Only me and my muse and forty pianos and ten thousand shoes

[sovay]

I have wanted to hear the original television cast of Stephen Sondheim's Evening Primrose (1966) ever since I discovered the musical via a studio recording in 2001, but it didn't occur to me to turn to the internet until tonight. Staticky YouTube came through. Here's Anthony Perkins introducing "If You Can Find Me, I'm Here" and here he is with Charmian Carr for "Take Me to the World." I have to get hold of the rest of this thing. I knew Perkins could sing; I didn't know what he sounded like. Sondheim should have written more roles for him. He's an ideal interpreter: that quick, tensile voice. He's effortless with the patter. And it's not a big voice, but it warms and brightens in the right places and it has the right kind of wire. Imagine him singing "Being Alive." To my knowledge, his only other musical was Frank Loesser's Greenwillow (1960). What happened? Hollywood? There should have been more.



[edit] According to this afternoon's research, Perkins would have sung "Being Alive" if he had stayed with the original Broadway production of Company long enough to see it replace the original closing number "Happily Ever After." The central role of Robert ("Bobby, Bobby baby, Bobby bubi, Robby, Robert darling") was written for him. He departed early in rehearsals in order to direct another show. The good news is, his replacement Dean Jones was soon replaced himself by Larry Kert, who was so good as Robert that he received the rare honor of being Tony-nominated for a role he had technically understudied; I linked to his performance because it's the definitive one. The bad news is, Perkins never got far enough into rehearsals for there to exist even demo recordings of him in the part and certainly none of "Being Alive," which wasn't even written until the tryout in Boston where it became clear that the cynical rejection of "Happily Ever After" would send audiences out hurt and bewildered, not humming. I don't know if there's more to the story. At least I was right to hear the likeness, the ghost of a voice that was never really there. I hope the directing gig worked out. Dammit, Tony.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, that's great! I don't know much about anything here, but I enjoyed the intro; it was very well done.

(And I think people just didn't make people sing enough after about 1930-1955 or something? Unless it was in scary novelty records, but those are mostly scary indeed.)

[sovay]

Aw, that's great! I don't know much about anything here, but I enjoyed the intro; it was very well done.

I'm glad! Both of the songs from Evening Primrose are very characteristically Sondheim.

(And I think people just didn't make people sing enough after about 1930-1955 or something? Unless it was in scary novelty records, but those are mostly scary indeed.)

I believe the golden age of American musical theater is considered to run through the 1960's, and it is certainly the case that there have been numerous examples of the form since that I personally love, but I agree it doesn't happen enough anymore. Except for some reason in movies where they cast people who can't sing. (I understand nothing about La La Land (2016), including wy it exists.)

[thisbluespirit]

We had moved onto kitchen sink stuff by 1960 - not much singing in that! :-)

ETA By 'we' I mean the UK. Or I'm just not a film buff to know, but not many 60s UK musicals come to mind! It'd all gone Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Carry On and Hammer Horror. And I'm even more rubbish at Hollywood.