Are Jerry Herman’s best scores from his flops?
No offense to La Cage aux Folles, Mame, and Hello, Dolly!, which are all bona fide hits filled with hummable songs. But after the giddy Encores! 2020 production of Mack & Mabel—and now the current delightful production of Dear World, running through March 19 at City Center—I’m convinced that these much-less-successful shows are more musically rewarding. Think of them as musical theater treasure hunts packed with hidden gems.
Dear World is the kind of show best suited to the Encores! mission, and also the kind of show that works best in a fancified concert staging. A curious little piece based on Jean Giraudoux’s La Folle de Chaillot (aka The Madwoman of Chaillot in Maurice Valency’s adaptation), the post-World War II–era story centers on the eccentric Countess Aurelia, played here by Donna Murphy, and her mission to save Paris from destruction by money-grubbing oil-drilling faceless corporations—here represented by the President of some unspecified conglomerate (Brooks Ashmanskas, petulant and hilarious), looking almost exactly like Rich Uncle Pennybags from Monopoly. Aurelia also gets a bit of help from two other locals, Constance (In the Heights’ Andréa Burns), the Madwoman of the Flea Market; and Gabrielle (Avenue Q’s Ann Harada), the Madwoman of Montmartre, who frequently communicates with, and through, an invisible dog named Dickie.
The original 1969 version was plagued by a rotating door of directors, a rocky Boston tryout, and, most significantly, a production that was too big for the story. Herman had conceived a chamber musical, with less than a dozen performers; what he got was the grand but massive Mark Hellinger Theatre with a seating capacity of about 1,600, and a cast of more than three dozen. Of course, he had an amazing leading lady—Angela Lansbury, fresh off her Tony-winning triumph in Mame (she won another for Dear World). But the ads showed her swathed in fur looking like a million bucks; theatergoers weren’t prepared to see her play a kooky Parisian lady in old-age makeup. And by reuniting the team of composer-lyricist Herman and librettists Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, it’s only natural that audiences were expecting another Mame.
Directed and choreographed by Josh Rhodes (who also staged Mack & Mabel a few years ago), this Encores! production, of course, has none of those problems. We know Donna Murphy isn’t going to walk out looking like her glam and gorgeous 21st-century self; rather, with her glorious grayish-white hair, piles of pearls, lace-trimmed skirts, and satiny robes, she looks like a cross between Madame Arcati and Madame Armfeldt. (Toni Leslie James’ costumes are a vintage shopper’s dream.) Set-wise, the City Center stage is stripped down by necessity; it looks like scenic designer Paul Tate dePoo III went to Marché Paul Bert Serpette for tables, chairs, trunks, and other assorted antique furnishings. The cast is roughly two-thirds the size of the original. And the orchestra—under the direction of the terrific Mary-Mitchell Campbell, the new Encores! music director—sounds by turns intimate and sweeping, hitting all the emotional notes.
Speaking of emotional notes: It’s rare that a show hits one so high midway through Act 1, but that’s where you’ll find the Countess’ defiant anthem “I Don’t Want to Know,” a sweeping waltz that Herman called one of his favorite songs: “If music is no longer lovely/ If laughter is no longer lilting/ If lovers are no longer loving/ Then I don’t want to know.” Later, the Countess sings a stunning memory song, “And I Was Beautiful,” recalling her lost love. And she shares her love of love with a new couple, the empty suit–turned–activist Julian (Phillip Johnson Richardson), and café waitress Nina (Samantha Williams), in “Kiss Her Now.”
Between those romantic ballads, Herman stuffed the score with wacky comedic songs such as “Garbage”—a tongue-in-cheek ode to days when people discarded such delicacies as paté and peach pits—sung by the town sage, the Sewerman (the wonderfully versatile Christopher Fitzgerald). And listen closely to the sweet strains of the waltz “The Spring of Next Year,” in which the President and his lackeys sing the praises of smokestacks and smog. It’s almost as if Herman knew that eventually air pollution would become a problem in the characters’ beloved Paris!
Dear World opened March 15, 2023, at City Center and runs through March 19. Tickets and information: nycitycenter.org
