Re: No, No, Nanette

On May 8, 10:36 pm, Robert Bouton <mprov...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Encores broke its own tradition by mounting the 1971 version of the
> 1925 show that, legend has it, helped curse Boston Red Sox.  But thank
> God this year included a genuinely entertaining show.
>
> It's a trifle, filled to the brim with dance, but what dancers!
> Michael Berresse, Shonn Wiley and Mara Davi all stepped with style.
> The comic highlights were Angel Reda, Jennifer Cody and Nancy Anderson
> as the mistresses.  Old pros Sandy Duncan and Charles Kimbrough retain
> some charm.  I'm afraid I just don't get Beth Leavel.  Her jazz
> singing involves abrupt changes in volume that have nothing to do with
> the lyric being crooned.
>
> But nothing was as horrifying as the sack of slackness impersonating a
> maid.  She reads lines like a very bored prompter in an overheated
> room.  Her name is Rosie O'Donnell and I hope she never again darkens
> a stage.

Caught the matinee entirely by chance (phone call, ideal ticket going
to waste, should have sold it). The show struck me as flimsy and I
missed Doris Day. and the rest of the movie cast. I also missed the
songs that WEREN'T cut: I didn't want them, and the fifteen-minute tap
numbers -- well, they felt like fifteen minutes -- added nothing to
the experience. I can drum my own thumbs.

Had it not been for Beth Leavel (and, in too small a part for her
enormous personality, Jen Cody) I would have been glazed and
petrifacted by the entire event. Sandy Duncan has a great dentist but
no otherwise discernible talent or charm. Rosie O'Donnell was
tolerable in comparison.

Two high points: Leavel and Berresse doing a duet that went through
four or five classy old dance steps, musical-theater cotton candy, and
Leavel's "Lost Hubby Blues" -- and best moment of the day, her spin on
the not-supposed-to-get-a-laugh line "Then why have I been singing the
blues?" But Jen Cody (Mrs. Hunter Foster)'s pint-sized bluesy "I Want
to Be Happy" had only one flaw: it ended. Give this girl everything
Kristin Chenoweth ever tried out for: she'll kill.

I wanted to rename the show Nano Nanette in her honor.

Jean Coeur de Lapin