Best of the Decade: The Best Musicals, #4

The 2003 season was one of my favorites, with its two biggest hits making my top 5. Hairspray was the quintessential traditional Broadway musical (with a twist or two), while number 4, Movin’ Out, was everything Hairspray wasn’t. Entertaining, thought-provoking, and enjoyable, both shows had what a lot of more recent shows don’t. So, why is the Tony winning Best Musical just below the runner up? Because to this day, something will remind me of this dance musical and I am as enthralled by I now as I was then.

To date, Twyla Tharp’s biggest hit and most acclaimed musical is Movin’ Out. Here is a look at that show.

#4: Movin' Out -
Music and Lyrics: Billy Joel
Conception, Direction and Choreography: Twyla Tharp

Statistically Speaking:
First Preview: September 30, 2002
Opening Night: October 24, 2002
Closing Night: December 11, 2005
28 previews, 1303 performances at the Richard Rodgers Theatre.

There were 22 cast members, lead by singer Michael Cavanaugh, opening night cast Elizabeth Parkinson (Brenda), Keith Roberts (Tony), John Selya (Eddie), Ashley Tuttle (Judy), Benjamin G. Bowman (James at all performances), and Scott Wise (who played Sergeant O’Leary and the Drill Sergeant at all performances). The alternating cast was Wade Preston (vocals), Holly Cruikshank (Brenda), David Gomez (Tony), William Marrie (Eddie), and Dana Stackpole (Judy). The ensemble included Mark Arvin, Karine Bageot, Alexander Brady, Ron DeJesus, Melissa Downey, Pascale Faye, Scott Fowler, Rod McCune, Jill Nicklaus, and Rika Okamoto. Additionally, there were 10 understudies and 6 swings.

• Movin’ Out earned 10 2003 Tony Award Nominations, 2 wins – Billy Joel and Stuart Malina (Orchestrations) and Twyla Tharp (Choreography). The nominees included Best Musical, Best Actor in a Musical (John Selya), Best Actress in a Musical (Elizabeth Parkinson), Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Michael Cavanaugh and Keith Roberts), Best Featured Actress in a Musical (Ashley Tuttle), Best Lighting Design (Donald Holder) and Best Direction of a Musical (Twyla Tharp).
• The show was also nominated for 6 2003 Drama Desk Awards Nominations, winning one for Twyla Tharp (Choreography).
• John Selya was honored with a Theatre World Award.

 Over the run of the show**, there were:

• 2 primary and 2 alternate dancers in the role of James.
• 1 primary and 3 alternate dancers in the role of Judy.
• 3 primary and 2 alternate dancers in the role of Tony.
• 2 primary and 3 alternate dancers in the role of Brenda.
• 1 primary and 4 alternate dancers in the role of Eddie.
• Michael Cavanaugh was the primary and Wade Preston and Darren Holden were the alternate Lead Vocalists. 

** - NOT including return engagements, understudies, swings or stand-bys.

Among the dancers who appeared in Movin’ Out that have gone on to notable Broadway credits: Michael Balderrama, Kristine Bendul, Timothy Bish, Christopher Body, Paul Castree, Kurt Froman, Lisa Gadja, Cody Green, Lorin Latarro, Marty Lawson, Matt Loehr, Charlie Neshyba-Hodges, Eric Otto, Justin Peck, Desmond Richardson, Rasta Thomas and Ron Todorowski.

My Favorite Moments in Movin’ Out:

• The entire opening sequence, from “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” through “This Night” - Capturing and entire generation with sung narration and heart-felt dance, is a remarkable enough experience, but the range and scope of this sequence is mind-blowing.
• “Waltz #1” - In an abrupt, unsettling way this beautiful orchestral interlude served to change the mood and thrust the story forward, as the innocent young men joined up and shipped out.
• “Elegy (The Great Peconic)” - The grief of stage and in the audience was palpable as one of the boys comes home in a coffin. Watching Ashley Tuttle dance her grief was a humbling, tearful experience.
• “Captain Jack/An Innocent Man/Pressure” - Eddie cannot reconcile his feelings after the Vietnam experience, so acts out in some surprising and other unsurprising ways. His downward spiral comes to a devastating end when he is forced to confront his feelings with a grieving Judy in front of him. It is unbelievable to me how much emotion and depth was portrayed by all of the Eddies I saw, and all with movement and not a single spoken word.
• “Goodnight, Saigon” - Perhaps the most gripping 12 minutes in song and dance on the entire decade. I was mesmerized as the entire Vietnam experience was recreated in front of me. Masterful dancing, spectacular lighting and a throbbing sound effect evoked the helicopters, battles and sheer hell of war. And of having to decide between saving yourself or risking it all for a friend.

