Clipped Wings: Bye, Bye Birdie on Broadway

A successful production of the classic musical, Bye Bye Birdie, actually doesn’t require that much besides a talented, energetic cast and a director with a sharp satirical eye for the absurdity of teen culture, both in the 1960s and today, as well as the ability to infuse his vision with a gentle, nostalgic sheen.  Charles Strouse’s music is so catchy and iconic and the story and characters so broad and likable that, unlike some other older musicals that might require a bit of reworking to be palatable to a modern audience, Birdie‘s material itself can carry a revival. It doesn’t require any real surgery, besides perhaps a minor cosmetic lift here and there.

Still, a recent Playbill interview with the director of Roundabout Theatre Company’s current Broadway revival, Robert Longbottom, suggested that he might have been on to something, with some of the nips and tucks he applied to the show.  He had compelling arguments for his decisions to cast actual teenagers in the teenage roles rather than the mid-twenties actors who traditionally take the parts, for moving “Spanish Rose” to a new position, and for dropping the infamous Shriners’ dance sequence.  When the curtain rose on a tableaux of the MacAfee family assembling in their living room, decked out in the fashions of Pleasantville, and turning on The Ed Sullivan Show, I was almost completely convinced that he was the perfect director for Bye Bye Birdie. When the scrim before them darkened in order to double as the screen for a digital projection of young girls from the 60s screaming for their teen idol (most likely Elvis or The Beatles), beautifully edited to look like they are swooning for Conrad Birdie, my suspicions were confirmed.

And then that curtain rose, revealing John Stamos as Albert Peterson and Gina Gershon as Rosie in the Almaelou Music Corporation office, and within moments, all of my hopes for the production were throughly crushed.  Stamos is uncomfortable and stiff, his performance more a caricature of a high-pitched nerd than the nebbishy, lovable character Albert is supposed to be, a problem which, granted, could improve for opening night over the course of previews. Gershon, however, is thoroughly irredeemable.  Not only is her performance clunky and abrasive, but her singing voice is wretched (Stamos’, by comparison, is merely weak).  At times, it sounds like a deeper version of the deliberately awful voice Leslie Ann Warren used for her Oscar-nominated gangster moll character in Victor/Victoria; other times, she sounds practically tone-deaf, beginning a note off-key, shakily holding that note for dear life, and then trying to find the right key as she sings, the vocal equivalent of shooting in the dark.  Some great musical theatre people cover for their lack of singing prowess by being a marvelously gifted actor or actress who can act out the lyrics and assert some level of control over his or her voice. Allison Janney in 9 to 5 springs to mind. Gina Gershon, unfortunately, is not one of these people. The fact that her performance is the central showpiece of a Broadway musical should, frankly, be an embarrassment to Roundabout.  There have been high school and community theatre productions that featured more talented Rosies. To add insult to injury, she and Stamos have no chemistry, making the audience not really care what happens to them.

Meanwhile, Nolan Funk (apparently a Nickelodeon “star”) is most likely the flattest Conrad Birdie ever to be in a professional production of the show.  One would hope that an actor portraying an Elvis clone would actually do his homework and study Elvis before beginning rehearsals, let alone before he strutted onto a Broadway stage.  Funk seems like he has no idea who he is supposed to be parodying (he doesn’t have a good voice, but on top of that, doesn’t even try to sound like Elvis), and even worse, that he is thoroughly bored.  It also doesn’t help that the teen actors who are meant to be swooning over him barely react upon meeting him until their blocking calls for them to faint or move or scream. They seem too busy mugging at the audience to take part in the scene.  Allie Trimm was lovely in 13. Here, though, as Kim MacAfee, the president of the local chapter of the Birdie fan club, she is bland and opaque, reading her lines dutifully and with only the barest splash of emotion. When she first meets Birdie, she seems about as enthusiastic as if she were meeting an old friend of her parents.

