Seussical--Live performance at Interlochen Arts Academy

They say you can't go home again, and perhaps they are right. I am in Michigan for a long weekend visiting my parents for Mother's Day, and decided to visit the campus of my alma mater Interlochen Arts Academy, which is a couple hours' drive my parents' home. I thought I was going to Interlochen to attend a farewell concert and tribute to Byron Hanson, who is retiring after having led the instrumental and band division there for 44 years. But when I arrived on campus, I realized that the theater department was also presenting Seussical, so clearly that is why I was called up to visit, so that an IAA theater company production could be part of my Thinking this Year. After all, I was in four musicals at Interlochen, performed in three Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, as well as singing in my first large-scale choral work (Vivaldi Gloria), taking voice lessons, and singing original songs written for a production of As You Like it. But enough of my waxing historical, on to Seussical the Musical...

This show and score have a lot of charm, like the other Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens shows I've listened to, Ragtime and Lucky Stiff. It also offers a lot for a large cast to do, a good thing for a show presented in an educational setting. The chorus has several big numbers and there are various small ensembles that have their own moments in the spotlight. There are just four or five roles that handle the bulk of the solo singing.

The plot of the show basically follows Horton and the people of Who on the speck of dust, a separation which was cleverly handled in this production by having the Who only appear on a series of platforms behind and above Horton and the other characters with whom he interacts.

The best voice of this student production was Horton, befitting the amount of music for this character. The young man playing Horton possesses a lovely lyrical baritone voice that he used well and didn't have to strain to get into his upper register. His understated playing of Horton was right on the mark and offered all the charm you could want in this unassuming character. The Cat in the Hat, who serves as a bit of a narrator for the show, is a much more showy role, although lacks the emotional connection to the audience that Horton makes. I feel compelled to brag that the young man playing The Cat in The Hat is Interlochen's 40th Presidential Scholar, a record unmatched by any other school, public or private, in the nation.

The female roles ask for mostly character voices, rather than legato singing. I wished that one of the women's role would ask for a true soprano voice. The closest we get is Gertrude McFuzz, who at times dropped the cupie doll affectation in her singing to allow for her real voice to be heard. I should note that this version of Seussical is from the Theater for Young Audiences collection, which I think means it is slightly shortened and in a simplified arrangement.

The largest beef I have with this production is in the staging as done by Robin Ellis, who is listed on Interlochen's website as a theater instructor at the Academy. This show was presented in a thrust theater (built long after I was a student), with steeply raked seating in three sections and two vomitoria that function as entrance points for both audience and actors. Well, as staged by Ms. Ellis, most of the action was blocked as if in a proscenium house, with primary characters facing the center section of the theater. I was fortunately seated in the center section, but I would have felt at a disadvantage if I had been in the right or left sections. One of the few staging rules I remember from my undergraduate directing course is that in a thrust theater you primarily stage things on the diagonal facing the vomitoria. This would seem particularly crucial in a presentational show like Seussical.

But then, no one is hiring me to direct anything, so I'll just be glad to know that my alma mater's theater department is going strong, presenting shows written after I was there, in a theater built after I was there, performed by kids born long after I was there.

Oy, I'm old.

Seussical
Music by Stephen Flaherty
Lyrics by Lynn Ahrens
Book by Ahrens and Flaherty
Based the writings of Dr. Seuss
Opened on Broadway in 2000
Cast: the theater department students at the Interlochen Arts Academy, classes of 2009-2012.

Ragtime The Musical: Mostly Original Broadway Cast recording

This recording is not listed as being the OBC album, but rather as "Songs from" Ragtime The Musical .  I wonder if E.L. Doctorow insisted on this being listed as "The Musical", so as not to confuse it with "The Novel" or "The Film" or "The Hip-Hop Concert."  While most of the cast of this recording is the cast that appeared on the Broadway opening night of this show, there are a couple of significant personnel changes.  If you know why, please tell me.  Oh, wait, I see, this was the out of town try-out cast in Toronto, not the Broadway cast.

I saw Ragtime on tour in Chicago close to a decade ago.  I remember thinking that it was a lovely score hampered by some pedestrian directing.  I put my career at risk with that statement, as the show was directed by Frank Galati, noted Chicago writer/director.  But as Galati also directed the brief, toxic production of Pirate Queen, which played Chicago before dying on Broadway--no one is immune to the creating schlock.

Ragtime is not schlock, even by the most curmudgeonly of standards.  There is powerful music, here, sung in powerful and effective ways.   But somehow it tries to take on too much for my tastes.   While the pastiche numbers for Evelyn Nesbitt, Henry Ford, Emma Goldberg, and Harry Houdini give a good feel for the era, they get in the way of telling the human stories of Mother, Father, Coalhouse, and Sarah. 

What a great cast, though.  Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Marin Mazzie are three of my favorite singers each given one fantastic song to sing and several interesting ensemble numbers (although if I hear that Ragtime theme once more, I may take a sledge hammer to the honky-tonk piano--a feeling I remember having after seeing the show live, too).  I think this is Mark Jacoby's first appearance in my year; I must look for other recordings with him.

Ragtime

Music by Stephen Flaherty

Lyrics by Lynn Ahrens

Book by Terrence McNally

Toronto Cast recorded in 1996 before the show opened on Broadway in 1997

Cast: Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Marin Mazzie, Mark Jacoby, Jim Corti, Camille Saviola, 

Lucky Stiff Off-Broadway Cast album

Weekend at Bernie's meets musical comedy in Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens' Lucky Stiff. No one is quite what or who they seem to be in this show that is not really a Who done it? but rather at They did What?

This is the first appearance of the song-wrting team of Flaherty and Ahrens in my Year, and I will need to make a point of finding other examples of their work, which includes Seussical, Ragtime, and Once on this Island. Lucky Stiff was their first effort together and, according the brief history of the show presented in the CD booklet, it premiered at Playwrights Horizons in 1988. This recording came out in 1994, though, and seems to be a studio recording made with an amalgam of casts, some from the original 1988 version.

The music is uniformly good. My only beef with the score is that perhaps much of it sounds the same. Since it is mostly upbeat, however, that's an easy sin to forgive. Two songs in particularly struck me and deserve some life outside the show: "Speaking French" is a faux-cabaret number which spoofs the language and the people; "Times like This" has particularly hilarious lyrics and is a nice dog alternative for listeners (like me) who are tired of characters singing about their cats.

The cast on this recording includes some notable performers who have continued to have significant musical theater careers, mostly Jason Graae and Judy Blazer. None in the cast seems a dud, though. Judy Blazer and Mr. Graae both appeared previously in my Year (both in a studio recording of Jerome Kern's Sitting Pretty), and they each seem enjoyable, versatile performers.

Lucky Stiff
Music by Stephen Flaherty
Lyrics and book by Lynn Ahrens
Opened in 1988
Studio cast recording made in 1994
Cast: Judy Blazer, Jason Graae, Debbie Shapiro Gravitte, Paul Kandel, Evan Pappas, Mary Testa