Bells are Ringing
by Brad Hathaway
Musicalstages.com
Is this really what it was like in the 50s during Broadway’s “Golden Age”? Was the world ever this bright and fun? If so, I wouldn’t mind going back – though I’d miss Kander & Ebb, Flaherty & Ahrens, (most of) Stephen Sondheim and Windows 98.
Reviving the show originally written for 1950’s treasure Judy Holliday with this century’s treasure Faith Prince has a feel of inevitability – except that it almost didn’t happen.
It took a concert staging at Washington’s Kennedy Center to demonstrate the match between this wonderful redhead’s persona and the “dumb blond with more common sense than anyone” essence of Holliday. That concert remains one of my most intense memories of musical theatre . . . the night that Faith Prince sat on the lip of the stage and sang “The Party’s Over” not five feet from my wife and me!
Now we get to see the full show, not as a concert adaptation but as it was intended. Here’s a fully staged revival and it is wonderful to see just how well the story works. Oh, sure, we knew the score was fabulous – we’d listened to the original recording. And we knew that Prince was fabulous – we’d felt her magic. But here is the full show, not just a hint of what the show must have been. I’m in heaven!
The story is, of course, a bit of fluff. But it is a well constructed, multi-layered, hugely entertaining bit of fluff. Before the days of the answering machine, call waiting and call forwarding there was the answering service – a company with a switchboard operating 24 hours answering its client’s calls, taking messages and relaying them to the clients. Ella Peterson, switchboard operator at “Susanswerphone” can’t help identifying with the customers and occasionally meddling in their lives. She falls in love with the voice of customer – Plaza 0-4433 (yes, phone numbers had names then!) He’s a writer suffering from writer’s block. She sets out to solve his problem but can’t use her real identity because her boss has ordered her to stop meddling. The confusion mounts as she comes up with solutions to the problems of other customers as well: the unemployed actor and the dentist who composes songs on the air hose of his dental drill.
I don’t care if Jule Styne composed on an air hose, a piano, a guitar or a harmonica. These songs are endlessly inventive, enrapturing, and delightful in the literal sense of the word – they are full of delight. “Long Before I Knew You” is a beautiful love duet. “I Met A Girl” has the most intriguing lilt. “Just In Time” must have been recognized as an instant standard the first time Styne played it through and “The Party’s Over” couldn’t be better in the hands of Faith Prince.
Prince is, in fact, a wonder. But we knew that before this production opened. With her Tony Award for Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, and her Tony nomination for Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, and her recent visit to Broadway as both the younger and the elder Belle Poitrine in Little Me, no validation of her abilities was needed. Just sit back and let her entertain you!
The surprises were the charm of Marc Kudisch and the strength of the part he plays. That part comes down to theatre buffs as played by Sydney Chaplin whose charms never translated to recordings. Here we can finally understand that the writer they played had an honest case of writer’s block and that Prince’s character had good reason to believe he could succeed if she could just get him started.
Also great fun is the rock-solid work of David Garrison as the scheming schlemiel who uses Susanswerphone to cover his bookie operation by adopting “A Simple Little System” of code.
The art of musical theatre has advanced since the original Bells Are Ringing. It has built on the strengths of the form. Here is an opportunity to see what a charming, entertaining and absolutely delightful thing the musical comedy was in the 50s. -- and have a gloriously fun time!
