard" are shows about show business.
* "Show Boat," written in 1927 by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II and based on the novel by Edna Ferber, spans four decades in the lives of the extended family on the fictitious Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi River show boat. One of the first shows to integrate smoothly a hard-hitting story and a lush, character-driven score, "Show Boat" is regarded by many musical theater aficionados (including this one) as the precursor of the modern musical.
The show is also modern in that, unlike the light, diverting entertainments of its day, it takes an unvarnished look at such devastating issues as racism, alcoholism, marital problems and gambling.
With a cast of 71 and a record top ticket price of $75, the $8.5 million production at New York's Gershwin Theatre is unquestionably the most lavish "Show Boat" ever. At the same time, director Harold Prince -- who calls his production a "reconstruction" instead of a revival -- has heightened the show's harder edges.
For instance, he has restored a first-act number called "Mis'ry's Comin' Aroun'," which was cut from the original because it was deemed too depressing.
* "Sunset Boulevard," with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and a libretto by Don Black and Christopher Hampton, isn't competing with previous productions. It's competing with its source -- the classic 1950 Billy Wilder movie starring Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, an aging diva from the silent-film era.
Sticking closely to the screenplay, the musical focuses on Norma's delusions as she attempts a comeback and falls tragically in love with a younger man. In Glenn Close's grandiose portrayal, Norma is largerthan life, and so is the production at the Minskoff Theatre, directed by Trevor Nunn, with sets by John Napier and a budget of $13 million. At several points, Norma's heavily carved and gilded two-story drawing room levitates, while a separate scene takes place on stage below.
The characters in both "Show Boat" and "Sunset Boulevard" seek refuge from their tumultuous lives in the world of dreams and make-believe known as show business. And, on the most basic level, that yearning is part of what attracts audiences to these shows.
"Show business is innocent at the heart. Mummers are just the damnedest dreamers. They're all wearing costumes and pretending to be other people," says "Show Boat's" Prince. Although the director claims he doesn't intentionally look for musicals about show business, his credits are rife with them, including the landmark "Cabaret," "Merrily We Roll Along," "Follies," "Grind" (which played a pre-Broadway run in Baltimore) and, to a lesser degree, "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Kiss of the Spider Woman."
The approach director Nunn has taken to "Sunset Boulevard" puts a different spin on the show business angle. "I do think 'Sunset Boulevard' is very different about show business," he says. "It's about the qualities of Los Angeles, where famous and wealthy people can place themselves behind a palisade of privacy and remove themselves from reality and therefore lie to themselves or be lied to about what is the truth of their situation."
Nunn brings up another characteristic that distinguishes "Sunset Boulevard." Protagonist Norma Desmond, he explains, "is one of the first generation of people to experience global fame, and therefore there's no model that she has in order to be able to understand how to deal with it, how to cope with it, whether to believe the publicity."
Whatever their differences, so-called backstage shows are a natural for theater folk. "The people who write the musicals are in show business, so they know a lot about it," Prince says, matter-of-factly.
New York writer Ethan Mordden, who has written extensively about "Show Boat," compares the effect of shows about show business to a mirror within a mirror: "twice fantasy -- fantasy about fantasy."
Backstage musicals also provide a convenient context in which to sing. "One of the reasons so many people make musicals of it is that show business sings, God knows," Prince says.
Yet few numbers in "Show Boat" and none in "Sunset Boulevard" are sung in that context, and Nunn insists: "I certainly don't think that you need a backstage or a theatrical situation to justify people singing. I think that the great American musical is wonderfully elastic. It can deal with any subject, however unlikely, in the tradition of opera." Indeed, "Sunset Boulevard" is almost entirely sung, and the few patches of dialogue are underscored with music.
In a broader sense, the subject of show business can serve as a kind of a frame; inside, it can accommodate all sorts of themes.
For example, Prince explains, " 'Show Boat' appealed to me for two very different and ultimately bisecting reasons: It's about family, and it's about show business, and finally, show business is about family metaphorically. On the larger spaces, 'Show Boat' ultimately is about the family of man and what it has to do to get along."
Prince's production is particularly noteworthy in that larger context, constantly reminding us of racism's impact on the family of man. The black characters who do the heavy tasks on the
Cotton Blossom are almost always at work on stage. And tellingly, there's a "colored only" sign on the Cotton Blossom's segregated balcony at the start of the production, and it's still there when the action ends 40 years later.
In addition, one of the production's loveliest interpolations is a second-act dance montage in which choreographer Susan Stroman and costume designer Florence Klotz represent the passage of time. In one scene, white bystanders watch black street dancers do the Charleston; in a subsequent scene the Charleston has been adopted by whites.
But unlike "Show Boat," in which the Cotton Blossom's $l employees and audiences exult in the glitter and greasepaint, "Sunset Boulevard," says director Nunn, "doesn't celebrate show business. Billy Wilder's original film and the musical have a very satirical and critical view of Hollywood."
The story within that satirical framework, Nunn continues, "works like a Greek tragedy works. It works because there's this steady, inexorable progress toward a disaster because the seeds of the disaster are in the people themselves."
One of the marvels of Glenn Close's performance is that she plays Norma as an actress who, like her counterparts in Greek tragedies, never removes her mask. Norma's mask, however, is her silent film career.
This is evident in her makeup, which exaggerates her eyes and whitens her skin. More significantly, it's evident in her oversized gestures and emotions. Whenever Alan Campbell's Joe Gillis, the screenwriter who becomes her kept man, tries to leave her, Close's Norma enacts a hysterical scene that would be right at home on the silent screen.
If, ultimately, "Show Boat" touches a deeper chord than "Sunset Boulevard," it's probably due to the scope of the story within the show business frame, not to any shortcoming in the physical productions, both of which are spectacles.
"Show Boat" is "a panorama of 40 years of American show business," says writer Mordden. But "Sunset Boulevard," he continues, "really is a little show. It's really about two people."
Yet large or small in scope, both shows are doing land-office business. "Sunset Boulevard" has advance ticket sales of more than $37 million, the highest in Broadway history. "Show Boat's" producer has a policy of not giving out advance sale information, but the production has been consistently breaking Broadway records for weekly ticket sales, with figures topping $900,000.
In the final analysis, Harold Prince's assessment of "Show Boat's" appeal may apply, in varying degrees, to show business musicals in general. "I think people are responding to a certain innocence which they equate with the best of America, the New World, as it were, and they're correct," Prince says. "We miss it. We've lost it."
GO TO THE SHOWS
'SHOW BOAT'
Where: Gershwin Theatre, 222 W. 51st St., New York
When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, matinees 2 p.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays
Tickets: $30-$75
Call: (212) 586-6510
*
'SUNSET BOULEVARD'
Where: Minskoff Theatre, 200 W. 45th St., New York
When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, matinees 2 p.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays
Tickets: $25-$70
Call: (212) 307-4007
HEARING 'SHOW BOAT'
To hear excerpts of "Show Boat" and "Sunset Boulevard," call Sundial, The Sun's telephone information service, at (410) 783-1800. In Anne Arundel County, call (410) 268-7736; in Harford County, (410) 836-5028; in Carroll County, (410) 848-0338. Using a touch-tone phone, punch in the four-digit code 6243 after you hear the greeting.