Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
SERIOUS AND REWARDING MUSICAL THEATRE . . . . . , August 1, 2006
DON'T BE MISLED BY THE "NO LONGER AVAILABLE" TAG. THIS VERY IMPORTANT ORIGINAL BROADWAY CAST RECORDING IS AVAILABLE ON-LINE FROM FYNSWORTH ALLEY. (JTW)
Growing up on a farm in the middle of Nebraska, four hours on two-lane highway from Omaha, I got my Musical Theatre fixes from the movies (this was during the Golden Age of the Hollywood Musical), "The Railroad Hour" on the radio, and the Columbia Record Club. Many were the treasures that came through the mail for [...] plus shipping & handling, and among them was a dark, tragic, yet beautiful musical called JUNO, based on Sean O'Casey's "Juno and the Paycock." The music was unlike any other show I had heard up to this point, more in the "classical" vein than Broadway. The composer was Marc Blitzstein, of whom I knew little except that he had written the English lyrics for "Mack the Knife" and the other songs from "Threepenny Opera."
Perhaps because it was the first "serious" piece of American Musical Theatre that I had heard, it remained deeply rooted in my subconscious, and I looked forward to it's being issued as a Sony Broadway CD. Of course, that never happened. So when Fynsworth Alley announced their release in 2002, I immediately went on line and got my copy.
The conflicts of O'Casey's play appear to reflect Blitzstein's personal conflicts. "Born to wealth, he became deeply concerned about the corrupting effect of money. He sought love and fidelity in a world of violence and betrayal. He struggled to support himself until suddenly riches fell, as if from the sky, in his last decade. `Captain' Boyle's vision of a happy life upon the sea in a world with only men may have echoed the fact that Blitzstein lived as openly [...] a lifestyle as it was possible to do in his era. He was a tireless champion of the working man who, in the end, was murdered by working men." -- (from Robert Viagas' superlative liner notes.)
There are few "happy" songs in JUNO. Jean Stapleton, Nancy Andrews, Sada Thompson & Beulah Garrick commiserate with "You Poor Thing;" "On a Day Like This" is a rare upbeat, inspirational moment; Shirley Booth & Melvyn Douglas spar at one another with "Old Sayin's." The ballads are melancholy: "I Wish It So," which Dawn Upshaw recorded in 1994; the lyrical Irish ballad "One Kind Word;" the folk song-like duet "Bird Upon the Tree." But most of the music is grim, befitting the play: "We're Alive;" "Song of a Ma;" Shirley Booth's wrenching "Where?"; and the ballet music for "Johnny."
JUNO ran for only 16 performances, which is not surprising considering American audiences' aversion to experimental theatre and/or musicals with serious themes. ANYONE CAN WHISTLE lasted just 9 performances; CANDIDE ran for 73; only 136 for CAROLINE, OR CHANGE; MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG (16); the powerful anti-war JOHNNY JOHNSON (68); and the real Floyd Collins probably spent more time in that Kentucky sand cave than FLOYD COLLINS spent on the Playwrights Horizons stage in 1996.
I strongly suggest that you make JUNO a part of your musical theatre library. It's an important show by an important, if little known, composer. Hopefully, Fynsworth Alley or some other small, quality-conscious label will see fit to issue a CD version of REGINA , Blitzstein's Tony & Theatre World Award winning setting of Lillian Hellman's "The Little Foxes" (56 performances, 1959, Columbia LP release). Perhaps DECCA Broadway will do the same for the marvelous 1964 revival of THE CRADLE WILL ROCK with Jerry Orbach ( MGM double LP). Then Marc Blitzstein might become better known for his great theatre works and not just as the guy who wrote the lyrics for "Mack the Knife."
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Another Goddard Lieberson save., June 25, 2006
"Juno", like Sondheim's "Anyone Can Whistle", was a Broadway flop (7 performances, or thereabouts) that Columbia president Goddard Lieberson recorded anyway because he recognized the quality of the score. This was an era when The Bottom Line didn't strangle every creative decision, Lieberson knew he'd lose money on it (it just came out of "My Fair Lady" profits). The aria - it's too difficult to label a show tune - "I Wish It So" has been recorded by a gamut of singers from Judy Kaye to Rosemary Clooney, and it's one of the handful of most beautiful and haunting American songs, worthy of Kern. As with all of Blitzstein's best songs, the sense of disappointed longing in it is tanglible. The climatic ballet scene where an IRA informer is murdered is still performed by the American Ballet Theater, where it was salvaged by choreographer Agnes DeMille after the show closed. There are amazing talents here: Shirley Booth (who admitted she was miscast later 'but what was I going to do, turn it down?'), Melvin Douglas, who had never sung on stage and never did again, Jack McGowen, the brilliant Irish interpretor of Beckett, Jean Stapleton and Sada Thompson in small roles before they were stars...it's a great but uneven score, quite operatic for the true singers in the cast ("One Kind Word", a glorious song for any Irish tenor). The patter songs for the stars are rather milling, like lesser Noel Coward, but the performers don't really enhance them. They may be better than they sound here, they've never been recorded by appropriate singers/actors. James Naughton, are you listening? The orchestrations are quite heavy, and later attempts to revive it lightened them. Geraldine Fitzgerald appeared in one of them, which cut most of the patter songs. It shares with "Anyone" the problem that it's book may succeed too well, a commercial American audience may not want to see or hear it, or didn't at the time. The Broadway production was probably doomed when the original director, then just breaking through, Tony Richardson, withdrew a few days before rehearsals because he got a movie deal. If ever a musical needed a strong, imaginative hand, "Juno" is it. Maybe Jerome Robbins could have whipped it into shape, but unlike his protege Lenny Bernstein, Blitzstein would never have worked with Robbins again after his once close friend named names during the McCarthy era. So "Juno"'s failure may have been just one more thing to be laid at Nixon's doorstep.
