immediate rewards.
-13-
The Man Who Came to Dinner
Two by Two
(1970–71)
BAD LUCK IN A BROADWAY MUSICAL MAY COME IN MANY FORMS. YOU may get fired on the road, as Madeline did in
How Now
. Your show may fold after just a few weeks, as
New Faces
did. Or you may get cast in a show written by America’s most popular theater composer, starring one of the country’s most beloved entertainers, and wind up running for a long, long year.
No question, getting cast in
Two by Two
was an honor, giving Madeline the opportunity to work with a score by Richard Rodgers and with a superstar, Danny Kaye, in the lead. Advance ticket sales were impressive, and the show, a retelling of the story of Noah’s Ark, promised fun for audiences. Peter Stone’s book, based on Clifford Odets’s play,
The Flowering Peach
, found new relevance in the Bible story, with its generation gap and fears of global annihilation. A resemblance to
Fiddler on the Roof
, which was still running on Broadway, boded well. Like
Fiddler, Two by Two
is a heartwarming family story based on Jewish traditions, concerned with the pairing off of three children (one of whom marries a Gentile), and featuring a father who frequently stops to address God—though in
Two by Two
, God answers. There might be fun, too, for the cast of eight, which performed a pantomime during the title number to illustrate how the animals boarded the ark—constructed by the actors themselves during the earlier scenes of the play. Images projected on screens upstage showed the animals, as well as visual clues to messages from God that only Noah hears.
After Noah himself, Goldie is the funniest character, and Madeline got big laughs at every performance. Even her first costume, a clingy golden gown with an elaborate hairdo, was an attention-grabber. 6 Goldie is anoutsider, a celebrant from the pagan Temple of the Golden Ram. She wanders in to see whether the crazy rumors about an ark are true, and Noah and his wife, Esther (Joan Copeland), immediately size her up as a prospect for their youngest son, Japheth (Walter Willison). Marriage isn’t what Goldie has in mind, but during the flood, she and middle son Ham (Michael Karm), who’s already married, fall in love. When he touches her at last, Goldie exults in song, using the only frame of reference she knows: an invitation to the pleasures of “The Golden Ram.”
That number was Madeline’s ticket to the show. According to Charnin, he and Rodgers had already sketched the song when auditions began, but they weren’t sure they could find an actress who could handle the challenging vocal line they had in mind. Willison, already cast by then, remembers that they saw Bernadette Peters and “all the cute girls of the time.” Having seen
Comedy Tonight
, Charnin knew Madeline was funny; having heard
Candide
, Rodgers knew what her voice was capable of. They hired her and finished the song. The result may not be quite the tour-de-force that “Glitter and Be Gay” is, but it’s a coloratura extravaganza—a classic Rodgers waltz, lopsided. Rodgers was handing Madeline a valuable prize, and she was ready to run with it—a little too far, she discovered, when she eagerly played for him the cadenzas and ornaments she’d written for the song. Rodgers was deeply offended; she in turn was mortified. Thereafter, she sang the aria precisely as he’d written it, which was, after all, what he’d hired her to do.
Two by Two
brought changes to Madeline’s personal life, as well. She started an affair with Karm and developed a close friendship with Willison, and she used an argument with Paula as an excuse to move out of the house on Romeo Court once and for all. Working on the show should have been a dream for Madeline, but it turned into a nightmare for everyone in the company. The troublemaker was Danny Kaye.
Decades of public adulation hadn’t brought Kaye emotional security. He hadn’t performed in a book musical on Broadway since 1943, and
-13-
The Man Who Came to Dinner
Two by Two
(1970–71)
BAD LUCK IN A BROADWAY MUSICAL MAY COME IN MANY FORMS. YOU may get fired on the road, as Madeline did in
How Now
. Your show may fold after just a few weeks, as
New Faces
did. Or you may get cast in a show written by America’s most popular theater composer, starring one of the country’s most beloved entertainers, and wind up running for a long, long year.
No question, getting cast in
Two by Two
was an honor, giving Madeline the opportunity to work with a score by Richard Rodgers and with a superstar, Danny Kaye, in the lead. Advance ticket sales were impressive, and the show, a retelling of the story of Noah’s Ark, promised fun for audiences. Peter Stone’s book, based on Clifford Odets’s play,
The Flowering Peach
, found new relevance in the Bible story, with its generation gap and fears of global annihilation. A resemblance to
Fiddler on the Roof
, which was still running on Broadway, boded well. Like
Fiddler, Two by Two
is a heartwarming family story based on Jewish traditions, concerned with the pairing off of three children (one of whom marries a Gentile), and featuring a father who frequently stops to address God—though in
Two by Two
, God answers. There might be fun, too, for the cast of eight, which performed a pantomime during the title number to illustrate how the animals boarded the ark—constructed by the actors themselves during the earlier scenes of the play. Images projected on screens upstage showed the animals, as well as visual clues to messages from God that only Noah hears.
After Noah himself, Goldie is the funniest character, and Madeline got big laughs at every performance. Even her first costume, a clingy golden gown with an elaborate hairdo, was an attention-grabber. 6 Goldie is anoutsider, a celebrant from the pagan Temple of the Golden Ram. She wanders in to see whether the crazy rumors about an ark are true, and Noah and his wife, Esther (Joan Copeland), immediately size her up as a prospect for their youngest son, Japheth (Walter Willison). Marriage isn’t what Goldie has in mind, but during the flood, she and middle son Ham (Michael Karm), who’s already married, fall in love. When he touches her at last, Goldie exults in song, using the only frame of reference she knows: an invitation to the pleasures of “The Golden Ram.”
That number was Madeline’s ticket to the show. According to Charnin, he and Rodgers had already sketched the song when auditions began, but they weren’t sure they could find an actress who could handle the challenging vocal line they had in mind. Willison, already cast by then, remembers that they saw Bernadette Peters and “all the cute girls of the time.” Having seen
Comedy Tonight
, Charnin knew Madeline was funny; having heard
Candide
, Rodgers knew what her voice was capable of. They hired her and finished the song. The result may not be quite the tour-de-force that “Glitter and Be Gay” is, but it’s a coloratura extravaganza—a classic Rodgers waltz, lopsided. Rodgers was handing Madeline a valuable prize, and she was ready to run with it—a little too far, she discovered, when she eagerly played for him the cadenzas and ornaments she’d written for the song. Rodgers was deeply offended; she in turn was mortified. Thereafter, she sang the aria precisely as he’d written it, which was, after all, what he’d hired her to do.
Two by Two
brought changes to Madeline’s personal life, as well. She started an affair with Karm and developed a close friendship with Willison, and she used an argument with Paula as an excuse to move out of the house on Romeo Court once and for all. Working on the show should have been a dream for Madeline, but it turned into a nightmare for everyone in the company. The troublemaker was Danny Kaye.
Decades of public adulation hadn’t brought Kaye emotional security. He hadn’t performed in a book musical on Broadway since 1943, and
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