Apparently all roads lead to Channing these days. I had wanted to look up some different YouTube renditions of "Is a Parade in Town" from ANYONE CAN WHISTLE, but none existed (aside from a solo cello version and a poor college choir Sondheim medley). It's not a far stretch to go from there to "Before the Parade Passes By", long my favorite song in the show. However, aside from a bad community theater production I saw years back, I have never seen the FULL number (with scene and all). Luckily, some kind soul posted it from the 1994 revival, starring Ms. Channing herself. Sadly, embedding is disabled (what does that accomplish exactly?), so I'll have to link to it HERE, but some things I want to point out/discuss:
1) Amusing Channingisms include: "Rum toddy" at 1m30s, her deliberate "oak. leaf." at 2m, "without colah" at 2m20s, how slowly she says "I have decided to rejoin the human race..." starting at 2m50s, the way she drives the point "Harmonia Gardens at 8 o'clock" at 8m30s (and the rest of the speech that follows)
2) I was surprised at how sensitively written this monologue was. I'm sure it's mostly Thorton Wilder (it feels very OUR TOWN), but it's not every musical theater leading lady that gets a monologue like that.
3) Though he was revered in his day, I don't think Gower Champion quite gets his due any more. Certainly the old guard understands, but, as a member of "the next generation" I have to say the extent of his talents has never really been appreciated by--or fully communicated to--me. He's been overshadowed by the "innovators" like Harold Prince, Michael Bennett, and Tommy Tune, while his innovations are negated by the fact that his hit shows (DOLLY, BIRDIE, 42ND STREET), get black marks for being silly stuff appropriate only for schools and stock. But notice the brief dance interlude that brings in the Irene Malloy scene (starting at 3m50s) before vanishing into the ether. Very remniscent of the girls at the barre appearing during "At the Ballet". And the staging of the parade proper (begining at 5m) is actually fairly conceptual. We don't get a linear parade, we get disparate elements gradually filling the stage until Dolly herself leads the winding parade around the pit, blurring the lines between the pedantic parade that much of Act I anticipates, and some sort of limbo in Dolly's mind (before such a thing existed in CABARET).
Watching this number makes me think that perhaps a DOLLY revival should be eminent, though I do have greater concerns over who should play Gower than who should play Gallagher-Levi.
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I just read "The Matchmaker" last weekend, and that monologue is a streamlined version of a Dolly soliloquy toward the end of act 4 (during which she invokes Ephraim, then breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience).
ReplyDeleteThe main difference is that the play is more of an ensemble farce, while the musical strips away much of the excess and gives Dolly a substantial arc.
You're also right about the direction - when there's a revival, there should be a strong hand guiding it. Not necessarily Barlett Sher, though that could be interesting, but someone who will realize the sort of endearing eccentricity marked in the original stage production while giving us a contemporary spin - the three Broadway revivals of Dolly have all been recreations of the original, and more a return engagement for the star than a true revival (Pearl Bailey once, Carol Channing twice).