1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (musical)
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| 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue | |
| Music | Leonard Bernstein |
|---|---|
| Lyrics | Alan Jay Lerner |
| Book | Alan Jay Lerner |
| Productions | 1976 Broadway cancelled |
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was a legendary Broadway flop in 1976, running only seven performances at the Mark Hellinger Theatre. It was Leonard Bernstein's last original score for Broadway.
The musical examined the establishment of the White House and its occupants from 1800 to 1900. Primarily focusing on race relations, the story depicted (among other incidents) Thomas Jefferson's then-alleged affair with a black maid, James Monroe's refusal to halt slavery in Washington, the aftermath of the American Civil War and Andrew Johnson's impeachment. Throughout the show, the leading actors performed multiple roles: Ken Howard played all the presidents, Patricia Routledge all the First Ladies, and Gilbert Price and Emily Yancy played the White House servants, Lud and Seena. Future Broadway stars Reid Shelton, Walter Charles, Beth Fowler and Richard Muenz appeared in ensemble roles, as did the young African-American baritone Bruce Hubbard.
The show was originally intended to be performed as a play-within-a-play, with the show's actors stepping out of character to comment on the plot and debate race relations from a modern standpoint. But this concept was almost entirely removed during the show's out-of-town tryouts in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. By the time the show opened on Broadway on May 4, 1976, little of the metatheatrical concept remained, aside from certain scenic and costume elements and a few musical references (most notably, the opening number "Rehearse!").
Discouraged by the critical and public response to the work — and angry that during the tryouts much of his music had been condensed and edited without his consent — Bernstein refused to allow a cast recording of the musical. Just as he'd done with previously abandoned projects, Bernstein used portions of the score in subsequent works. In Songfest, for example, the setting of Walt Whitman's poem "To What You Said" as a baritone solo was a reworking of the original prelude of the show, in which the chorus hummed a melody played by the 'cello in the Songfest version. (In the show, this music was moved to the emotional low point of the second act, used as background to a Presidential funeral.) The occasional piece Slava! A Political Overture, written in honor of Bernstein's friend Mstislav Rostropovich, blended two numbers from the show, the up-tempo "Rehearse!" and "The Grand Old Party." Early in the opera A Quiet Place, the music for the aria "You're late, you shouldn't have come" derives from that of "Me," a song that in the original show established the metatheatrical concept that was eventually abandoned. (Some of the music for "Me" can be heard in the Broadway score, most memorably in the song "American Dreaming.")
After his death in 1990, Bernstein's children and associates sifted through the many variations and revisions of the score and authorized a choral version entitled A White House Cantata, which deleted nearly all the remaining play-within-a-play references. (Some can still be heard in the duet "Monroviad.") BBC Radio broadcast the London debut of this work in 1997, and three years later Deutsche Grammophon released a CD recording. Both the London concert and the DG recording were conducted by Kent Nagano.
The initial critical response to the show was resoundingly negative. Critics savaged Lerner's book while largely praising Bernstein's score. The later White House Cantata version tended to be reviewed as a classical work rather than a Broadway work, a tendency encouraged by the casting of the leading roles with opera singers. Differences in the score and performance style make it impossible to judge the original musical fairly from the later recording. The score is considered by many musical theater historians and aficionados to be a forgotten, or at least neglected, masterpiece. Some of the songs have enjoyed some fame outside the show including "Take Care of This House," "The President Jefferson Sunday Luncheon Party March" and "Duet for One (The First Lady of the Land)", a tour-de-force for a single actress portraying both Julia Grant and Lucy Hayes on the day of Rutherford B. Hayes's inauguration. It details the exhausting vote counts that had many questioning his legitimacy.
Individual numbers from the work have been recorded and performed by a variety of notable singers. "Take Care of This House" was sung by Frederica von Stade under Bernstein's direction at the inauguration of Jimmy Carter, and "The President Jefferson March" and "Duet for One" both appear in their original (pre-Broadway) versions on an EMI disc called "Broadway Showstoppers," conducted by John McGlinn and sung by Davis Gaines and the Tony-winning soprano Judy Kaye. The late African-American baritone Bruce Hubbard, a member of the original Broadway ensemble, also recorded Lud's ballad "Seena." It can be heard on his recently reissued CD For You, For Me. "Take Care of This House" has been recorded by Miss Kaye as well as everyone from opera singers Marilyn Horne and Roberta Alexander to theater artists Joanna Gleason and Julie Andrews.
The show's only significant revival was a 1992 Indiana University production, which used a pre-Philadelphia draft of the script and included portions of Bernstein's music that had been excised on the road to Broadway. This production also played briefly at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The Leonard Bernstein estate licenses performances of the cantata version but refuses to allow the performance, recording, or publication of the original musical.
[edit] Musical numbers (as performed on Broadway)
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