Strike Up the Band

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In 1927 after collaborating with composer Irving Berlin and librettist Morrie Ryskind on the Marx Brothers’ second Broadway musical, The Cocoanuts, George S. Kaufman was asked by producer Edward Selwyn to write an anti-war musical with the songwriting team of George and Ira Gershwin. Kaufman came up with a plot that included the United States entering into a phony war with Switzerland over cheese tariffs. The resulting show Strike Up the Band tried out in in Philadelphia to rave reviews by the critics but little interest by the theatergoing public, and never came into New York. This is what led to Kaufman’s classic quip, “Satire is what closes on Saturday night.”

In 1929 Selwyn decided to revive the project but Kaufman involved with other shows declined to revisit his work. He suggested his Cocoanuts collaborator Ryskind who took on the rewrite while the Gershwins revised their score. By this time as a team, Kaufman and Ryskind had written the Marx Brothers musical Animal Crackers for Kalmar and Ruby. Ryskind later described his rewrite by stating “What I had to do, in a sense, was to rewrite War and Peace for the Three Stooges,” sourced by Lawrence Maslon and Michael Kantor’s Broadway: The American Musical (2022). Whereas Kaufman’s book had a war over cheese, Ryskind changed it to chocolate and turned the war section into a dream sequence. The new 1930 show, which had less satire and was less bleak, now a vehicle for comedians Clark and McCullough, ran a respectable 191 performances.

In the early 1930s, Kaufman and Ryskind joined the Gershwins twice more for political musical satires. The first the Gershwins longest running Broadway show was the 1931 Of Thee I Sing, in which John P. Wintergreen runs for president on a platform of putting “Love in in the White House,” and which was the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The second collaboration was the 1933 sequel Let’Em Eat Cake, in which Wintergreen turns the U.S. into a dictatorship but the dark show was a quick failure at the height of the Depression when audiences wanted lighter entertainments. Classifying the 1935 Porgy and Bess as an opera, Let’Em Eat Cake was the last Broadway musical written by George Gershwin. However, Kaufman and Ryskind went on to collaborate on the 1935 Marx Brothers classic A Night at the Opera which has much the same kind of humor.

With the concert version of Strike Up the Band on Oct. 29 at Carnegie Hall, MasterVoices under the auspices of conductor and artistic director Ted Sperling has now staged all three of the Gershwin/Kaufman/Ryskind political musical satires, Of The I Sing in 2017 and Let’Em Eat Cake in 2019. The MasterVoices concert production featured a revised book by Maslon and Sperling based on both the Kaufman and Ryskind originals. Without reviewing the earlier librettos, it is difficult to know who to credit with what. However, one excision is clear: the roles of heiress Anne Draper and executive assistant Myra Meade have been combined into one with Miss Meade being given Anne’s songs and love interest. It is not difficult to see why the Kaufman version did not please audiences as it is still an entirely cynical show, and a fake war remains unpalatable as we have undergone so many in recent years.

The plot is a combination of several strands that come together by the finale. Horace J. Fletcher, CEO of Fletcher’s American Cheese Company in Hooray, Wisconsin, is campaigning for Congress to pass a 50% tariff on all imported cheese. He is being pursued by dowager and philanthropist Mrs. Draper, who runs the City Air Movement for Country Children. Fletcher isn’t much interested in her until he discovers that she has inherited five million dollars. When Colonel Holmes, the president’s confidential adviser, arrives, he is smitten with Mrs. Draper who offers to make him president of the United States with her money and influence.

While the older folks are involved with cheese and money, the younger characters have their own involvements. Miss Meade, Fletcher’s executive assistant, is in love with Timothy Harper, foreman at Fletcher’s Cheese but can’t get him to commit to marriage. Fletcher wants his headstrong daughter Joan to marry his general manager C. Edgar Sloane who is rather creepy. However, she is more interested in journalist Jim Townsend who has written an article naming her “a little social snob” on no acquaintance. It transpires when he shows up to get Fletcher’s opinion on the inevitable cheese war with Switzerland that he was trying to gain Joan’s attention. Just as Townsend discovers that Fletcher’s Cheese is using adulterated Grade B milk, war is declared and Fletcher offers to pay for it if it will be named after him. Act Two brings all the characters to Switzerland with various agendas before all is settled happily including discovering the spy in their midst.

