MACK AND MABEL

[drednm]

Jerry Herman's musical ode to silent films via the love story of Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand is on stage again in New York.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/thea ... on=Theater

The original production flopped badly, despite having Bernadette Peters and Robert Preston as the leads.

[Fred M. Stevens]

1. Blurry, Relatively Unseen, Behind the Scenes

1:44:16 183 views • Jan 27, 2020
Peters and Preston in MACK AND MABEL (1974)
1971FolliesFan
“Super8 home movies shot during the original production of Mack and Mabel, starring a young Bernadette Peters and Robert Preston. While most of the performance footage from the wings was shot by Don Pippin, the show's conductor, the rest of the backstage and studio footage was shot by Igors Gavin, a grip and Mr Preston's understudy. First seen is the cast preparing to go out of town for the tryouts, then various rehearsals in studio and at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and at the Kennedy Centre Opera House, lots of fooling around backstage (I cut some less appropriate scenes out), more studio rehearsals, and finally onstage rehearsals. This is followed by a cast party at Jerry Herman's house in LA, rehearsals for a special performance at the Hollywood Bowl, more studio rehearsals, and finally performance excerpts seen from the wings.”

2. “Look What Happened to Mabel”:
JANE KRAKOWSKI (First Video) Taking a Shot at It in the Los Angeles revival (2000)
And (In Excerpts from Following 3 videos) The Fabulous ALEXANDRA SOCHA- See Her in M+M, This Week Only, in NYC !!!!


Socha, in rehearsal- Terrific, with some Peters inflections

More of Socha, in rehearsal
(“Hey, Look Me Over” - the last number here- was introduced by Lucille Ball {1960})

Socha, in costume, on stage
(Vanessa Williams recreating Lena Horne role)


3. “Wherever He Ain’t”


4. Though Sennett had prematurely-snowy Steve Martin hair, he was “only” about 12 years older than Normand
Mack Sennett b.1880 Mabel Normand b. 1892 Met in 1911
Odd that some stage productions cast him with actors old enough to be Mabel's Tennessee Grandpa:
In 1974 Robert Preston b.1918 Bernadette Peters b.1946
In 2020 Douglas Sills b.1960 Alexandra Socha b. 1990
(Sills had been more age appropriate in the LA production (2000) with Krakowski b.1968)

5. Would the show have fared better if the book had taken a Twentieth Century (1932) On the Twentieth Century (1978) approach

[Wm. Charles Morrow]

When Mack & Mabel played at City Center last month I wasn’t able to attend in person, but happily the show was recorded on video for the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive (TOFT). Earlier this week I watched the tape.

I’d never seen the show before, and it left me with mixed feelings. Like practically everyone says, the Jerry Herman score is tuneful and appealing; the man who wrote “Hello, Dolly” definitely knew how to craft a song with hooks. But the main problem with this show is the libretto, i.e. Michael Stewart’s script. I went in knowing this wasn’t going to be a documentary about the silent movie era, and that the details would be scrambled and fictionalized, but even so it left me kind of rattled. Aside from the historical errors, however, the book is superficial and full of clichés.

For example: Mabel, as presented here, starts out not as the professional model she was in reality, but as a delivery girl from a delicatessen. She shows up at the movie studio with an order of sandwiches, enters through the wrong door while a scene is being filmed, and spoils a take. Everyone seems to think this is hilarious, and she’s hired on the spot. Of course, that trope goes back to Merton of the Movies (the novel, the play, and the film adaptations), and even Chaplin used a version of it in The Circus, but it never rings true. What’s so funny about spoiling a take? And it also implies that Mabel, like Merton, wasn’t especially gifted, but just a klutz who got lucky.

As for anachronisms and historical errors, there are tons of them—although again, we shouldn’t expect accuracy from a show like this one, and there’s no point in getting too literal-minded about it. That said, here are a few examples: in a scene set in 1911, an actress aspires to own “a mansion like Pickford’s.” Way too early, of course. There’s a reference to D.W. Griffith making epics “with grandeur and sweep” at a time when he was still directing modest shorts for Biograph. We’re specifically told that Sennett conceives the idea for the Keystone Kops in 1923—a decade late, and six years after the Keystone brand folded. Mabel sails to Europe with William Desmond Taylor almost two years after his death. (More about Taylor in a moment.) Etc. etc.

There’s a comedian in the show called “Fatty Arbuckle,” but in name only. He’s never called Roscoe, and he’s only there to cavort before the cameras. In this show he works for Sennett non-stop from 1911 into the mid-‘20s, and finally leaves when Hal Roach offers him more money. (I know, I know.) No mention of the scandal, but that’s understandable, as it would’ve overshadowed the central narrative. But they could’ve just called the guy Rollo Entwhistle or something, because he isn’t Roscoe.

