We were grateful last night to receive some free passes to see the show currently ensconced in the venue occupying the historic Liberty Theatre, site of the original productions of shows like George M. Cohan’s Little Johnny Jones and Little Nellie Kelly and legendary revues like George White’s Scandals, Hitchie-Coo of 1919, and Blackbirds of 1929. Nowadays its a restaurant and party space behind the Liberty Diner, but still an appropriate place, one would agree, for an attempted re-creation of Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic. Though amazingly (given all that has been razed in that area) the actual theatre that served as venue for that historic series of revues still stands: it’s the New Amsterdam (although the Frolics took place in a second venue on the New Amserdam’s Roof).
“Interactive, immersive” experiences are rarely my thing. I’m one of the few people it seems who found the original Speakeasy Dollhouse to be a torturous ordeal. I strongly dislike the pressure of being expected to “participate” and the performers always fall so far short of what I imagine the actual experience to have been like that it can only engender contempt. It always seems to me they’ve mastered about 5% of whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing, yet they’re most insistent about doing it in my face anyway. Thus the paradox of my inevitable reaction: I have a strong desire to run away, but I also want very much for them to go away as well. Or, barring that, I want the opposite. I want to be picked up, whisked away, told precisely where to go immediately and moved from point to point by thrilling and compelling action. I have no time or inclination to mill about like a cow at some place I wouldn’t otherwise be.
At the Midnight Frolic we found ourselves most confused on that score. After checking in outside the door to be admitted to the venue, we were asked our names once again once we got inside. I couldn’t tell if the second check-in expected my real name or some fictitious name on the “passport” we were handed, but we later surmised that perhaps it had something to do with dinner reservations (it’s a dinner theatre experience). At all events, once inside, it was unclear where we should go. As though we were in some Kafka story, the room was full of empty tables, all marked “reserved”. This left standing around on the floor, where we could see some performers cavorting around on a balcony above. Apparently, there is a narrative about the death of Olive Thomas (which happened in Paris, not at the Frolic itself), but we didn’t make it that far because then the show started and that drove us from the room.
The performance starts out with a wretched, apparently original song that sets the period tone for the evening by mentioning something about testicles. And then we are confronted by a great confusion of anachronisms and slapdash gestures in the direction of traditional show business. A gentleman who is supposed to be Eddie Cantor, but who for some reason looks much more like Dwight Frye in his role as Renfield, comes out and sings in a vocal style much more characteristic of the late 20th century, which I suppose matches the piano bar music the band plays that does everything BUT evoke the ‘teens or ‘twenties of the last century. The gentleman doesn’t seem to be doing an Eddie Cantor impression. He just kind of seems to be named “Eddie Cantor”. When “Will Rogers” came out and neither told jokes nor did rope tricks but SANG the 1929 Rodgers and Hart song “I’ll Take Manhattan” (I guess this was supposed to be that time when Will Rogers got hit on the head and thought he was Ella Fitzgerald), we had already had more than enough and vamoosed.
The one element we found enjoyable (while were there) was the re-creation of the chorus line, which included an impressive and adorable array of fetching females: about a dozen of them, which alone is impressive. Watching them sing “Ain’t We Got Fun” was joyous and infectious. Personally, I would have opened with them doing that number and STAYED in the spirit of that, instead of the atrocious non-impressions. (Later I’m told there is also a promising Gallagher and Shean (Glen Heroy and Charley Layton) and an excellent Josephine Baker, played by Delysia LaChatte. We hope to see them do these acts on some future occasion.)
The pleasure of seeing so many friends and colleagues in the cast gave us a boost. We spied Melody Jane, Kat Mon Dieu, Syrie Moskowitz, and others we know as well. It is always good to see them employed. And for that reason we hope the show will continue on as the tourist abattoir it is so obviously set up to be. For New York theatre buffs, it will be like fingernails on chalkboard. But for a stranger in town, it is probably better than watching television in your hotel room, although personally I’d much rather do the latter, because then I could lie in bed and flip the channel.
Note this review has two more parts: here is part two and here is part three.
To learn about vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.
(Travalanche) 