In 1964, Jerry Herman, Michael Stewart and Gower Champion combined forces to launch Hello, Dolly! on Broadway. A decade later they would bring Mack & Mabel. The show was a flop and ran only 65 performances. Despite the mediocre to negative reviews, the musical was nominated for eight Tony Awards, winning none.
Long considered one of Jerry Herman’s best scores (even by the composer), this Encores! production enables a revisit to a show many had hoped would be revived (and fixed). The songs are indeed excellent and Rob Berman’s orchestra showcased them beautifully. Amusingly, of the eight Tony nominations, the score was not recognized. The music is the only thing remembered positively today.
Mack & Mabel is a semi-fictionalized tale of legendary silent screen director Mack Sennett and one of his great stars, Mabel Normand. In this telling, Mabel is discovered when she delivers a deli sandwich to the Brooklyn sound stage where Mr. Sennett is filming in 1911. “Look What Happened to Mabel” puts the audience back in time and establishes a fun tone.
The tone is one of the bizarre problems in Mr. Stewart’s book which has been rewritten over the years. The show opens with Mack looking back after the talking pictures made him obsolete. He sings about when “Movies Were Movies” to open the show. He comes across as an unlikable curmudgeon but the staging and the song establish the period well enough.
The show, however, is narrated by Mack so the character is more of a memoirist rather than a participant in this tragic romance. Instead, boring exposition occurs. While not a direct quote, the feeling is: “In this scene, Mabel will betray me and go to another film studio.” It doesn’t help that Douglas Sills and Alexandra Sochi don’t develop any real chemistry. I have to concede that the same criticism was made of Robert Preston and Bernadette Peters in the original. As written, the roles and the musical’s structure might be an insurmountable hurdle.
Mabel died in 1930 from tuberculosis. Her drinking and drug addictions are chronicled here so the mood is somber and dark. In the original, the creators decided that Broadway audiences needed a happy ending. The musical ended with Mack imagining a wedding with the dead Mabel. That oddity was excised in this version and perhaps audiences today can tolerate more darkness in their musicals.
The show embraces Mr. Sennett’s contributions to the silent film era notably the Keystone Kops. Mr. Sills sings “I Wanna Make the World Laugh” which sums up his directorial style. When he gets the idea for filming his Bathing Beauties, “Hundreds of Girls” is the energizing first act closer.
“When Mabel Comes in the Room” is the first number in Act II. Is it a replica of Hello, Dolly’s title track? Definitely. Molly has not really been out of the story but, after years of film success elsewhere, she is welcomed back where she belongs. From this good time moment, the show descends into darkness, or tries to and fails.
There’s a good song called “Tap Your Troubles Away” that probably should be dark and menacing to accompany the story being told. As staged here, it is a weird happy dance. The ballads in this score, especially Mack’s “I Won’t Send Roses” and Mabel’s exquisite “Time Heals Everything” are top drawer Broadway show tunes.
Encores! is usually a great opportunity to catch well-staged performances of forgotten shows or those with some flaws. This production was not one of the finest in this series but nonetheless interesting from a historical point of view. The score is still excellent.
The next musical in this year’s Encores! series is 1948’s Love Life by Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner running from March 16 – 22, 2020.