La Salle Music Theatre was started in 1962 by Dan Rodden, ’41. He founded the program to provide a place for young people to train in musical comedy, and it quickly became one of the most popular summer entertainments options in the greater Philadelphia region.
At its founding, La Salle’s Music Theatre was the only college-sponsored professional summer theatre in the U.S., and by its own account, it retained this distinction for more than twenty years. Another point of pride was that, while many musical theatre companies were run by volunteers, all of La Salle’s Summer Music Theatre members were salaried, from technical staff to performers.
From its initial production, Carousel, to its record yearly attendance in 1970, with 23,600 patrons attending Bitter Sweet and Man of La Mancha, La Salle’s Music Theatre thrived under the leadership of Dan Rodden. Even as his health declined, his passion for the Music Theatre program persisted. Once he stepped down from the Theatre, his work continued through the hands of Sidney J. MacLeod, Jr. and Bro. Gene Graham.
Though the program had been immensely successful throughout the 1960s and 1970s, by the 1980s it faced rapidly increasing production costs and declining audience numbers. After 27 years and 52 productions, La Salle Music Theatre performed its final play, Good News!, in 1988.
Over the years, La Salle’s Music Theatre saw a number of entertainment industry professionals cross its stage. Notable names included Mary Lou (Cookie) Metzger, who was a feature soloist on The Lawrence Welk Show; Marcus Brown, who was company manager, captain, and lead dancer for The Sammy Davis, Jr. Show in Las Vegas; Dennis Cunningham, who was a drama critic for WCBS-TV in New York; and Pat Cronin, who appeared on TV shows, including All in the Family, Alice, and Two Close for Comfort.
-
Rodgers and Hart: A Musical Celebration
La Salle College
THE PLAY
Richard Lewine's and John Fearnley's "celebration" is, of course, not a play but a revue, reviving the enormously successful twenty-four year career of Rodgers and Hart through the performance of their songs, selected and arranged according to thematic sequences and settings which explain themselves. It was a late-season surprise party of Broadway's 1975 season and the critics and audiences celebrated together. "A champagne musical! Absolutely delightful!/' said Clive Barnes. "The freshest show in years." (N.Y. Post) A young cast of twelve performed in New York, a six-person, star-oriented production was mounted in Los Angeles and in the Chicago area it was slightly restyled once again to fit the stage of the Arlington Park Theatre. Music Theatre is pleased to present the Philadelphia premiere.
Here, for those of you who might enjoy matching the familiar-or freshly heard-songs you will enjoy this evening to their original settings on stage or screen, is a condensed chronology of the sixty or so numbers.
The eldest selection is "Any Old Place With You," the team's first professional sale in 1919. Their initial hit score for the revue, The Garrick Gaieties in 1925 featured "Manhattan." Dearest Enemy, a romantic spook of the American Revolution that same year, first presented "Here in My Arms." Their innovative mix of Mark Twain, the Camelot legend and Ye Olde Song and Dance (A Connecticut Yankee) started a 418 performance run fifty years ago this November with "Thou Swell" "My Heart Stood Still" "On a Desert Isle." The "roaring '20's" also gave us the highly danceable title song of The Girl Friend and the gentle "Blue Room." Ruth Etting first warbled "Ten Cents a Dance" in Simple Simon in 1930.
Maurice Chevalier and Jeannette MacDonald charmed each other and their audiences with "Lover" and "Isn't it Romantic?" in the 1932 film, Love Me Tonight. The full-hearted "You're Nearer" was written for the film version of Too Many Girls in 1940.
Covering their standard-setting, risk-taking prime years on Broadway, "My Romance," "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World," and "Little Girl Blue" are drawn from the circus spectacle Jumbo (1935). On Your Toes (1936), the first musical to incorporate dance into its plot is represented by "There's A Small Hotel" and "Glad to be Unhappy." The hit-packed score of Babes in Arms (1937) provides "My Funny Valentine," "Where or When," "Johnny One-Note," "I Wish I Were in Love Again/' "The Lady is a Tramp."/ Married an Angel (1938) is saluted by its title song and "Spring is Here." (Even a Rodgers and Hart mistake- 1940's Higher and Higher - bestows the durable souvenir, "It Never Entered My Mind.") The devilishly daring Pal Joey (1940) yields "Bewitched" and "Zip" and 1942's By Jupiter displayed "Everything I've Got," "Nobody's Heart," "Jupiter Forbid" and "Wait Til You See Her." One of Larry Hart's last lyrics-a comic masterpiece, "To Keep My Love Alive," is from the revival of A Connecticut Yankee which premiered five days before his death in 1943. And there is much more to recall, to discover-and to savor.