The only actor in the production who seems to be having any fun is Bill Irwin as Mr. MacAfee. He gets huge laughs from the audience, but unfortunately, it is constantly at the expense of the other actors. Instead of performing his scenes with them, he acts as if he is trying to draw all attention to himself, mugging even more shamelessly than the teen actors, and jumping on other people’s lines and cutting them off before they are finished, all for the sake of being the center of attention.

The choreography, also by Longbottom, is similarly disappointing, with not a single innovative or simply creative step in the entire production.  His idea for the famous “Telephone Hour” number involves having the teens singing into their phones, while dragging around abstract, wheeled phone booths that are so unwieldy that most of the actors aren’t able to freeze when they are supposed to because they are too busy fighting with these contraptions, trying desperately to hit the proper marks without colliding into one another.  It looks sloppy and unprofessional. Again, this is something that could potentially improve by opening night, but more than anything else, it seems to further underline how out of touch Longbottom’s production is.

Even more egregious a miscalculation is his decision to move “Spanish Rose” to nearly the end of the play, because it indicates a lack of comprehension regarding the material.  In the original musical, when Rose sings this song, momma’s boy Albert has just sided with his monstrous mother over her, and she has stormed out. “Spanish Rose” is an eruption of anger and defiance, in which Rose dances sexily around a group of men at a bar, while cataloging all of the racist stereotypes by which Albert’s mother defines her.  She is lashing out because she is furious.

Now, one might be able to understand why theoretically, Longbottom’s concept of having Rose sing this song directly to Albert’s mother, Mae, might make sense.  Unfortunately, the way he presents it does not. Moments after Albert tells Rose he loves her and wants to be with her, Rose stumbles upon Mae, tells her she’s going to be her new mother-in-law and sings “Spanish Rose” to her. Therefore, what was supposed to be a song of frustration suddenly turns into musical gloating.  Rose is basically singing “Nyeh-nyeh-nyeh-nyeh” to a defeated old woman.  That doesn’t make Mae any less awful, but it makes Rose just that bit more awful herself.  One wouldn’t expect this burst of bitterness and acrimony from a woman who finally got her man.

Further, from a character perspective, it doesn’t make sense that Mae would actually allow Rose to get through her whole song without opening her mouth. In Longbottom’s staging, Mae sits politely near Rose and watches her dance like a crazy person alone on the stage, saying nothing and only reacting with a slightly perturbed face.  Longbottom claims that he dropped the number in which Rose dances with a whole group of shriners, because he wanted Rose’s emotional triumph through dance to occur in “Spanish Rose.” Gershon’s graceless, plodding movements around the stage during this song, however, hint at another reason, namely that a nearly five-minute-long dance scene would be too much for her to handle.  This role was originally played by the legendary Chita Rivera. Who would hand a starring role originally played by a great dancer and singer to someone who can’t sing or dance?

Additionally, the musical arrangements and musical direction are uniformly awful.  One who didn’t walk in knowing the score wouldn’t even realize how infectious it is, from the mishmash of untrained voices colliding here.

To put it succinctly, this Bye, Bye Birdie is an ungainly mess, devoid of emotion, clarity, and heart, and utterly lacking in what made this such a beloved show in the first place. I spent $10 for my ticket to this production by lining up on the morning the box office opened. I could say something catty such as “Community theatre prices for a community-theatre-level performance,” but that would be unfair to the vast majority of community theatre I’ve seen, much of which is ten times as professional as this dud.

Related posts:

1. Patti LuPone in Gypsy
2. “Ah, But Underneath”: Sondheim on Sondheim
3. “Travel, Travel, Travel…”: Noel Coward’s Sail Away
4. Shakespeare Taking Flight: Sonnet Rep & Matchbook’s Richard II
5. Pure Broadway Gold: Promises, Promises

Tagged as: Bye Bye Birdie, Musicals, Roundabout Theatre Company, Theatre