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Everyone has a learning curve. Even
Stephen Sondheim. A talented 24-year-old in 1954,
Sondheim was approached by producer Lemuel
Ayers to turn the Julius and Philip Epstein play, Front Porch in Flatbush into a
musical. Saturday Night was Sondheim’s first. Before it could be
produced, Ayers died of leukemia. In 1959,
Jules Styne wanted to produce the show with Bob Fosse directing, but Sondheim demurred as
he felt he had moved on, his lyrics to West Side Story and Gypsy
having by then earned him acclaim. Thus did Saturday
Night languish on the shelves for over 40 years until it was revived in England, if
it is possible to revive something that had yet to live.
A period piece, in a period style, with a period conceit, Saturday
Night is dated. It tells the story of a
group of awkward young men in Brooklyn, in anguish over the prospect of not having a date
and having to spend Saturday night with the newspaper, a tragedy with which they are all
too familiar. These are guys who would
consider being kissed a conquest. Set in 1929,
the underlying theme is the feverish whirl on Wall Street prior to the crash and the envy
it engendered in those not part of the boom.
Gene (tall, handsome and talented Nathan J. Moore), the brother of two
of the young men, arrives on the scene wearing tails. He
has the polish, the moves and the success with women. Daytime
he is a runner on Wall Street. Saturday night
he is the suave sophisticate who is able to slide surreptitiously into the glamorous
Manhattan he craves. Moore dances and sings
with an Astaire-like ease. He sweeps away
Helen (Jennifer Bangs, a fine match to Moore), another Brooklynite pretender he meets as
they are both refused entry to a society event they were trying to crash. Both are
Brooklyn to the core, but they each try to convince the other that they were invited and
their invitation is simply lost. Even after
the denouement, when each discovers the other’s true identity, they are thoroughly
smitten and Gene’s fantasies become even more
grandiose.
Gene’s hunger for the good life in Manhattan with Helen and all
the swells leads him to convince the other young men to give him their small, hard earned
savings on the promise that he has a tip that will make them all rich. Suffice it to say, his fantasies get the better of
him and he squanders it on a Sutton Place apartment deposit before he can invest in the
hot tip.
Saturday Night is a major undertaking for a small theater
group. With a cast of 15 and a band of five,
it taxed the capacity of the Chromolume Theater Company at the Stella Adler Theater in
Hollywood. Gary Gray’s musical direction,
despite his major musical credits, was plodding and loud, drowning out many of the lyrics. Perhaps Sondheim did write some catchy bits but
they were lost to the uninspired pounding of the band. And
maybe the music had some of Sondheim’s originality. Except
for a glimmer of hope in the second act, the audience will never know. Despite the competition from the band, the cast
danced beautifully to the simple but effective choreography of Director Jon Engstom.
Why does Sondheim have such a following?
It is for the bittersweet, the witty, the rhythms that surprise and the lyrics that
are impossibly precise. Sondheim has an edge
and sophistication rarely found on the musical stage.
Here, in his first effort, there are only a few intimations of the originality and
complexity that was to come. Saturday
Night is a pleasant and competent musical comedy.
It is undoubtedly a must see for the died-in-the-wool Sondheim groupie who is
compelled to visit the historical roots. For
others, the likely conclusion is that Sondheim knew best when he said no to Jules Styne. The first crepe should be thrown away and the cook
should have the wisdom to know this. Sondheim
knew.
