The article "Jerry Herman interview: Are we finally ready for this mad, mad world?" was published on the website telegraph.co.uk on 13 Feb 2013.
The article carries a lot of comments on a rare flop from the great Broadway composer Jerry Herman who gets its British premiere tonight – 44 years after it first opened.
Giving appraisal of the situation it's necessary to point out that it’s not uncommon, towards the end of a monumental career, for the giants of musical theatre to want to put their house in order,Andrew Lloyd Webber has been busy filming his shows for posterity. Stephen Sondheim has seen Merrily We Roll Along come good and even the unloved Road Show revived if not resuscitated,who knows, maybe the perpetually rejigged likes of Martin Guerre and Chess will one day be completed and for now it’s the turn of Jerry Herman to breathe new life back into a show which has long suffered from a deficit of love and attention.
In addition the author of the article mentions that "Dear World" was first performed in New York way back in 1969, but when it resurfaces at the Charing Cross Theatre this month, it will be the show’s British premiere,forty-four years seems like a long wait for a musical from the witty composer-lyricist who, in Hello Dolly (1964) and Mame (1966), had given Broadway two wonderfully frothy entertainments,indeed, in Dear World Herman completed a trilogy of shows featuring eccentric, rule-breaking heroines.
In this connection it’s worthwhile mentioning that the show was adapted from Jean Giraudoux’s play "The Madwoman of Chaillot", which tells of a countess who, driven mad by the loss of her lover, dwells in the asement of a Parisian bistro and embarks on a plot to stop a powerful corporation drilling for oil, herman had acted in the play (in the role of a deaf mute) as a university student in Florida: “And I absolutely fell in love with the language, with the storyline, with the heart of that material. With every aspect of it.”
Speaking of this situation it is also interesting to note that Herman thinks the rot set in the minute a huge advertisement appeared in the New York Times with a glamorous picture of Angela Lansbury, who was the darling of Broadway after her performance in Mame,it didn’t look like a show about big oil featuring sewers, nor did it help that Cohen insisted on Dear World at least looking like a Jerry Herman show with high-kicking chorus lines,he also placed it in the cavernous theatre which once housed My Fair Lady.
The author concludes the article by Jerry's quote : “I’m so open to experiment with my work. I love it when people have new ideas. It always leads to learning. I don’t learn anything by going to see an exact copy of what I’ve done before. But I do learn when somebody does something a little daring, a little offbeat with it. And I welcome change.”
As for me I think that every artist has his own aims , some of them dreams about success , others about money and there are very few people who works for the art , I think that such people including Jerry Herman are worth admiring.
The article carries a lot of comments on a rare flop from the great Broadway composer Jerry Herman who gets its British premiere tonight – 44 years after it first opened.
Giving appraisal of the situation it's necessary to point out that it’s not uncommon, towards the end of a monumental career, for the giants of musical theatre to want to put their house in order,Andrew Lloyd Webber has been busy filming his shows for posterity. Stephen Sondheim has seen Merrily We Roll Along come good and even the unloved Road Show revived if not resuscitated,who knows, maybe the perpetually rejigged likes of Martin Guerre and Chess will one day be completed and for now it’s the turn of Jerry Herman to breathe new life back into a show which has long suffered from a deficit of love and attention.
In addition the author of the article mentions that "Dear World" was first performed in New York way back in 1969, but when it resurfaces at the Charing Cross Theatre this month, it will be the show’s British premiere,forty-four years seems like a long wait for a musical from the witty composer-lyricist who, in Hello Dolly (1964) and Mame (1966), had given Broadway two wonderfully frothy entertainments,indeed, in Dear World Herman completed a trilogy of shows featuring eccentric, rule-breaking heroines.
In this connection it’s worthwhile mentioning that the show was adapted from Jean Giraudoux’s play "The Madwoman of Chaillot", which tells of a countess who, driven mad by the loss of her lover, dwells in the asement of a Parisian bistro and embarks on a plot to stop a powerful corporation drilling for oil, herman had acted in the play (in the role of a deaf mute) as a university student in Florida: “And I absolutely fell in love with the language, with the storyline, with the heart of that material. With every aspect of it.”
Speaking of this situation it is also interesting to note that Herman thinks the rot set in the minute a huge advertisement appeared in the New York Times with a glamorous picture of Angela Lansbury, who was the darling of Broadway after her performance in Mame,it didn’t look like a show about big oil featuring sewers, nor did it help that Cohen insisted on Dear World at least looking like a Jerry Herman show with high-kicking chorus lines,he also placed it in the cavernous theatre which once housed My Fair Lady.
The author concludes the article by Jerry's quote : “I’m so open to experiment with my work. I love it when people have new ideas. It always leads to learning. I don’t learn anything by going to see an exact copy of what I’ve done before. But I do learn when somebody does something a little daring, a little offbeat with it. And I welcome change.”
As for me I think that every artist has his own aims , some of them dreams about success , others about money and there are very few people who works for the art , I think that such people including Jerry Herman are worth admiring.
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some of them DREAM about success
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