While Strike Up the Band proves to be no lost masterpiece, with its witty Gershwin score it is still very entertaining. The best songs remain the original standouts, “The Man I Love” from the 1929 version and “I’ve Got a Crush On You” from the 1930 edition. Ironically, “Soon,” the big hit from 1930 is nowhere in evidence. While the Kaufman and the Gershwins’ initial influence were Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, two songs remain which are obvious G&S parodies, “A Typical Self-Made American,” resembling “ A Modern Major General” and the patter song, “Unofficial Spokesman.”

The rest of the score seems to be devoted to swing and jazzy melodies. Two lovely ballads, “Hoping that Someday You’d Care” from the 1927 version and “Hangin’ Around with You” from the 1930 revision ought to be better known. The second act opener, “Oh, This Is Such a Lovely War” is a clever pastiche of the 1917 British World War I song of similar name. And, of course, the title song sung twice and included in the sprightly overture is still a rousing march and anthem. Tommy Krasker is credited with the restoration of the score, with Russell Warner, William D. Brohn, William Daly, Dick Hyman, Sid Ramin, Larry Wilcox and Donald Johnston listed as orchestrators as they are on the 1991 complete Elektra Entertainment studio recording.

Aside from the 31 piece orchestra and 100+ Chorus, the MasterVoices presentation featured many Broadway veterans including two-time Tony Award winner Victoria Clark and Tony nominees, John Ellison Conlee, Bryce Pinkham, Christopher Fitzgerald and David Pittu, as well as featured players Claybourne Elder, Shereen Ahmed, Phillip Attamore and Lissa deGuzman. Under the direction of maestro Sperling, the orchestra and chorus were glorious as usual giving the Gershwin score their utmost. The stage direction by Sperling, however, had trouble with the low comedy and the bad puns, many of which failed to land. In the leading roles, as the wealthy dowager and philanthropist Mrs. Draper, Clark was not given much to do, while Conlee as blustery Horace J. Fletcher seemed to be on too often.

Armed as his feisty daughter Joan and Pinkham as a wry but low-key Jim Townsend as the local journalist with whom she has a love-hate relationship sang beautifully the lovely duets, as well as did deGuzman as the acerbic secretary Miss Meade and Attmore as the befuddled Tim Harper, foreman of Fletcher’s Cheese, who have an on again/off again love relationship. Pittu as Colonel Holmes, a Very Important Person from Washington who does not have the president’s permission to speak, usually so reliable and witty, here seemed rather shackled by the role in which he is caught in a triangle with Fletcher for Mrs. Draper’s favors but can’t speak his mind.

Best was Fitzgerald as George Spelvin  (a Kaufman creation), an ambassador without portfolio, a role obviously modeled around Groucho Marx, who shows up in every scene as someone else from electrical repair man to postman to waiter to general. Elder in the non-singing role of C. Edgar Sloane, general manager of Fletcher’s Cheese, is rather bland as the stuffed shirt executive who wants to marry his boss’ daughter.

Alison Solomon was the choreographer for the charming dances for deGuzman and Attmore, and the dance ensemble made up of C.K. Edwards, Fiona Claire Huber, Masumi Iwai, Justin Keats, Cory Lingner and Derek Luscutoff as American soldiers, Swiss misses and other ensemble characters. Tracy Christensen and Somie Pak were co-costume designers on the elegant 1930s clothing. Cassie Williams and Sarah Norton were co-hair and make-up designers for the thirties’ period look for the American women and Swiss lady camp followers. Now that MasterVoices has resurrected three shows by the Gershwins Kaufman and Ryskind, three by Gilbert and Sullivan, and four by Kurt Weill, it will be anyone’s guess what musical territory they head into next.

Strike up the Band (October 29, 2024)

MasterVoices

Carnegie Hall

Isaac Stern Auditorium/Ronald O. Perelman Stage, 881 Seventh Avenue at 57^th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, call Carnegie Charge at 212-247-7800 or visit http://www.CarnegieHall.org

Running time: two hours and 50 minutes including one intermission