When I blogged earlier about Movin’ Out just as Tharp’s latest show, Come Fly Away, was about to open (click here for that article), I summed up my feelings thusly:

I love to watch excellent dancers perform excellent choreography (my thoughts on West Side Story corroborate that) and Movin' Out provided me with hours of such pleasure. I saw it three times on Broadway and several times on tour. It speaks to the quality of the piece, the director and the dancers that each time the show got richer and deeper, just the opposite of what happens to many long-running shows that become a parody of themselves. I sat in stunned silence the first time I saw it, and wept openly at Judy’s anguish, which closed act one, and wept yet again at the flashback sequences in act two that showed us what happened in Vietnam. As I type this all these years later, the goose bumps are fresh at just remembering the penetrating throb that went through my body as the sound of helicopters approached, hovered and finally left, an aural symbol of tat bloody conflict. I loved every single minute of it, even embracing the sweet, if unlikely ending.

It remains one of my favorite theatrical experiences of all time, and certainly among the top of the first decade of this century.

Since Broadway:

The show has continued to tour the country, with 2 Equity National Tours and now with a non-equity tour. Most of its principal dancers have continued with Ms. Tharp in her subsequent shows, The Times They Are A-Changin’ and Come Fly Away.

Comments? Leave one here or email me at jkstheatrescene. Or send me a question at http://www.formspring.me/ and look me up as "jkstheatrescene" or "Jeff Kyler." Go ahead! Follow me!
Jeff

Looking Back: Twyla Tharp's Movin' Out

Recently, I took a look back at Twyla Tharp’s most recent Broadway show, 2006's flop, The Times They Are A-Changin', an original story set to the music of the legendary Bob Dylan. Her latest, Come Fly Away, opens this late winter/early spring at the Marquis Theatre. I hope this newest effort is every bit the success of her first big hit, Movin’ Out. (It should be noted here that Movin’ Out was not her first Broadway show; it was actually her fourth. Her biggest success prior to this one was the 367 performance flop stage adaptation of Singin’ in the Rain, a property which, to me seems directly at odds with Tharp as an artist. Still, the show is a staple nationwide.)  But I digress. To date, her biggest hit and most acclaimed musical is Movin’ Out. Here is a look at that show.

BY THE NUMBERS:

Movin’ Out played the Richard Rodgers Theatre.

• First Preview: September 30, 2002
• Opening Night: October 24, 2002
• Closing Night: December 11, 2005
• 28 Previews, 1303 Performances

Cast members: 22, lead by singer Michael Cavanaugh, opening night cast (above) Elizabeth Parkinson (Brenda), Keith Roberts (Tony), John Selya (Eddie), Ashley Tuttle (Judy), Benjamin G. Bowman (James at all performances),and Scott Wise (who played Sergeant O’Leary and the Drill Sergeant at all performances). The alternating cast was Wade Preston (vocals), Holly Cruikshank (Brenda), David Gomez (Tony), William Marrie (Eddie), and Dana Stackpole (Judy). The ensemble, crucial to the show, was comprised of Mark Arvin, Karine Bageot, Alexander Brady, Ron DeJesus, Melissa Downey, Pascale Faye, Scott Fowler, Rod McCune, Jill Nicklaus, and Rika Okamoto. 10 understudies and 6 swings.

• 6 2003 Drama Desk Awards Nominations, 1 Win – Twyla Tharp (Choreography).
• 10 2003 Tony Award Nominations, 2 wins – Billy Joel & Stuart Malina (Orchestrations) and Twyla Tharp (Choreography).

• John Selya (above) was nominated for the Drama Desk and Tony Award. He won a 2003 Theatre World Award.

