By Harry Haun
15 Oct 2008

David Rasche, Jan Maxwell, Steve Kazee, Kristine Nielsen, Peter Maloney and Marina Squerciati, Michael McCarty, Brandon Perler and Robert Dorfman, Rocco Sisto and Casey Nicholaw
photo by Aubrey Reuben

The first Broadway house to be named for a Broadway publicist — the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre — officially bowed for business Oct. 14 at the 47th Street site of the old Biltmore with an age-old, ponderously pondered question: To Be or Not To Be.

Originally — like, 66 years ago — that stylish filmmaker, director Ernst Lubitsch, and his scripter, Edwin Justus Mayer, swiped their title from Hamlet's riff on indecision and wickedly re-coded it so that it would cue the cuckolding of the actor playing the melancholy Dane in the backstage film comedy, "To Be or Not To Be." When those six words were uttered on stage, a handsome young member of the audience would make for the exit and the dressing room of the actor's leading lady and wife. That left the middle-aged actor-husband stranded on stage with nothing but a soliloquy to keep him warm.

In his lifetime, Lubitsch made some memorable movie musicals ("The Love Parade" and "The Smiling Lieutenant," for two) — and, after his lifetime, some memorable Broadway ones: His "Ninotchka" and "The Shop Around the Corner" turned tunefully into Silk Stockings and She Loves Me. This latest Main Stem entry doesn't really push the song-and-dance beyond a Polish dirge and a hand-flailing, wildly improvised buck-and-wing, but it seems to be desperately wanting to be a musical, and it does have for a director the gifted and inventive Casey Nicholaw, who set the kingdom of Spamalot to toe-tapping and The Drowsy Chaperone to groggily twirling.

"To Be or Not To Be," the 1942 film, always deserved another life. (Never mind the 1983 Mel Brooks-Anne Bancroft remake.) It took years of televiewing to jack up its reputation to cult-classic status. Its audacity extended far beyond the improbable pairing of Jack Benny and Carole Lombard as The Lunts of Poland (named the Turas here) — he preening and imperious, she long-suffering with a little extracurricular on the side.

It endeavored to take the sting out of being occupied by focusing on the travails and political intrigues of a Warsaw theatrical troupe coping with sudden swastikas in the audience. But it was released to a very unamused world on Valentine's Day of 1942, two months after our entry into World War II — and, even more fatally for the film, a month after Lombard perished in a plane crash returning from a bond drive.

The late-blooming admiration that the movie has subsequently amassed justifies why Manhattan Theatre Club jumped so eagerly at the bait of Nick Whitby's play adaptation. Unfortunately, as has been reported in the press, the honeymoon was better than the marriage. When Whitby came from his native Cornwall to look in on the production, two very able actors dropped out of the show, and opening night was pushed back 12 days. Declining rewrites, Whitby returned to England where he presumably was on opening night. His name never came up — a rarity for MTC.

"I think we did a great job with what we had," sighed the usually smiling Nicholaw. "We were able to put up the script and all find it together and do the best we could."

His happy ending is already forming on the horizon: Minsky's, which he, directing and choreographing, will world-premiere at the Ahmanson. "We start rehearsals Nov. 24, and then we're out there in L.A. for January and February." The unstated hope is that the show will be on Broadway by spring.

This time it's a real musical — music by Charles Strouse and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead, both of whom were in attendance — and it's based on a movie title: Bob Martin, The Drowsy Chaperone's co-book-writer and "Man in Chair," adapted 1968's "The Night They Raided Minsky's" into the night they actually raided Minsky's, shelving the original movie plotline.

"It's going to be a lot of fun," promised Nicholaw, who's primed for it. "I'm very excited about the cast." Norbert Leo Butz, long-rumored for the lead, won't be doing it after all. "Chris Fitzgerald (the Eye-gor of Young Frankenstein) is who we're hoping for, but the deal's not done yet."

Nicholaw did say that Gerry Vichi, who recently went from The Producer in The Drowsy Chaperone to The Producer in Curtains, has been happily demoted to a baggy-pants comedian, a character that Bert Lahr was playing when he died during the filming. "Gerry was born to play this. It's the role of a lifetime for him. He gets to be burlesque, and the man is burlesque."

For the To Be after-party, first-nighters moved to Planet Hollywood, a galaxy far, far away to judge from the muzak piped in. After an Occupation play, it's never a good idea to go with a jaunty, upbeat rendition of "The Last Time I Saw Paris."

David Rasche (a late addition to the cast, after rehearsals began) doesn't do a conscious imitation of Jack Benny, but it's possible to catch a distant echo of the comedian in the clear, penetrating timbre of his voice.

"When you have lines like 'How idiotic?'" reasoned Rasche about his undeliberate Benny bid, "what are you going to do? You would sound like Jack Benny."

Unlike their official billing in the film (JOSEPH TURA and Maria Tura), the fairer Tura is the show's mainstay — especially as advanced here by Jan Maxwell. "Oh, I love Maria," the actress trilled blissfully. "She's great. I think she's more grounded than Joseph is. She's the one who keeps the company together, kinda the Snow White of the group. Not the brightest bulb on the tree, but her heart's in the right place."

Again unintentionally, there's a luminous illusion of Lombard here, which is pretty good considering Maxwell has only seen one Lombard film in her life and can't remember what that was. (Pssst, Jan: Lombard is now Star of the Month on Turner Classic Movies.) As it is, with a little help from costume designer Gregg Barnes, she keeps up the game and glam faηade quite well. "I do love the costumes. My favorite part is the costumes. Gregg did such a beautiful job. It's the way he drapes clothing." Continued...

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