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Broadway
By The Year
By Leslie Rosenberg
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Times
Square in the 1930s.
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What
do you get when you mix timeless Broadway melodies with a dash of
musical history and narrative schtick? The answer is Broadway
By the Year, a witty, educational, lyrical series celebrating
its second season at New York City's Town Hall.
Created,
written and hosted by author/critic Scott Siegel, Broadway
By the Year takes listeners on a journey back in time, when
the Great White Way was in its heyday. Each segment of the four-part
series focuses on a single year in musical history, as stars perform
songs both beloved and unknown from Broadway's archives.
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Playbill
art from the early days of Broadway.
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This
season's opener on March 18th focused on the year 1933 and included
songs from the shows As Thousands Cheer (Irving Berlin),
Let 'Em Eat Cake (The Gershwins), Pardon My English
(The Gershwins), Roberta (Jerome Kern), Melody (Sigmund
Romberg), and The Three Penny Opera (Brecht/Weill), among
others. Broadway veterans Mary Testa, George Dvorsky, Mary Bond
Davis, Anne Runolfsson and Mark Coffin delivered each song with
a heartfelt appreciation for the material, uplifted by musical director/arranger/pianist
Ross Patterson and The Ross Paterson Little Big Band. In between
numbers, Siegel educated his audience with amusing anecdotes about
the circumstances that led to in a song's creation, and perhaps
the reasons it felt into obscurity.
Broadway
by the Year is a treat for theater buffs and musical novices
alike. You'll walk away brimming with trivia (did you know that
Jerome Kern originally wrote "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" as an uptempo
march, before lyricist Otto Harbach suggested he turn it into a
ballad?), and you'll be tapping your toes all the way home.
Broadway
by the Year celebrates the songs of 1940 on April 15
at 8 pm. On the repertoire are selections from Pal
Joey (Rodgers & Hart), Louisiana Purchase (Irving
Berlin), Cabin in the Sky (Vernon Duke), Panama
Hattie (Cole Porter), and Walk with Music (Burton
Lane/Johnny Mercer), plus many more. Tickets are
available for $30-$35 at The Town Hall Box Office, 212-840-2824,
or through TicketMaster, 212-307-4100.
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