Call Her Madam
There's a double reason for this, so bear with me.
The Encore! series in New York presents semi-staged concert versions of well-regarded musicals that have largely fallen under the wire. They recently did the 1950 show Call Me Madam that originally starred Ethel Merman, who also recreated her role in the movie adaptation. It's not known for its plot, written by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse (who most famously would write the book to The Sound of Music), that was largely a light-hearted spoof of politics centered around a character loosely inspired by Perle Mesta, a Washington, D.C. socialite party-giver who had been made an ambassador during the Truman Administration, known as the Hostess with the Mostes. However, it has a fun score by Irving Berlin, including the stand-out counterpoint song, "You're Just in Love."
(Side note: a while back, I posted here the Mystery Guest segment of What's My Line? where the contestant was the real-life Perle Mesta.)
The show is pretty much a creature of its time, so it hasn't had a Broadway revival, though its original production had a successful run of 644 performances, about a year-and-a-half.
The Encore! production starred Carmen Cusack, who I wrote about last year when I saw her in the Los Angeles production of Bright Angel, for which he won the Tony Award as Best Actress in a Musical, that had a score by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell. And it had a very nice supporting cast including Brad Oscar (who played 'Franz Liebkind' in the stage musical of The Producers) Carol Kane, Darrell Hamond (of SNL), Jason Gotay and...Randy Rainbow.
Yes, that Randy Rainbow. Which is the second reason for writing about this. It was a small role, but still a nice touch by the producers.
An occasional reader of this site, conductor-composer Peter Breiner (whose wonderful Christmas Goes Baroque CDs I tend to post selection from each holiday) saw the show and said that it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, helped by that terrific Irving Berlin score, though the night he went Ms. Cusack seemed to be under the weather.
I have a couple of videos from the production. This first has the best selection of songs, though no Randy Rainbow. That's in the second batch.
In this second montage, you'll see Randy Rainbow (hard to miss in his trademark pink sunglasses), and a few of the same songs, but a bunch of different ones. Brad Oscar comes along a little after the 2-minute mark -- he's the larger, bald member of the trio.
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