ROMEO AND JULIET AND MUSICALS By Peter Filichia
It was one of the biggest theatrical hits of the 16th century.
And this week, we’ll have the opening of the 36th Broadway revival of a drama that first opened in New York 270 years ago.
What’s more, with William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at Circle in the Square for the next four months, Broadway will have two shows that sport “Juliet” in their titles.
The names Romeo and Juliet have long remained an idiom for passionate lovers. As a result, they’ve had a place in love-centric musical theater, for which plenty of lyricists have been grateful.
Lorenz Hart might have been the most appreciative of all to have the name Romeo available to him when he was writing THE BOYS FROM SYRACUSE. How handy that this musical version of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors featured not one, but two characters named Dromio. Hence, Hart couldn’t have taken very long to think of the perfect rhyme for that name.
What Hart didn’t do was make Shakespeare’s lover boy very intelligent. In “This Can’t Be Love” – the big hit song from the 1938 musical – Antipholus of Syracuse sang, “In Verona, my late cousin Romeo was three times as stupid as my Dromio.”
Well, yeah, but come on; he was just a kid. Everybody has to go through stages like that.
Luciana, the object of Antipholus’ affection, got to represent the other half of the couple: “Though your cousin loved my cousin Juliet – loved her with a passion much more truly yet.”
Yes, but when the forlorn 15-year-old Kim McAfee told Rose in BYE BYE BIRDIE that she wanted to move from Sweet Apple to New York, she supported her argument by saying, “Juliet was 14 when she left home.”
Rose’s response? “Yeah – and look what happened to her.”
However, Juliet’s fate might have been averted if telephone answering service receptionist Ella Peterson had been on the job. In BELLS ARE RINGING’s “Is It a Crime?” Tony winner Judy Holliday said that, if she could “go back a few hundred years,” she would have delivered this message:
“Hello, Veronaphone… Oh, yes, Mr. Romeo. Juliet Capulet called.” She insisted that “If I got that message through on time, I’m telling you, those two kids would be alive today!”
If you’ve only caught the movie version of BELLS ARE RINGING, you didn’t see this song – unless you went to a bonus track that proved “Is It a Crime?” was filmed but dropped before the picture was released.
(You can also encounter it the old-fashioned way, via the excellent original cast album.)
“I Want a Kiss” sings Pierre in THE DESERT SONG. But in an age where a sword is the premier weapon, the only blade that the pusillanimous Pierre has ever encountered is his own shoulder blade.
So, Margot isn’t interested, causing the butch Paul to sneer in song to Pierre, “You’re not a Romeo.”
Ah, but Pierre had a secret identity. By night, he’s “The Red Shadow,” a brave vigilante. Margot is very willing to give this latter-day Romeo a kiss (at the very least).
Who can say who wrote the specific Romeo reference in “I Want a Kiss”? The lyrics for this song and many others (including the still-exciting “The Riff Song”) are attributed to three lyricists: the now-forgotten Frank Mandel, the vaguely remembered Otto Harbach and the immortal Oscar Hammerstein II.
Cole Porter got into the act, too, in OUT OF THIS WORLD, a show that showed us mythical gods who traveled from Mount Olympus to a New York bar.
Porter, the master of the list song, had such characters as Mercury, Chloe and Juno praise each other by stating that “Cherry Pies Ought to Be You,” before listing other ought-to-be-youers as Snow White, Orson Welles and Eleanor Roosevelt. But Porter made room for “Every Will Shakespeare line ought to be you” and, to define matters more closely, “Romeo in disguise ought to be you.”
There are many other lyrics that celebrate Mr. Montague and Ms. Capulet. HAIRSPRAY’S Link Larkin reminds us in “It Takes Two” that “Romeo had Juliet.” In LADY IN THE DARK, the group officially known as “Liza Elliott Admirers” sing in “Oh, Fabulous One” that the editor is to her magazine as “What Juliet was to Romeo.” And Og in FINIAN’S RAINBOW’s “Something Sort of Grandish” croons about “Romeo and Guenevere.”
(Guess this leprechaun doesn’t get to the theater very much.)
And in HOW NOW, DOW JONES, we were told that “Shakespeare Lied,” before getting some revisionist history on the teen lovers.
But here’s the one you expected first and foremost in any mention of Romeo and Juliet and musicals. Shakespeare’s play was the inspiration for a show that won neither a Best Musical Tony nor whose subsequent Broadway mountings have ever captured any Tony for Best Revival.
Back in 1958, WEST SIDE STORY didn’t win either Best Book (by Arthur Laurents) or Score (music by Leonard Bernstein; lyrics by Stephen Sondheim), and not just because THE MUSIC MAN might have snagged those prizes, too. Although Book and Score had been official categories during the first few years of the Tonys, they were discontinued in the early ‘50s and weren’t reinstated until the 1961-1962 season.
It’s been filmed twice, resulting in 10 Oscars the first time and seven nominations and one win the second time. Fun coincidental fact: Rachel Zegler, the current Juliet at Circle in the Square, was Maria in the latter film.
Of course, with Tony and Maria as updated characters, Romeo and Juliet weren’t cited. There was someone else germane to the property who also went unmentioned.
And that brings us to Sondheim’s angry letter concerning the 2012 revival of PORGY AND BESS. He complained that the powers-that-be had the audacity to put the words “THE GERSHWINS’”before the title but ignored DuBose Heyward, who had co-authored the book and the lyrics, and, with his wife Dorothy, had previously written the play PORGY; without it, of course, there would have been no musical.
But why didn’t Sondheim argue that Shakespeare deserved credit for inspiring WEST SIDE STORY? The Bard’s name has never appeared in any of the musical’s Playbills, window cards, three-sheets or cast albums.
Oh, well. Let’s finish by taking a listen to “Man” in THE FULL MONTY. In the song, Jerry is trying to convince his buddies that, despite their considerable physical shortcomings, they could become sex symbols by shedding their clothes.
His best friend Dave responds, “Not this time, Fabio.”
In case you never knew or have forgotten, Fabio is Fabio Lanzoni, who – with his long hair, face and body – was on the cover of many romance novels in the 1990s. So, when THE FULL MONTY opened in 2000, he was still a household name.
But, as Leo Robin taught us in GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, “we all lose our charms in the end.” Fabio is now 65, and although Romeo is pushing 430, here’s betting that future revivals of THE FULL MONTY have Dave responding, “Not this time, Romeo.”
Peter Filichia can be heard most weeks of the year on www.broadwayradio.com. His new day-by-day wall calendar – A SHOW TUNE FOR TODAY – 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year – is now available for pre-order on Amazon.