THE STORY

Set to the pop hits and classical compositions of Billy Joel, Movin’ Out tells the story of teenage friends Brenda and Eddie (they start out as boyfriend and girlfiend), James and Judy (an inseparable and truly in love couple) and Tony, a friend to both of the guys. Their youthful exuberance and abandon is abruptly taken from them as the three guys are whisked off to Vietnam, leaving Brenda to sow her wild oats after a break up with Eddie, and Judy to worry about the love of her life. James does not return alive, sending Judy into a deep despair, and leaving Eddie and Tony feeling guilty that it wasn’t them. Both deal with the return to civilian life in different ways, Eddie with drugs, Tony (Keith Roberts and Elizabeth Parkinson, below) with sex and unsuccessful relationships. Eventually, Judy brings them all together as a way to honor their friend, and the remaining four, broken, but mending look forward to the rest of their lives.

Part cliché and part revelation, the show is given broader audience access through the familiar lyrics and tunes of Joel’s catalogue of pop standards and tried and true character types. But the dance that is presented for each song brings out the depth and pain that is hidden throughout the songs, and the characterizations go far beyond the easy stereotypes that they are at first.

THE CRITICS

Hindsight, they say is 20/20, and the critics were completely unanimous in praising Movin' Out, while lambasting her later effort, The Times They Are A-Changin’. That is not to say the reviews weren’t good for the show when it opened in 2002, they were. But they were tempered by a fear of praising that most reviled of musical sub-genres, the jukebox musical. Clearly, this was a serious undertaking – not the frothy fun of Mamma Mia, but more like Susan Stroman’s Contact, which was a dance play that stunned the theatre community by not only being a smashing success, but the Tony winning Best Musical of 2000. After taking heat for over-praising that show (at least by some), the critics also seemed reluctant to give Movin’ Out its full stamp of approval. Every high praise had a caveat. But there were several things that all of the critics agreed on.

They all loved Michael Cavanaugh’s vocals, which, they opined, was enough like Joel to satisfy his fans, and full and interpretive enough to please the drama critic in all of them. They also heaped praise (deservedly so) on Ms. Tharp’s choreography; many mentioned how each little out of balance twist and turn, coupled with breath-taking acrobatic moves created rounded characters and brought out the nuance and subtlety of Joel’s lyrics. To a person, they loved the corps of dancers, with particular praise for John Selya, Elizabeth Parkinson and Ashley Tuttle, as well as the ensemble in general. Any short comings were chalked up to issues they had with very specific moments of Tharp’s direction and occasional hyperbole.

Ben Brantley of The New York Times summed up the critical response in his own review by saying, “Ms. Tharp's production has little of the old-style showbiz wit and flourish that Ms. Stroman brought to her delightful trio of danced playlets. Nor does ''Movin' Out'' trade as obviously as ''Mamma Mia!'' does on what might be called the karaoke quotient: the pleasure in listening to familiar feel-good music that makes you want to sing along… Michael Cavanaugh (above), who performs on a platform above the dancers with an excellent 10-piece band. There's a self-contained polish about his singing that does not encourage theatergoers to join in. Up to the show's finale, you're unlikely to feel any overwhelming urge to tap your feet or shimmy your shoulders.”

MY THOUGHTS

I love to watch excellent dancers perform excellent choreography (my thoughts on West Side Story corroborate that) and Movin' Out provided me with hours of such pleasure. I saw it three times on Broadway and several times on tour. It speaks to the quality of the piece, the director and the dancers that each time the show got richer and deeper, just the opposite of what happens to many long-running shows that become a parody of themselves. I sat in stunned silence the first time I saw it, and wept openly at Judy’s anguish, which closed act one, and wept yet again at the flashback sequences in act two that showed us what happened in Vietnam. As I type this all these years later, the goose bumps are fresh at just remembering the penetrating throb that went through my body as the sound of helicopters approached, hovered and finally left, an aural symbol of tat bloody conflict. I loved every single minute of it, even embracing the sweet, if unlikely ending (below).

It remains one of my favorite theatrical experiences of all time, and certainly among the top of the first decade of this century.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Several of the original dancers went on tour with the show as did many of their replacements. And several joined Tharp for her next project. John Selya was also featured in the recent revival of Guys and Dolls. Elizabeth Parkinson has since had children with husband and co-star, Scott Wise. And many of the ensemble had and continue to have much success in a variety of shows as accomplished Broadway dancers, including Rod McClune, Pascale Faye and Scott Fowler.

Come Fly Away will again feature many of Tharp’s principal dancers. For more information on that show, click here.

Comments? Leave one here or write to me at jkstheatrescene@yahoo.com

Jeff