A long time ago in a galaxy far away called Broadway in Manhattan, I bought tickets for a new musical called "They're Playing Our Song" as a birthday gift for a friend. Since we are talking over two decades ago, and he lies about his age (he tells people that I was his babysitter, or tutor, depending on the occasion)--I think he's only 42 now. Me, I am 53, and he is two months older according to the Julian calendar. Now that I have gotten THAT out of my system. . . So, I bought these tickets, because he was a fan of Robert Klein, and maybe even of Lucie Arnaz, the daughter of television icons Lucille Ball (of whom he was a definitive fan) and Desi Arnaz, and I thought he'd enjoy this musical. I went with him as ticket number two, although I did not have that great a fondness for either of the stars. It's nice to see a friend enjoying a gift. And I figured I wouldn't hate it. I didn't hate it. I loved it. I saw it three times. He saw it five. I have the album. I still remember the words to most of the songs. I even have the piano selections which I occasionally noodle, badly. It's based on the real life partnership and romance between Marvin Hamlisch (who wrote the music) and his then collaborator Carole Bayer Sager.
I have come to admire Lucie Arnaz a great deal over the years, because she did manage to leave the shadow of two entertainment giants, and she seems a genuinely nice lady who still loves her parents, maybe her father a little more. I have even seen her club singing act and she is quite good at cabaret. I always harbored a hope that the twosome of Klein and Arnaz would reteam as Vernon and Sonia for a version of the play. It was their chemistry that really made everything, the story, the music. And then in the summer, my ageless friend sent me a page from the San Diego Symphony about what I thought was going to be a staging or at least a retrospective of the play. I bought tickets immediately for both of us, figuring that even if we ended up not being able to trek to San Diego, I had them, just in case. I never even noticed that the tickets said, "They're Playing My Song" instead of the "Our" of the title, and I really had no idea what exactly they were going to do. But I needed to have them. I needed to know WE COULD go. That was a piece of very warm nostalgia for me.
And then it was November 10th. Neither of us could take the time to stay overnight in San Diego, so it was going to be a marathon road trip, 2 plus hours down, hit the 8 o'clock show and 2 plus hours back. And it was worth the effort. It was a Hollywood Bowl type delight, except it was San Diego, inside and not summer. My friend and I are planning on telling the Bowl folks and Marvin that they need to get together for a show in the summer. Oh, yes, Marvin Hamilsch was there. He conducted. The show had four parts, an opening of TV themes beginning with Dragnet, and including the I Love Lucy theme, as well as some of Marvin's works, like the theme from the Burt Lancaster film of the early sixties (I think) "The Swimmer". We were in the second row, center. We could watch, up close and personal, as Mr. Hamlisch (I shouldn't call him Marvin. He was just so personable, it felt like I know him), engaged a 14 year old boy, named Austin, who was there with his mother, and probably hadn't heard of any of the people he was seeing, let alone music from the 1950s and 1960s. The second part wasn't even in the playbill, it was Robert Klein doing standup, including a song that had me laughing like I used to at Joan Rivers in the 80s, so hard that the still healing scar on my neck from my recent surgery hurt like hell, about a colonocopy. And another about all the places he'd travelled, but the Bronx was the best. (He too is from the Bronx or is that he is from the Bronx, and so am I, given his stature on the stage and mine as a paying customer). Intermission. Then Lucie came out and did a few songs. I couldn't blame her that the music drowned out her singing on at least two of them--that wasn't her job, that was Marvin's and the sound technicians and maybe a poor choice of pieces for that size a place. Still, she looked stunning in her red gown, although I wondered whether she was wearing stockings. That she probably wasn't was resolved by my friend noting her knobby knees. Stockings would definitely have hidden that. A little unfair to have people that up close I am thinking. We are too hard on the performers. But she looked terrific. And then she and Robert did a mini performance of the old play, both of them going right into character as if it were Broadway twenty odd years ago. Fallin', If He Really Knew Me, They're Playing Our Song, I Still Believe in Love (I do, but that is the name of the song). They were in good voice together and I remembered why I was so taken with both of them then. I was back in Manhattan in that theatre, the first time, watching Vernon and Sonia take that trip to Quog, Long Island in a fake prop car, to soup up their budding relationship, just before it broke down, and then love walks in permanently. It was a time machine moment those two and a half hours for which we travelled nearly five. It was what the Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore movie, Music and Lyrics could have been, but wasn't.
They Played Everbody's Song last night. I don't know what young Austin thought. But there were a bunch of middle aged folks and a fair number of people on walkers of a somewhat older age who were transported to a time gone by.
2 comments:
I may not remember exactly how old I am, but I certainly do recall that Robert Klein's character name is not Seymour, but Vernon.
So right you are, I shall change it, eventually.
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