-
The Boys From Syracuse
La Salle College
THE PLAY
In 1938, Director George Abbott's notion-also jokingly entertained by Larry Hartthat an ancient Athenian comedy by Menander, retreaded by the Roman Plautus and later garnished with English verse by William Shakespeare as The Comedy of Errors could be translated into musical comedy at first seemed so farfetched that it took the fillip of a family matter to push it into the working stage. A great Broadway down named Jimmy Savo just happened to be available and Teddy Hart, the lyricist's actor-brother, just happened to be a dead ringer for him. The ideas jelled. The mischievous merger of classical farce with the tuneful irreverence of Broadway musical theatre caused critical huzzahs and handstands. (" ... a beautiful feast of rollicking mummery," wrote Brooks Atkinson;" ... the greatest musical comedy of its time," rhapsodized Sidney Whipple) Its 1963 revival won The Vernon Rice Award as the year's best Off-Broadway achievement.
With The Boys from Syracuse, the "Boys from Columbia" earned the ultimate reward -their faces graced the cover of TIME magazine as the "American Gilbert and Sullivan." But Rodgers and Hart proved to be unique-as unique as that simplest of success formulas they used time and again over a twenty-four year career-don't have a formula. Innovation and sophistication became their signatures. On Your Toes in 1936 first integrated dance and ballet into the musical play. Pal Joey (1940) -Music Theatre 1973-opened the stage door to the musical anti-hero. With Hart's untimely death in 1943, Rodgers launched an equally successful - but decidedly different - collaboration with Oscar Hammerstein.
Perhaps no single show of the partnership celebrated by Music Theatre this season speaks with such deftly juggled tenderness of heart and toughness of mind as the one you will watch this evening. In that spirit, and in the words of George Abbott's mockingly understated prologue,-"If it's good enough for Shakespeare, it's good enough for us!" Enjoy!
-
Sing, America, Sing
La Salle College
ABOUT SING, AMERICA, SING:
In 1975, several creative forces began to shape the original production of Sing, America, Sing. The show opened the Bicentennial season of The John F . Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. It was initiated by Julius Rudel. the Center's former musical director, and it was presented by the Kennedy Center and The Prudential Insurance Company of America. Folksinger Oscar Brand wrote. directed, and performed in the production that starred Broadway's John Raitt. After completing its special engagement in September of last year. Sing, America, Sing appeared on national television in an excerpted, one-hour version. Music Theatre's production, the first. anywhere. since the original production, was made possible by the kind assistance of Dr. Joseph Grossman; Oscar and Karen Brand; George Pickow; David Nash, Director of Technical Operations of the Kennedy Center; and The Prudential Insurance Company of America.
-
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
La Salle College
About the Show
It all started with the first faint stirrings of Big Business parody back in the fifties. Shepherd Mead wrote the 1952 best-seller, the title of which was eventually carried over to tonight's celebrated musical adaptation. But when the redoubtable team of Abe Burrows and Frank Loesser completed their transformation of the book into musical comedy form, they were faced with - and happily accepted - an atypical American musicomedy challenge.
Shepherd Mead's original sub-title for the book is: "The Dastard's Guide to Fame and Fortune." In certain important and hilarious respects, the "hero" of the finished musical version remains just that - a dastard. Thus the mirthfully Machiavellian rise of J. Pierpont Finch in the World-Wide Wicket Company broke with the vast majority of its theatrical predecessors both in its stylish satirization of Madison Avenue and in its hard-nosed reliance on a most unconventional protagonist.
