Broadway's Boys
Opera News
When Alfred Drake strode onstage and burst into "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! in 1943, a new kind of musical hero was born: recognizably American, approachable, yet commanding enough to claim his piece of Broadway's New World. Right up through the early 1940s, musicals had tended to offer leading men who were either gee-whiz juveniles or stiff holdovers from the operetta era. With the role of Curly, Drake instantly became one of the great leading men of musical comedy. Long before electronic amplification on Broadway was the norm, Drake was able to fill the house with his huge voice and equally huge personality.
Nowadays, the complaint heard in musical-comedy circles is the same one heard in opera: where are those fabulous theatrical monsters of Drake's caliber? Is the true star a dying breed? The answer is emphatically no. Broadway may no longer be the force it once was, and many of its most promising talents are all too quickly enticed away to the bigger money and wider exposure of TV and film. But the strong voices and presences are very much with us, particularly when it comes to leading men. Many are carrying on the traditions and style of their predecessors, placing musical theater (and opera) among the last strongholds of this kind of exuberant, full-blown performing.
Not that there is, or ever really was, a plethora of candidates competing for leading male roles in musicals. Hollywood, with its kinder climate and higher salaries, can be a much more attractive place to build a career. In fact, it's highly unusual that Hugh Jackman, who could have his pick of movie roles, is coming to Broadway this fall to star in The Boy from Oz, the new musical about Australian entertainer Peter Allen.
As Broadway's stock continues to slip in relation to a new world of movie blockbusters, TV series and music videos, the pool of viable leading men becomes increasingly limited. Stars are rarely made on Broadway anymore; the Broadway star of today usually hits (or returns to) the Rialto only after having established solid success in the mainstream media. The few big names who can offer the hope of a decent run are Jackman, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Tom Wopat and Mandy Patinkin, actors whose film and TV careers have helped build them a substantial fan-base of ticket-buyers. Meanwhile, equally gifted performers, such as Richard Muenz, Davis Gaines and George Dvorsky, who would have flourished during musical comedy's Golden Age, find themselves working primarily as understudies, replacements and concert performers.
Today's Broadway leading man might never have existed had Alfred Drake not created the blueprint. As leading men went, Drake was neither particularly tall nor particularly handsome; what he had was spectacular charisma and a grainy, multi-hued baritone with an unmistakable timbre. He also had a love of classical theater and the instincts of a born comic -- two qualities that made him the ideal man to create the role of the pompous stage star Fred Graham in Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate in 1948. A tape of a 1958 Hallmark Hall of Fame production of Kiss Me, Kate, viewable at New York's Museum of Television and Radio, shows Drake's push-button comic timing, as well as his sly way with Porter's lyrics, and with the sharp dialogue of Samuel and Bella Spewack. Drake went on to create Hajj in Kismet. That show's original-cast album is a tribute to Drake's extraordinary voice and incisive comic instincts.
Only two current Broadway leading men come close to matching Drake's word-pointing and irresistible sense of self-irony. Those qualities were clearly on display in Marc Kudisch's recent New York appearances as Trevor Graydon in Thoroughly Modern Millie and Carl-Magnus in Sondheim's A Little Night Music at New York City Opera. In both, he played characters who had a pompously inflated view of themselves: one a die-hard romantic, the other a chauvinistic adulterer who is literally capable of murder. Kudisch also brought his comic flair to an entirely different role, that of 1950s rock 'n' roll idol Conrad Birdie, in the otherwise stale TV version of Bye Bye Birdie (1995). A classically-trained baritone with a focused, muscular sound, Kudisch -- who has said he wouldn't mind singing Escamillo one day -- seems an ideal choice for Drake's roles the next time Kate or Kismet comes around.
The other contender for Drake's spotlight is Douglas Sills, who made a smashing Broadway debut in the title role of The Scarlet Pimpernel (1997) and has been heard from very little since, aside from an enjoyable performance as Marco the Magnificent in New York City Center's Encores! concert performance of Carnival. Virility -- with a campy edge -- seems to come naturally to Sills, who moves nimbly about the stage and can play both mincing fops and dashing heroes -- or both, as he did in Pimpernel, which was practically a dual role. Sills's voice, however, is not his greatest asset. It's a reedy tenor without a strongly identifiable color, but he wields it with grandiosity and flair, and he can hang on to those big "money" high notes for bars and bars.
Although Drake set the original standard, John Raitt created an entirely different kind of leading man in Rodgers and Hammerstein's near-operatic Carousel. Raitt's sensitive but undeniably manly tenor brought a welcome softening of the edges to Billy Bigelow, Carousel's bitter, brutal anti-hero. After Carousel, Raitt had a series of flops for the next ten years, until he scored again as Sid Sorokin in The Pajama Game. That success brought him his first and only major movie role, in Stanley Donen's superb 1957 film version. It is odd that Raitt did not make more movies earlier, because he had it all -- a camera-ready face and body, an attractive persona and a magnetic voice.
Broadway's last revival of Carousel was marred by a vocally inadequate Michael Hayden as Billy Bigelow. Hugh Jackman took on this challenging role to great acclaim last year in a sold-out Carnegie Hall concert performance. Jackman had made a huge splash as Curly (which Raitt sang in touring productions) in the 1998 London revival of Oklahoma!, but Actors' Equity ruled that an American actor must play the role in the 2002 Broadway version. And by that time, Jackman was already in great demand as a film star in Hollywood. Critics who had praised Oklahoma! in London were less kind to it here; apparently Jackman was the key ingredient in the revival's success.
