In the 1950s, the Broadway musical attained a cultural
respectability it had never enjoyed before and would hold onto for only
a short
time. Part of this was a result of the association many of these works
had with
established plays or books – it's surely no coincidence that Shaw's Pygmalion gave birth to a great musical
such as My Fair Lady, and likewise
Bernstein's West Side Story came out
of Romeo and Juliet, Candide derived
from the classic novella
of the same name, and The King and I came
from the film Anna and the King (itself
based on a strong book).
For Damn Yankees,
Richard Adler and Jerry Ross looked to no less a story than the Faust legend, which they updated to
1950s
Newly revived at
There's a heartening ensemble feel about the production, but it has to be said that of the leads, the men fare better than the women. Part of this, I think, is because the cast consists of actors rather than voice students. Nevertheless, Mark Desebrock's Joe Hardy is vocally outstanding, with a nice bright voice that fully does justice to lyrical songs such as 'Goodbye Old Girl', 'A Man Doesn't Know' and 'Near to You'. There's also a touching simplicity about his performance that makes the moral strength of his character – who does not ultimately capitulate to Lola and Applegate – more credible than in other productions I have seen.
Still, it has to be said that it's Terence Keeley who brings the house down as Applegate. What a performance: on the one hand, he completely inhabits book-writer George Abbott's reconception of the Devil character as a man of more cunning than power (at one point he alludes to all the money he's spending on costumes); and on the other, his showstopping 'Those Were the Good Old Days' is augmented by a number of clever tricks and is delivered with all the aplomb required of a leading character actor. Keely and Desebrock certainly have what it takes to get on the professional stage.
Similarly, Anna McSweeney acts with pathos as Meg, but she struggled at this performance to maintain her tuning, especially during the higher passages. Lauren O'Neil came into her own during Lola's faux-Latin scene but does not have the huskiness of voice or quite the ease needed to fill Gwen Verdon's shoes in this role.
Most of the rest of the cast is excellent too, with the big numbers like 'Six Months Out of Every Year', 'Shoeless Joe', 'The Game' and especially 'You've Gotta Have Heart' providing highlights. No fewer than thirty players are in the pit band for this production – a near-miracle, considering that it's rare to get more than twenty in professional West End productions nowadays (seventeen for the recent Carousel was considered a lot); Don Walker's orchestrations (which were not credited in the programme, quite shockingly) came across extremely well after a slightly sloppy Overture.
Three performances remain for this Tony Award-winning show, which marked the end of the brief collaboration between Adler and Ross. The latter died at the age of twenty-nine, having written two of the biggest Broadway hits of the 1950s (the other was The Pajama Game) – perhaps a cue to seize the day and grab the rare opportunity to see Damn Yankees while you can.
Related articles:
Review: Musicals in London and in the UK (2009)
Review:
Sondheim's A Little Night Music at the Menier Chocolate
Factory
Review: Cole Porter's The New
Yorkers at Sadler's Wells
Review: Opera North's
production of Gershwin's Of Thee I Sing
