Growing up, the movie Holiday Inn was
a perennial favorite in our household, especially around Christmas. It’s a combination of all my favorite things:
musicals, the 1940s, inns, New England, and, most importantly, holidays! So when I heard there was a new stage musical
adaptation headed for Broadway, I promptly bought tickets. Some unabashed Golden Age musical optimism seemed
the perfect anodyne to these last few days of the most stressful election
season ever (something the lead actor touched upon during his closing remarks). It’s got that All-American, Greatest
Generation “we’re gonna put on a show!” (which is literally dialogue in the
musical) sunniness.
Although the critical reviews were somewhat tepid, I was not
disappointed. The first act was definitely
a bit sluggish despite the many chipper Irving Berlin tunes (in addition to the
holiday-themed tunes that appear in the original film, the stage version is
padded out with several other Berlin songs such as “Blue Skies”). There was a lot of plot set-up before we actually
got to the holidays themselves, but once the first seasonal number started (replete
with showgirls dressed like turkeys wearing cornucopia headpieces) I was all
in. The best number came towards the end
of Act One—and I’m not saying that just because it was Christmas-themed.
Interestingly, the song was “Shaking the Blue Away,” a Berlin tune I
associate more with Easter since it appears in the film Easter Parade. However here
it was repurposed and staged at Christmastime, with a bevy of enthusiastic
showboys and showgirls shaking and singing while simultaneously decorating the
inn for Christmas. Most impressive was a
tap routine that was done while the dancers also jumped rope using a bedazzled
garland. That’s the kind of old school
musical razzle dazzle that I live for!
The second act was loaded with holiday-themed numbers, including the aforementioned
“Easter Parade” (with wonderfully over-the-top Easter bonnets) as well as
numbers devoted to Valentine’s Day and the 4th of July, including a
recreation of Fred Astaire’s famous fireworks and tap routine. Gone is the “Abraham” number from the
original film, which makes sense given that it was done in blackface (a
reminder that the 1940s, however idealized now, was also fucked up). The ensemble of the stage version was relatively diverse, and one of the male leads was African-American, which signaled a nice change from the all-white casts of days gone by. There was one sour note, a tired trans-panic joke where one of the showgirls speaks in a deep man's voice and scares off one of the male leads. I was surprised that such a moment (aside from being unfunny) would be included in such a traditionally queer-friendly space as Broadway theatre.
Also gone was the problematic character of the African-American
housekeeper, replaced with a coded lesbian “handywoman” played to perfection by
Megan Lawrence. It’s the type of
supporting character that Thelma Ritter or Mary Wickes would have relished back
in the day. The other standout for me
was leading lady Megan Sikora, who in addition to all of the dancing and singing
was extremely funny in the type of part that can sometimes be a bit bland. Speaking of a bit bland, the one weak spot
was High School Musical graduate
Corbin Bleu. His dancing was admirable
(he’s the one that does the 4th of July fireworks routine), but his
character, a lovable cad played by Fred Astaire in the film, fell flat. Perhaps due to a surfeit of dialogue, his
character barely registered outside of his dancing.
The true stars of the night, however, was the cranky elderly woman and
her hard-of-hearing husband sitting behind us!
She irritably repeated the punchline of every joke to him after the fact,
and after a not-terribly-funny joke about a character being stung by a Connecticut wasp, she
relayed the punchline and then said:
Cranky Wife: “Took you long enough.”
Husband: “What?”
Cranky Wife: “I said, took you long enough!”
Husband: Pause. Yes, it did.
I’m waiting for the day those two get their own Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?-style stage musical extravaganza!
I’m waiting for the day those two get their own Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?-style stage musical extravaganza!