The critical cartwheels on the occasion of its October 14, 1961 opening included: " .. . stings mischievously and laughs uproariously. It belongs to the bluechips among modern musicals . .. " Howard Taubman, New York Times; " .. . crafty, conniving, sneaky, cynical, irreverent, impertinent, sly, malicious, and lovely, just lovely •. . " Walter Kerr, Herald Tribune. And the Pulitzer Prize bestowed on the show for 1962 with the Critic's Circle Award for the season simultaneously marked a further phase of the American musical theatre's coming of age.
Broadway sage and quipster George S. Kaufman once characterized American stage satire as the production which " ... closes on Saturday night." The Loesser-Burrows success story with HOW TO SUCCEED, with its joyous run of 417 performances, gave the lie to that legend. But that is history and not much fun. We know that you will find the living proof quite positive and extremely pleasant to the taste. And it is all yours to enjoy this evening.
-
Out of this World
La Salle College
OUT OF THIS WORLD is about love; it is happily appropriate that it all started here in the City of Brotherly Love at the Shubert Theatre on November 4th, 1950. After a preview try-out here, it moved to Broadway, opening December 21, 1950 under the . direction of Agnes Demille, starring Charlotte Greenwood, George Johgeyans, and William Redfield. OUT OF THIS WORLD now returns to Philadelphia, several changes to its name, with its original bundle of pure Porter delight.
During the original Philadelphia run, material came and went including several songs that seemed to go unnoticed by the critics; one song cut from that score, "From This Moment On" was later published and recorded and soon came to be loved as one of Porter's best. Even though this Broadway production contained some of Porter's finest material, it lasted only a few short months in New York, the overriding problems lodged in the book.
Some twenty years after the Broadway version closed its doors, Mr. John Wharton, trustee for the Cole Porter estate (1974 recipient of the Tony Award) commissioned a new; book. The heady task was given over to George Oppenheimer who is well remembered for his book to the Marx Brothers film A Day at the Races. Richard Michaels was soon contacted to stage the off-Broadway revival:
"When I learned I was to stage the revival, I immediately set to work researching every bit of material I could locate. The final count of available scripts was thirteen; there were scores of scores to discover, too. I located an early version by Betty Comden and Adolph Green ( Bells are Ringing). Later I found the road company version and Mr. Oppenheimer's new script. Again, material seemed to be in a constant state of.Jransition - here today, gone tomorrow. Since the role of Juno was drastically rewritten from that of a comedienne (Charlotte Greenwood) to a far more sophisticated goddess (Joy Franz, now appearing in A Little Night Music), several major numbers had to be replaced. The more involved I became, the more a part of me OUT OF THIS WORLD became. We finally opened on March 8, 1974 with costumes by Music Theatre's own Gerry Leahy. I always wondered what it would be like to go to a cast party and wait for reviews. Well ... the first television review came on and it was a pan. Next the (New York) Times arrived - they loved it! From then on, paper after paper, all raves. All mentioned that the book still needed work. Since the revival was scheduled for a limited run, I immediately set to work on a revised version with a writer friend, Merv Deskins. In the months that followed, we worked on the new book, again, moving scenes, songs and ideas back and forth. It seemed to go on forever but for me it was a labor of love. When it was announced that La Salle would present it and that I was being considered to restage it, I couldn't have been more excited. Dan Rodden sat down and worked over the script, wrote in two new characters (Spiro and Min) and added his special touch. When I was definitely "on" to do the La Salle version, I rescheduled. seven other shows in the works and came to Philadelphia. All of this has happened in four short weeks. I had no idea what I was walking into. In short, I found a wonderful management, ten serious, talented, and beautiful actors and actresses, and an exciting staff of designers - all giving their time, talent, and love in such abundance that it is, excuse me, OUT OF THIS WORLD. I hope you will share our excitement."