If you are interested in Bernstein, Sondheim or American opera, Blitzstein is the unsung pioneer and mentor of them, however much the Bernstein estate and Sondheim disparage him now (when mentioning him at all). You will at least find it a very serious attempt by a major American composer to create an American hybrid of opera and musical. It sounds now in most aspects to be way ahead of it's time, a precusor in some ways to "Sweeney Todd"; while in others a contemperary of "Showboat". Not a bad pair to be dangling between.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Do You know JUNO?, December 15, 2008
A resurgence, so it seemed to me, of the American Musical happened in the late 50s. There were intermittent 'hits' after GUYS & DOLLS and THE KING & I in 1950 but there was renewed 'strength' in the late 50's: WEST SIDE STORY (which lost a TONY Award to THE MUSIC MAN!) but in 1959 GYPSY probably the greatest 'show biz' musical arrived on Broadway, and as noted in the New York Times spring 2008, another musical adaptation w/something of a pedigree: Sean O'Casey's JUNO & THE PAYCOCK w/no less than a book by Joseph Stein and music and lyrics by Marc Blitzstein, starring the revered Shirley Booth as Juno and Melvin Douglas w/choreography by Agnes De Mille opened-- and closed 16 performances later.
I've often wondered how you get over the lack of success of what (in this case) is truly an intelligent rendition musically of a great Irish play. That doesn't happen often. MY FAIR LADY two years earlier seemingly has eclipsed PYGMALIAN-- if only because we know the lyrics of the songs and where they come in. It's hard now to watch Shaw w/out Lerner & Loewe tuning at the piano. I was struggling through college in the midwest when all these late 50's shows opened, but got to see Merman do Mama Rose in Chicago, Forrest Tucker do Harold Hill on tour and having at many times in my life had some 'association' to WEST SIDE STORY, I don't remember where I first saw it. JUNO disappeared; heard nothing more of it. Frank Loesser's GREENWILLOW opened that same year. I never got to see that either, but at least the album (LP-- and also on CD) was/is available.. and as it turns out, I last spring got a copy at long last-- I hadn't been trying-- of JUNO. Somewhere between my midwestern youth and my many years in NYC, my interest in 'popular' musical theatre diminished. Contemporarily I have no interest in MAMMA MIA or HAIRSPRAY though Broderick & Lane in THE PRODUCERS in that first month on B'way was worth standing in line from 7:00 AM for seats (I hadn't done that since MY FAIR LADY in 1957.)
But last spring (2008) City Center Encores did a weekend revival of JUNO. I made sure I got there; something of my youth signalled that needed 'completion'. And the fact that no less than the great Garry Hines, whose direction of Martin McDonough's plays, Brian Friel's TRANSLATIONS (B'way 2006) and "DruidSynge" was its director, there was no doubt in my mind that this 'dismissed' musical interpretation of O'Casey's great play must have some substance. Oh indeed it does. It may not be a wise thing to tinker w/a classic, but this production, which I saw w/a woman unfamiliar w/either play or this interpretation felt exhilarated by the performance. There was brilliance there. It's not been recorded but Shirley Booth and the original cast are still available on CD. I'm glad I've now filled that place in my personal history of 'important theatre' from my youth. JUNO works musically, dramatically, and disturbingly. It's very moving. I suspect you need to know the play to grasp the intensity and the humor. But I do think a copy of the JUNO CD for collectors of (good) American musical theatre are well advised to own and listen to this.. as opposed to to (camp) GOLDILOCKS, BAJOUR and .. if you're into that.. I need not say more. Stein and Blitzstein treated O'Casey's work w/respect; Garry Hines made me wish again I could have seen the B'way original... and I've yet to see GREENWILLOW... another treasure. Gibbs Murray
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