The “Bathing Beauty Ballet,” featuring the legendary choreography by Jerome Robbins, is the centerpiece of High Button Shoes, the 1947 musical that caps the 2019 season of Encores! Watching the intricately contrived puzzle of a ballet burst into life on the City Center stage, the audience is whipped into a frenzy of musical-comedy delight.
But, alas, that’s not until the start of act two. Up until that point, the Jule Styne/Sammy Cahn/George Abbott show is revealed to be what we’ve always been told: not much of a musical. That ballet gives act two enough energy to coast along amiably, but if you lose the audience in a relay of poor songs in the first act, that’s meager consolation. The evening would work far better with an added pre-reprise of the ballet in the first act, about 40 minutes in. This would not make sense story-wise, but it would sure pick up things. Many in the audience at City Center, in fact, would probably have preferred that they run the “Bathing Beauty Ballet” three times in place of all those bird-watching ladies.
High Button Shoes was a throwback when it originally opened, on the heels of Oklahoma!, On the Town, Carousel, Finian’s Rainbow, and Brigadoon: A ragtag, pasted-together, decidedly non-ambitious, old-fashioned affair. The show survived almost two years on the legs of its main assets. First and foremost was Phil Silvers, a burlesque comedian who had achieved familiarity through a series of featured film roles starting in 1941. Cast in the role of conman Harrison Floy, Silvers—know best known for his creation of Sgt. Bilko—scored a knockout in the role.
The other asset was that “Bathing Beauty Ballet.” Jerome Robbins choreographed the entire show, and one can only suppose that his other work was perfectly suitable; but it was the ballet, inspired in part by the Mack Sennett two-reelers featuring bathing beauties and Keystone Kops, that made the show. Silvers and the ballet were enough to offset the uneven reviews. (Sample, from Robert Garland in the Journal-American: “There’s so much good in the best of it, and so much bad in the worst of it.”)
At City Center, we do indeed get that ballet. Not Robbins’ original choreography, exactly; that was lost to the ravages of time. He reconstructed the piece—helped along by the memories of various cast members and replacements—for the 1989 revue Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. Sarah O’Gleby (with whose work I was until now unfamiliar) has recreated that version of the ballet, and quite well despite a considerably smaller ensemble to work with. What’s more, the ballet works even better, in context, than in the Robbins revue.
Most of O’Gleby’s choreography, here, is new. She does impressively well through much of the evening, with her dancers working in the exuberantly energetic style of early TV variety shows (like Milton Berle’s Texaco Star Theatre, Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows). That is, up until she comes to the first act “Picnic Ballet,” which looks like it was pieced together from five blurry snapshots of Agnes de Mille ballets in other musicals.
Where the current staging—under the direction of John Rando (Urinetown, et al.)—falls flattest is in the star performance. Battling an unworkable script by Stephen Longstreet based on his 1946 fictional memoir, Silvers and director Abbott took it upon themselves to rewrite the thing, with the officially credited author storming back to Hollywood in a huff. (Abbott quotes an argument with Longstreet, in which Silvers retorted “You’d better be careful—some night we may play your original version.”)
The flim-flam man Floy is chockful of Silvers’ ad libs, which one can well imagine were uproarious coming from the man. Do High Button Shoes without a clown who can land the jokes, though, and the entire thing deflates—even if you outfit your star in Phil’s trademarked wide-pane glasses. Michael Urie (Buyer & Cellar, Torch Song) is an impressive comic actor, and does adequately in the role; but he is not a low-comedy clown, and the Silvers gibes—which someone like Nathan Lane or Michael McGrath could pull off—don’t land. Without a strong star performance, all that’s left in this High Button Shoes is the “Bathing Beauty Ballet.” And that’s not enough to support the evening.
Nor does the rest of the cast capture the ragtag style the show calls for. Kevin Chamberlin, as the star’s stooge Mr. Pontdue, is the exception, goosing up the action considerably. Betsy Wolfe, as Sara Longstreet—the role that launched Nanette Fabray to stardom—is charming but not stellar. Mylinda Hull and Matt Loehr stand out for their comic tango in the first act and various contributions to the second, while Mark Koeck adds laughter as the Texan football star playing for Rutgers University. Aidan Alberto also perks up attention in the juvenile role of Stevie Longstreet. Yes, that is presumably author Stephen Longstreet as a child.
The music, at least, is impeccably handled. Rob Berman leads the Encores orchestra with such flair that during the rambunctious overture the show sounds like a hit. But not for long.
High Button Shoes opened May 8, 2019, at City Center and runs through May 12. Tickets and information: nycitycenter.org