What really bothered me about the show was its bizarre slander of William Desmond Taylor. In Mack & Mabel the director is depicted as a youthful, freewheeling party boy, a heedless jazz hound who dances the Charleston and eagerly tries to hustle Mabel into the sack. (None of which sounds like the Taylor of record, to put it mildly.) Worse still, he is shown giving Mabel heroin, and starting her on the road to ruin. I’m surprised Taylor didn’t rise from the grave and sue everyone involved. As with Arbuckle, they could’ve simply called this character ‘Jonathan Johnson Smith’ or something, and avoided defaming a real person, but they didn’t.

Gypsy is a great musical, but it follows the life of Gypsy Rose Lee only loosely. Aside from Gypsy herself, her sister June, and their infamous mother Rose, all the other characters are fictional. I think that approach would have worked better in Mack and Mabel. As it is, the songs are worthwhile, but the script is sure to irritate film buffs, and isn’t especially compelling in its own right, that is, for the average viewer who knows little or nothing about film history.

[buskeat]

When Mack & Mabel played at City Center last month I wasn’t able to attend in person, but happily the show was recorded on video for the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive (TOFT). Earlier this week I watched the tape.

I’d never seen the show before, and it left me with mixed feelings. Like practically everyone says, the Jerry Herman score is tuneful and appealing; the man who wrote “Hello, Dolly” definitely knew how to craft a song with hooks. But the main problem with this show is the libretto, i.e. Michael Stewart’s script. I went in knowing this wasn’t going to be a documentary about the silent movie era, and that the details would be scrambled and fictionalized, but even so it left me kind of rattled. Aside from the historical errors, however, the book is superficial and full of clichés.

For example: Mabel, as presented here, starts out not as the professional model she was in reality, but as a delivery girl from a delicatessen. She shows up at the movie studio with an order of sandwiches, enters through the wrong door while a scene is being filmed, and spoils a take. Everyone seems to think this is hilarious, and she’s hired on the spot. Of course, that trope goes back to Merton of the Movies (the novel, the play, and the film adaptations), and even Chaplin used a version of it in The Circus, but it never rings true. What’s so funny about spoiling a take? And it also implies that Mabel, like Merton, wasn’t especially gifted, but just a klutz who got lucky.

As for anachronisms and historical errors, there are tons of them—although again, we shouldn’t expect accuracy from a show like this one, and there’s no point in getting too literal-minded about it. That said, here are a few examples: in a scene set in 1911, an actress aspires to own “a mansion like Pickford’s.” Way too early, of course. There’s a reference to D.W. Griffith making epics “with grandeur and sweep” at a time when he was still directing modest shorts for Biograph. We’re specifically told that Sennett conceives the idea for the Keystone Kops in 1923—a decade late, and six years after the Keystone brand folded. Mabel sails to Europe with William Desmond Taylor almost two years after his death. (More about Taylor in a moment.) Etc. etc.

There’s a comedian in the show called “Fatty Arbuckle,” but in name only. He’s never called Roscoe, and he’s only there to cavort before the cameras. In this show he works for Sennett non-stop from 1911 into the mid-‘20s, and finally leaves when Hal Roach offers him more money. (I know, I know.) No mention of the scandal, but that’s understandable, as it would’ve overshadowed the central narrative. But they could’ve just called the guy Rollo Entwhistle or something, because he isn’t Roscoe.

What really bothered me about the show was its bizarre slander of William Desmond Taylor. In Mack & Mabel the director is depicted as a youthful, freewheeling party boy, a heedless jazz hound who dances the Charleston and eagerly tries to hustle Mabel into the sack. (None of which sounds like the Taylor of record, to put it mildly.) Worse still, he is shown giving Mabel heroin, and starting her on the road to ruin. I’m surprised Taylor didn’t rise from the grave and sue everyone involved. As with Arbuckle, they could’ve simply called this character ‘Jonathan Johnson Smith’ or something, and avoided defaming a real person, but they didn’t.

Gypsy is a great musical, but it follows the life of Gypsy Rose Lee only loosely. Aside from Gypsy herself, her sister June, and their infamous mother Rose, all the other characters are fictional. I think that approach would have worked better in Mack and Mabel. As it is, the songs are worthwhile, but the script is sure to irritate film buffs, and isn’t especially compelling in its own right, that is, for the average viewer who knows little or nothing about film history.

Did they use the original 1974 libretto? From what I understand there have been more than a few attempts to rewrite it because its weakness has been universally accepted.

[Wm. Charles Morrow]

Did they use the original 1974 libretto? From what I understand there have been more than a few attempts to rewrite it because its weakness has been universally accepted.

The libretto used in the Encores production was revised by Francine Pascal. She writes young adult novels, and is best known for the Sweet Valley series. (She also happens to be the sister of Michael Stewart, who wrote the original book.) I don't know exactly how this adaptation differed from the 1974 original, as I never saw that version.