Lyrics & Lyricists Series: “Wonder of Wonders: Celebrating Sheldon Harnick”

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When the Lyrics & Lyricists evening “Wonder of Wonders” was first planned by conductor Ted Sperling, it was intended as a 100^th birthday celebration for lyricist Sheldon Harnick. However, when Harnick passed away last year on June 23, 2023, the presentation became a celebration of his life and career. With Sperling as writer, music director and genial host this became a special evening devoted to a man he knew and had worked with. In fact, he had conducted the recent 2015 Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof.

The excellent cast was made up of five singer/actors who each played their strong suit in this evening: Sam Gravitte, romantic and comic songs; Adam Heller, mature dramatic roles; Adam Kantor, comic and seductive songs; Alysha Umphress, comic and dramatic songs, and Anna Zavelson, high soprano ballads. They appeared in solos, duets, and in group songs which needed all five performers. The songs were backed by Kylee Loera’s projection design which illustrated many of the songs and shows.

The show was mainly devoted to Harnick’s legendary collaboration with composer Jerry Bock: the Pulitzer Prize-winning Fiorello, Tenderloin, She Loves Me, Fiddler on the Roof, The Apple Tree and The Rothschilds, not necessarily in that order, and leaving out The Body Beautiful, the unsuccessful show which introduced Bock and Harnick to Broadway. Sperling recounted how George Abbott and Harold Prince were sold on Bock for the music for Fiorello! but Harnick had to audition with lyrics for four songs before he obtained the job. He also touched on the problems with the direction on The Rothschilds which ended their career, but years later Harnick and book writer Sherman Yellan successfully resurrected the show by jettisoning most of the second act.

While most of the songs presented were standards, there were some oddities and curiosities like five cut songs, one song from a Ford Motor Company industrial show by Bock and Harnick, and two songs Harnick wrote with others, one to his own lyrics. Sperling himself sang three of the five cut song, starting with Amalia’s song of anxiety before her date with “Dear Friend” pen pal for the unashamedly romantic She Loves Me, “Tell Me I Look Nice,” replaced by the more powerful “Will He Like Me?” (created by Barbara Cook, and sung here by Zavelson).

Sperling also sang and played at the piano two songs cut from Fiddler on the Roof: Lazar Woolf’s solo, “A Butcher’s Soul,” which though effective took the focus off Tevye’s problem of allowing too old a man to marry his daughter, and “What a Life,” which required Tevye’s horse to refuse to move. As director/choreographer Jerry Robbins refused to stage a scene with a horse, both the song and the horse were cut and replaced with the now famous “If I Were a Rich Man” (sung here by Heller.) Gravitte and Zavelson introduced “Dear Sweet Sewing Machine,” a charming song sung by the tailor Motel Kamzoil and his beloved Tzeitel, which, though loved by the backers and the creatives, did nothing for the out-of-town audiences and was eliminated from the show. Ironically, all three songs had witty references to food which went by the wayside.

Sam Gravitte was assigned a cut song from Fiorello! entitled “Where Do I Go From Here?” originally intended to be sung by LaGuardia’s secretary Marie when he breaks a date with her and she is heartbroken. Though a poignant ballad, the song did not work in the show even though other places were suggested for its inclusion. The evening also offered one of Harnick’s first hits, “Garbage” written for Bea Arthur to sing in the 1959 Shoestring Revue, one of few songs with both music and lyrics by Harnick, here sung with enthusiasm by Umphress. Harnick’s college friend Charlotte Rae was in the show and had suggested that he submit something to the producers, though ironically she did not get to sing it. The finale of Wonder of Wonders: Celebrating Sheldon Harnick  which included the entire company was taken from Harnick writing with composer Cy Coleman for Neil Simon’s movie The Heartbreak Kid: “You’re Going Far,” one of his first collaborations after the break up with Jerry Bock.

Each of the talented singers had rich material to sink their teeth into. Sam Gravitte had a ball with the showy “Try Me” from She Loves Me in which stock boy Arpad attempts to convince the owner Mr. Maraczek to give him a chance to be a salesman by pantomiming a huge sale and knowing all the prices. He also sang the amusing “It’s a Fish” from The Apple Tree in which Adam thinks that Eve has given birth to a water creature, not another human.

Alysha Umphress gave a powerful performance of “Garbage” from Shoestring Revue, an early feminist statement from a male lyricist. She was assigned one of the comic songs from She Loves Me, in which Ilona Ritter’s “A Trip to the Library” makes “a new girl of me” when she meets her optometrist Paul, after breaking up with the serial seducer Georg Novack. She also dazzled in the two back-to-back transformation songs for Jules Feiffer’s Passionella in the third act of The Apple Tree: “Oh, to Be a Movie Star” sung by Ella the chimney sweep who turns into the “Gorgeous” Passionella with a clever costume change.

Anna Zavelson’s beautiful high soprano wrapped itself around the plaintive “Will He Like Me?, ” Amalia Balish’s anxiety song from She Loves Me, and one for LaGuardia’s first wife Thea’s surprised “When Did I Fall in Love?” Adam Kantor charmed with the seductive “The Apple Tree (Forbidden Fruit)” in which he plays the serpent to Zavelson’s Eve. He also threw himself into Motel the tailor’s “Miracle of Miracles,” recreating a song he sang for one year in the last Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof, again here conducted by Ted Sperling.

Adam Heller played all the mature men, Mayer Rothschild and Tevye the Milkman. A high point of the evening was his duet with Umphress as Goldie in Fiddler’s “Do You Love Me?” as well as Tevye’s solo, “If I Were a Rich Man,” in which he addresses God. He also appeared in three songs from The Rothschilds (“Rothschild and Son,” “Everything” and the solo “In My Own Lifetime” which ended the first half of the show), and the hilarious “Little Tin Box” from Fiorello! about corruption in city government. Saving the best for the penultimate number, Sperling and company led a sing-a-long (with projected words) to the iconic “Sunrise, Sunset,” first quoting Harnick on how much it meant to him when people told him how the song touched them at various point in their lives.

Lyrics & Lyricists Series: Wonder of Wonders: Celebrating Sheldon Harnick (June 1 – 3, 2024)

The 92^nd Street Y, New York

Theresa L. Kaufmann Concert Hall, 1395 Lexington Avenue, in Manhattan

For tickets, call 212-415-5500 or visit http://www.92NY.org/lyrics

Running time: two hours and 25 minutes including one intermission