As heard on the cast recording, Jackman's voice in itself is not a thing of true beauty. It's an adequate, well-produced tenor with good thrust and "ping," which carry him well in a musical-theater context. But Jackman is possessed of a high degree of energy and charm. The Boy From Oz (set to open October 16) will be his first chance to prove himself on Broadway in a fully-staged new musical. Needless to say, it's already one of the hottest tickets of the season.
When The Pajama Game received a recent concert revival in New York, courtesy of the Encores! series, John Raitt's role was taken by Brent Barrett. Every inch the tough but vulnerable stud, Barrett hurled his shimmery, rangy tenor into the far corners of the house. This star turn came as no surprise to musical-theater buffs, who have enjoyed Barrett's work ever since he took over the role of the Baron in Tommy Tune's Grand Hotel eleven years ago. Despite Barrett's continued success, we're still waiting for him to be offered a major role in a new musical. Instead, he has become a stalwart of revivals. His presence in them is undeniably valuable, but he deserves the chance to shine in an entirely fresh context.
Broadway musicals from the late 1950s into the '60s often favored male voices that were less operatic and more conversational. Stage and film actors Robert Preston, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison were reborn as musical-comedy stars in middle age, talking their way through The Music Man, Camelot and My Fair Lady in rich, resonant tones. They were cast for their dramatic abilities and drawing power, and their parts were tailored to fit their unique vocal talents. Another product of that vocally-diminished era was Jerry Orbach, now known to an enormous TV audience as Law and Order's Detective Lennie Briscoe. The original El Gallo in off-Broadway's hit The Fantasticks (1960), Orbach went on to play leads in Carnival, Promises, Promises, Chicago and 42nd Street. Although his trademark these days is a sad-eyed, almost schlumpy presence, Orbach at that time cut a commandingly attractive figure onstage. His baritone, though not remarkable in size or timbre, was always up to the task of projecting words, mood and character into a Broadway house.
One of the last of the big Broadway baritones was Harve Presnell, who co-starred with Tammy Grimes in The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1960) and with Debbie Reynolds in the film version of that show. Presnell's solid though somewhat stodgy operatically-trained baritone had relaxed a bit by the time he made the movie, but his career as a leading man didn't take off.
Broadway's great male voice of the '50s and '60s belonged to Richard Kiley. Not blessed with matin�e-idol looks, Kiley nonetheless had a virile presence to match his robust, glorious baritone. Kiley proved his strengths in one musical after another -- Kismet, Redhead, No Strings, I Had a Ball and, most memorably, Man of La Mancha.
Brian Stokes Mitchell, the most recent star to take on Don Quixote de la Mancha, has magnificently seized the role and made it his own. With his tall, pencil-thin frame and expressive face, he is physically perfect for the part. His interpretation, poignant and utterly winning, has brought audiences to their feet night after night. Then there is the wonderful, round richness of Mitchell's baritone, which seems to thrill and caress at the same time. Where he sometimes falters is in his phrasing, which can smack too much of contemporary rhythms that instantly yank him out of period. He keeps this under control in most of Man of La Mancha, but it compromised his otherwise stunning performance as musician Coalhouse Walker in the musical Ragtime. And although he won a Tony Award as Fred Graham in the 1999 revival of Kiss Me, Kate, he seemed barely to skim the surface compared with Drake's wicked sense of identification in this deceptively complex role. Over the past few seasons, Mitchell has been seen at his best in the Encores! series, where he was able to project a Rat Pack-era charm in Do Re Mi, as well as the heartbroken bitterness of Paul, the intensely dramatic male lead in Carnival.
Running a close second to Richard Kiley in the '60s and continuing his musical career to this day is John Cullum, who currently plays Caldwell B. Cladwell in the cast of Urinetown. Cullum's imposing persona, big voice and operatically fervent delivery enriched such musicals as On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, 1776 and Shenandoah. In On the Twentieth Century (1978), his John Barrymore imitation was a comic triumph that won him a Tony.
A near contemporary of Cullum is Len Cariou, who starred in Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd. In the latter, he gave a performance of titanic intensity. Although his voice could not be called rich, it was firm, well-placed and dramatically deployed. It also withstood the punishment of eight performances a week in the exacting role of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, setting a standard yet to be matched by our latter-day operatic interpreters of the part.
It may be significant that the major male star to have emerged from the Broadway musicals of the past quarter-century is Mandy Patinkin; when it comes to Sondheim, he has been an almost ubiquitous presence in recent years, with his "Celebrating Sondheim" concerts. Hardly your typical leading man, Patinkin has specialized in a wildly neurotic, heart-on-sleeve delivery that recalls Al Jolson -- whom Patinkin has acknowledged as a source of inspiration. A natural baritone, with an attractive chest register that he rarely uses, Patinkin has chosen instead to exploit his head range. The resulting falsetto is mesmerizing to some, insufferable to others; in fact, there seems to be no middle ground where Patinkin is concerned. Those of us who admire him point to unforgettable performances when he is cast as tortured, even dangerous characters in such musicals as Evita, Sunday in the Park with George, The Secret Garden and The Wild Party. But it's hard to blame Forbidden Broadway creator Gerard Alessandrini for spoofing Patinkin's mannered delivery of "Over the Rainbow" in a number called "Somewhat Overindulgent."
What lies ahead? As competing media siphon away musical-comedy talents, will we have much to look forward to? Today's Broadway economics being what they are, the next Drake or Raitt may well be lured West to spend most of his career comfortably ensconced in a sitcom.
-Eric Myers, Opera News
August 2003
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