-
Two By Two
La Salle College
RICHARD RODGERS, TWO BY TWO
"Rodgers and Hart ... Rodgers and Hammerstein... Rodgers and Rodgers... The common denominator is a man with a passion to create, and a genius for bringing large dreams to fulfillment"
Thus David Ewen writes of Richard Rodgers' "two by two" collaborations and his rich and full lifetime of commitment to turning heartfelt melody to high dramatic purpose. While the above quoted review of his successive collaborations might lend this gifted composer a corporate rather than unique image, there is a very special appropriateness to describing his work in those terms. He has in fact spent legendary collective identities, never serving himself alone but acting as the melodic alter ego for the imagination of writers of theatrical prose. Richard Rodgers has been the good provider of poetic feeling on the musical stage, raising the reach and the scale of mere words with his outpouring of song.
His work with sardonic and sassy Lorenz Hart was a collaboration which consistently tested the ideal of integrating the various elements of American musical comedy from the mid-20's through the early 40's. The impudent review numbers of Garrick Gaities were custom made for the tastes of the Gatsby Era, but from the blending of ballet and book in On Your Toes in 1936 through their final full-time work together on the cynical classic Pal Joey (which delighted Music Theatre '73 audiences) the Rodgers - Hart unit conducted an intensive, hand-in-glove exploration of all the urbane and sophisticated tools of the form.
But even before Hart's untimely death in 1943, that rewarding relationship began to wear thin. It seemed then that Rodgers' humane, even noble musical sentiments were struggling against the grain of the ingrown misanthropy of the Hart lyrics. Not surprisingly, the rustic "folk" operetta of the American West (Oklahoma, 1943) held no interest for the exhausted Hart and so with Oscar Hammerstein II, Rodgers undertook a fresh series of more ambitious and affirmative musical plays. Carousel, Allegro, South Pacific and The King and I are outstanding results of their works.
The "team" of Rodgers and Rodgers (No Strings, 1960) was necessitated by the passing of Oscar Hammerstein 11 in that same year. The summary of Rodgers' collaborative ventures can now be updated to include also Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim (in Do I Hear a Waltz?).
And to bring matters right up to tonight's performance, there is the monumental matching of Rodgers and lyricist Martin Channin and librettist Peter Stone, of course, but also a host of combined force-Theatrical, cosmic, and Biblical-reaching all the way back to the Book of Genesis. The late Philadelphia-born playwright Clifford Odets-who used to be an Oak Lane neighbor of Music Theatre at 1721 Sixty Eighth Avenue-cherished the dream of translating the Old Testament tale of Noah and his family into an opera with music to be supplied by Aaron Copeland. He settled instead for a non-musical rendering called The Flowering Peach in 1954. It lost a split decision for the Pulitzer Prize to Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that season. His work then had to wait until 1970 for rebirth with the sweep and majesty of a Richard Rodgers' score. It is as though nothing less than this whimsical yet stirring retelling of The Flood, the Ark, of the destruction and eventual reclamation of the human race could once again inspire the soaring support and eloquent music of that master of collaborators. In Two by Two, Richard Rodgers once again is "bringing large dreams to fulfillment."
-
Cabaret
La Salle College
The years 1930 and 1931 were critical for Germany and, as, it turned out, for the world. More and more volunteers looking for a cause about which to rally, to march, to "clear the streets", to set a lawful and orderly course for a newly united nation swelled the ranks of the Nazi Party. Money and prestigious endorsements lined its coffers and inflated its influence, giving shape to formal acceptance and eventual triumph.
The extraordinary texture of this tragically pivotal time and place, with its sleazy after dark Gemutlichkeit and its drifting abdication of political, social, and moral conscience was - incredibly - transformed into an adventurous musical play.
The original production of CABARET was staged by Harold Prince, opened on November 20, 1966 and was hailed as a milestone in the contemporary refinement of the musical drama. It won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, swept the Tony Awards in 1967 and its recent film adaptation dominated the Academy Awards this Spring. The libretto by Joe Masteroff and the music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb were designed to mirror the show strip of Berlin "before the start of the Third Reich" through the re-creation of the garish indulgences and diversions of its changing citizenry and its confused international colony.
Christopher Isherwood's "Berlin Stories" and a later dramatization by John van Druten, I Am a Camera, formed the foundation for this evocation of a churning political and social riptide which at first supports then engulfs Sally Bowles, Cliff Bradshaw, Fraulein Schneider, Herr Schultz and, in fact, a whole hell-bent society.