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'42nd Street' at the Walnut (2nd review)
Those dancing feet
LEWIS WHITTINGTON
Even with its oozing schmaltz, stale plot and (in this Philadelphia production) dicey production values and uneven cast, Walnut Street Theatre’s staging of the late director-choreographer Gower Champion’s 42nd Street has plenty going for it.
“You hoofers have the most fun,” Backstage momma Maggie (Diane Findlay) tells her bevy of hungry chorus girls. In an age when juke-box musicals have to parse out specialties, 42nd Street sustains that increasingly rare showbiz phenomenon: the song-and-dance woman and man.
Champion, of course, was one such powerhouse (he had to be to work so often with the cut-throat producer David Merrick). Champion transformed the 1933 Busby Berkeley dance-noir <i>42nd Street into one of the first movies adapted for Broadway, then assured its place in Broadway legend by dying mere hours before the opening curtain in 1980.
This production included a half-dozen cast members who had Champion’s hoofer-belter goods to spare, starting with leads David Elder (who starred in the recent Windy City) as the stage-door Johnny, Billy Lawlor, and Cara Cooper as the aspiring Broadway baby, Peggy Sawyer.
Cooper charmed as the Allentown girl with a pair of untested gams transformed into the gutsy ingénue who saves the show. Elder, who spent four years in the Broadway touring company, won my dime as the best dancer with his airy muscularity tap-dancing atop a giant coin to “We‘re in the Money.” He flew off that coin in a fully splayed lateral split good enough for ballet.
In Champion’s choreography, the time-step becomes the metronome driving those gypsy hoofers, and those great movie musical tunes like “Lullaby of Broadway” and “Young and Healthy” demonstrate the dancers’ hearts.
Looking good too were some burlesque-era scenes like “Shuffle off to Buffalo,” effectively staged in this show with the chorus girls flash posing through burgundy curtains of a cutaway Pullman railroad car.
Findlay demonstrated both the pipes and the sass as Maggie, and Susan Cella hit some ripe comic moments as the aging star. Broadway lead Mark Jacoby, as the mercurial Merricky producer Julian Marsh, deadpanned his way through with a heart of gold-plate.
Less winning was a frequently sloppy sounding orchestra and some wooden-paced scenes. But the most intricate number— “Dames,” featuring the fan bevy of beauts and set in Philadelphia (remember when we were a Broadway try-out town?)— came off like a satin robe.
For other reviews of 42nd Street, click here and here.
LEWIS WHITTINGTON
Even with its oozing schmaltz, stale plot and (in this Philadelphia production) dicey production values and uneven cast, Walnut Street Theatre’s staging of the late director-choreographer Gower Champion’s 42nd Street has plenty going for it.
“You hoofers have the most fun,” Backstage momma Maggie (Diane Findlay) tells her bevy of hungry chorus girls. In an age when juke-box musicals have to parse out specialties, 42nd Street sustains that increasingly rare showbiz phenomenon: the song-and-dance woman and man.
Champion, of course, was one such powerhouse (he had to be to work so often with the cut-throat producer David Merrick). Champion transformed the 1933 Busby Berkeley dance-noir <i>42nd Street into one of the first movies adapted for Broadway, then assured its place in Broadway legend by dying mere hours before the opening curtain in 1980.
This production included a half-dozen cast members who had Champion’s hoofer-belter goods to spare, starting with leads David Elder (who starred in the recent Windy City) as the stage-door Johnny, Billy Lawlor, and Cara Cooper as the aspiring Broadway baby, Peggy Sawyer.
Cooper charmed as the Allentown girl with a pair of untested gams transformed into the gutsy ingénue who saves the show. Elder, who spent four years in the Broadway touring company, won my dime as the best dancer with his airy muscularity tap-dancing atop a giant coin to “We‘re in the Money.” He flew off that coin in a fully splayed lateral split good enough for ballet.
In Champion’s choreography, the time-step becomes the metronome driving those gypsy hoofers, and those great movie musical tunes like “Lullaby of Broadway” and “Young and Healthy” demonstrate the dancers’ hearts.
Looking good too were some burlesque-era scenes like “Shuffle off to Buffalo,” effectively staged in this show with the chorus girls flash posing through burgundy curtains of a cutaway Pullman railroad car.
Findlay demonstrated both the pipes and the sass as Maggie, and Susan Cella hit some ripe comic moments as the aging star. Broadway lead Mark Jacoby, as the mercurial Merricky producer Julian Marsh, deadpanned his way through with a heart of gold-plate.
Less winning was a frequently sloppy sounding orchestra and some wooden-paced scenes. But the most intricate number— “Dames,” featuring the fan bevy of beauts and set in Philadelphia (remember when we were a Broadway try-out town?)— came off like a satin robe.
For other reviews of 42nd Street, click here and here.
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