The Spotlight Theatre Company is paying homage to one of Broadway’s biggies with “Showtune: Celebrating the Words & Music of Jerry Herman.” The company’s first musical is a straightforward, old-school revue that plays through Sept. 25 at the John Hand Theatre.
In some ways, a pleasant, elegant evening like this one is the easiest recommendation in town. That is, if you love musical theater, its history, or already are a fan of the Hall of Fame composer of “Mame,” Hello, Dolly!” and “La Cage Aux Folles.” That’s a large, but fairly closed, demographic — because if you’re not already in the club, this musical revue won’t likely invite you into it. This one’s more for insiders.
While “Showtune” presents one great song after another, there’s no real attempt on the part of compiler Paul Gilger to introduce Herman to the audience, or elucidate on the impact of his considerable career. There’s a presumption that surely you already know Herman — or should. But for a man who’s been largely out of the spotlight for 25 years, that’s a mistake.
This is a revue, for example, that gives equal weight to the songs of “Mack & Mabel” as “Hello, Dolly!” — And how many of you have ever seen “Mack & Mabel”?
The 37 songs are grouped not by musical but by theme. For example, the second act opens with an upbeat series of songs about the movie industry. But while one song blends seamlessly into the next within a given segment, there’s no overall throughline. There’s no clarifying exposition to speak of — just six quality singers and one of the hardest-working men in show business (at least on this night). That’s pianist Trent Hines, who’s tickling the ivories for more than two hours with barely a second’s rest.
What musical-theater buffs know that you might not (and you’re not alone), is that Herman was one of the most influential composers of the 1960s, best known for his big title numbers in “Hello Dolly!” (1964) – which he wrote at age 33, and always fretted he’d never top – and “Mame” (1966).
If all you know of Herman are those two musicals, you might naturally think of him as a one-man marching band of unflaggingly optimistic “huzzah” showtunes. Not true.
Herman’s career detoured (some would say derailed) after those two big “razzmatazz” successes, though history might one day show that his subsequent “dark period,” which lasted two decades (until “La Cage” in 1983), actually produced better songs.
This modest “Showtune” revue makes plain just how emotionally complex Herman’s songbook became during that time. It’s rife with meaningful ruminations on loss, regret and relationship conflict. The kind of gut-scraping songs women, especially, would kill to sing (and the threesome of Melinda Catherine Gross, Lee Ann Scherlong and proven veteran Deb Curtis kill one right after the other.)
So much so that within the typically peppy realm of the musical revue, a contradictory sense of melancholy pervades here.
In Ken Bloom’s book “Jerry Herman: The Lyrics,” journalist Sheldon Harnick noted the multi-faceted nature of Herman’s repertoire: The sardonic social commentator, the inventive rhymer, the master word manipulator, the sophisticated poet and the compassionate observer all are on display here.
To create so varied an assortment of musical voices, Harnick wrote, requires not only verbal dexterity and compositional talent — it takes intelligence, imagination, curiosity, humor, empathy, compassion, the mind of a dramatist, and the ability to express complex ideas and feelings in both simple and sophisticated language.
And that can make for a fairly dour revue — or at least the first act of “Showtune” is.
It probabaly wasn’t the wisest choice for Gilger to front-load the show with songs from “La Cage Aux Folles” — and not at all for its gay content, and certainly not for Michael Nicosia’s fine performance here. Rather for its lack of dramaturgical context. Four songs in is a little early to be hitting audiences with “Little More Mascara,” for example. That’s backstage at a drag club where an older man is transforming into a showgirl named Zaza. Again, someone just walking off the streets would have very little clue just what’s happening from one song to the next.
Undoubtedly, one of Herman’s greatest (and most universal) songs is the self-empowerment anthem, “I Am What I Am,” also from “La Cage.” But what makes Herman’s anthems so impactful in full performance is that they come at the climax of stories we’ve seen build. We get realized characters. We get catharsis. Taking them out of context and plopping them into the musical-revue format, where ensemble members are fairly interchangeable, blunts their emotional impact.
Which is not to say each of director Pat Payne’s fine singers don’t repeatedly deliver the goods. Lung power is on full display in Gross’ “Ribbons Down My Back”; Keith Hershman’s “I Won’t Send Roses” and “It Only Takes a Moment” (perhaps Herman’s best-written song); Curtis’ heart-rending “And I Was Beautiful”; Scherlong’s “Time Heals Everything”; Kris Graves’ upbeat “When Movies Were Movies”; and Nicosia’s “Song on the Sand” (with Scherlong).
And yet it’s most stirring when they’re blending their harmonies together and reaching vocal crescendos on songs like “Before the Parade Passes By” and the penultimate “The Best of Times is Now.”
To be fair, the evening is peppered with bits of comic levity, like when Curtis and Scherlong put on a Dolly/Mame mashup with “Bosom Buddies”; and when Gross plays a very pregnant (and unmarried) Agnes Gooch lamenting her pregnancy. But overall, a sense of buttoned-up propriety rules this evening — at least until the inevitable “Hello Dolly” audience sing-along at the end.
I just wish these six could relax a bit and give those forced smiles a rest; take off their “Sunday Clothes,” so to speak — and have some more fun with the legendary material they’ve been given.
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“Showtune: Celebrating the Words & Music of Jerry Herman” *** (out of four stars)
The music and lyrics of Jerry Herman. Presented by the Spotlight Theatre Company at the John Hand Theatre at the Colorado Free University, 7653 E. 1st Place. Through Sept. 25. 2 hours, 15 minutes. 7:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 6:30 p.m. Sundays. $18-$20. 720-880-8727 or
Song list
First act
It’s Today! (Mame)
We Need a Little Christmas (Mame)
Put On Your Sunday Clothes (Hello, Dolly!)
Little More Mascara (La Cage aux Folles)
The Man In The Moon (Mame)
I Am What I Am (La Cage aux Folles)
I Won’t Send Roses (Mack & Mabel)
Ribbons Down My Back (Hello, Dolly!)
Dancing (Hello, Dolly!)
It Takes A Woman (Hello, Dolly!)
Wherever He Ain’t (Mack & Mabel)
Hundreds Of Girls (Mack & Mabel)
So Long Dearie (Hello, Dolly!)
And I Was Beautiful (Dear World)
Kiss Her Now (Dear World)
Time Heals Everything (Mack & Mabel)
Before The Parade Passes By (Hello, Dolly!)
One Person (Dear World)
Second act
Movies Were Movies (Mack & Mabel)
Look What Happened To Mabel (Mack & Mabel)
That’s How Young I Feel (Mame)
Look What Happened to Mabel, reprise
My Best Girl (Mame)
Nelson (A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine)
Just Go To The Movies (A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine)
It Only Takes A Moment (Hello, Dolly!)
What Do I Do Now? (Mame)
Tap Your Troubles Away (Mack & Mabel)
Bosom Buddies (Mame)
Song On The Sand (La Cage aux Folles)
Shalom (Milk and Honey)
I’ll Be Here Tomorrow (The Grand Tour)
If He Walked Into My Life (Mame)
I Promise You a Happy Ending (Mack & Mabel)
Mame (Mame)
The Best of Times (La Cage aux Folles)
“Hello, Dolly!” (Hello, Dolly!)
