FLAHOOLEY
Discover The Lost Musicals July /August 1997
Barbican Cinema
Review by Emma Shane
For the third Lost Musical of this season Ian
Marshall Fisher has presented us with a well and truly Lost Musical. It has taken some years research to bring Flahooley
back to life, as Dick Vosburgh mentioned in his pre show talk, which he
concluded with a poem. The plot of this musical, by Sammy Fain (best known for the score of Calamity Jane) and Yip Harburg
(Best known as the lyricist, on Wizard Of Oz), is basically about a
Puppet-builder named Sylvester who invents the Flahooley Doll which laughs
instead of cries. He also accidentally awakes a magic Arabian Genie, who does
not understand capitalism, and so chaos ensues. The Genie is pursued, in a
McCarthy style Witch Hunt, by, Elsa Bundshlager, a Witch, an excellent
performance from Myra Sands, I particularly liked her Margaret Sullivan
style melt (this was apparently a concert-staging addition, credited to Dick
Vosburgh).
There
is also an Arab Princess, known as Princess Najla, who was played gracefully by
Valda Avicks, and you have to admire her operatic vocal talents in Najla’s
Lament, Najla’s song of Joy (amusingly subtitled Arabian for “Get
Happy”) Najla’s Birdsong/Enchantment; although personally I am not
over fond of too much highly classical singing in musicals.
James Vaughan gave an
unusually unemotional performance as an Arab emissary. Delivering such classic
lines as “We will have to send an ambassador to Washington so that we can
withdraw him”, with style, and coming into his comic own in Najla’s
Birdsong/Enchantment.
The
original production contained several puppetry sequences, performed by Bill
and Cora Baird’s troupe. Although the
company sang a very good rendition of You Too Can Be A Puppet, for this
concert staging the puppetry segments were dispensed with. The Lost Musicals
resident puppeteer was in the audience, rather than performing.
Sylvester
was to have been played by Dale Rapley. While it would have been
delightful to have seen the latter gentleman in the role, I have to say that
his replacement, Alan Cox was extremely good. He sang all the numbers
very well and was pleasing to look at.
As
Sylvester’s girlfriend Sandy, who initially finds it very strange that
Sylvester “talks to puppets”, Sian Reeves proved to be an excellent
romantic lead, exactly the kind of performer suited to this sort of role. She
sang her solos He’s only Wonderful and Come Back Little Genie,
sweetly. I doubt that her duet with
Alan, Here’s To Your Illusions could have been better handled either. I
certainly hope we see both of them in many more Lost Musicals.
Melvyn
Hayes portrayed the Genie, Abou Ben Atom’s mystification at capitalism, and
human desires, well. He also evoked much sympathy for his character with his
tender handling of The Springtime Cometh, sung to The Flahooley Doll
herself, a sweet performance from young Kirstie Wilde, who seemed to
have appeared from nowhere.
Special
mention must also be made of two other outstanding performances: Mandy More,
as always, made the most of her part, B.G.Bigalow’s secretary K.T.Pettigrew. My
only regret is that she did not get to sing any solos. B.G.Bigalow, a company
director, who had so successfully out rivalled his competitors that he had to
finance his own competitor, in order to have any competion, was played
brilliantly as ever by Matt Zimmerman. A running joke throughout the
show, is that he keeps discovering enterprises that he did not know he owned.
The
supporting company were: Stephen McCarthy, Zoe Ann Brown George
Fitzgerald, Jane Lancaster, Gareth Owen, Steve Elias, Dominic
Curtis, Josefina Gabrielle and Jacqueline Harben. The Musical
Director was Mark W. Dorrell,
with Musical Reconstruction work by Mark Warman. All acquitted
themselves well, with such interesting songs as: Who Says There Ain’t No
Santa Claus, Flahooley, Jump Little Chillun, The World is
Your Balloon, Spirit of Capsulanti, No More Flahooley’s and Christmas
Song (Sing The Merry).
My
favourite number was Happy Hunting, a song which could be a postrunner
to this composer’s earlier hit Deadwood Stage. This was a terrific piece
of fun handled as only Myra Sands possibly could!
I was
also amused by the script, which contained a lot of in joke references to other
musicals, like: Wizard Of Oz, ShowBoat, & South Pacific.
By the
end of the Show: Sandy and Sylvester are married, just before Christmas, the
Genie is back in his lamp, which has been restored to the Arabs, and Sandy is
totally reconciled to Sylvester talking to his puppets, she even does so
herself.
Perhaps
the 1951 Flahooley got lost through being ahead of its time. Four years
later NBC started broadcasting Sam and Friends and both puppetry and
peoples perception of it was changed forever. Talking to puppets came to be
viewed as something that could be done “as if it was the most natural thing
in the world” to quote both Ethel Merman and Linda Lavin.