Opening Doors Theatre Company celebrates underappreciated and forgotten musicals from the past with lively staged performances under the title Closing Notice. Season three began with a presentation of Fade Out-Fade In, an original musical created by Jule Styne and Betty Comden & Adolph Green. It opened on May 26, 1964 and played 271 performances at the Mark Hellinger Theatre. Created for and starring Carol Burnett, it utilized real histories of both Burnett and early Hollywood for the plot. Directed by George Abbott, the original cast also featured Jack Cassidy, Tina Louise, Lou Jacobi, Tiger Haynes, and Virginia Payne (radio’s Ma Perkins.) When it was announced for a fall opening in 1963, it had a $3 million advance from theater parties. Burnett married and got pregnant, postponing the show until the spring of 1964, and thus losing its theater parties. Rehearsals went smoothly and the show played sell out engagements in New Haven and Boston. In New York, every night was a sellout until Burnett started missing performances, sometimes not calling in until minutes before curtain. She also began performing on a TV series produced by her husband. She announced she was quitting and the show closed. The producers went to arbitration to make her give them a date when she could return. She agreed to come back and re-open the show but after the re-opening she got pregnant again and the show closed forever. To my knowledge, there was only one other major production, in Australia with Sheila Smith.

The Opening Doors production with a cast of ten, ably directed by Suzanne Adams and musically staged by Adams and Christine Schwalenberg, used creative cast-doubling and quick costume changes. The cast was quite wonderful. Although Sarah Lilley in the Burnett role is much more attractive than Burnett (the plot hinges on the Burnett character not being a beauty) ,she had a sweet wholesomeness and was able to hit the Burnett high notes in "The Usher from the Mezzanine," (a number created from Burnett’s real life). If there is a song that has endured from the show, it is the Shirley Temple-Bojangles Robinson tap dancing novelty "You Mustn’t Be Discouraged," which Lilley and Lawrence Street (in the Tiger Haynes part) carried off with great aplomb. Other Comden & Green plot elements (similar to their screenplay for Singing in the Rain) were the tyrant studio head, the vain motion picture leading man and the sexy starlet. As the studio head, Hector Coris was better than Jacobi, gleefully singing and dancing such numbers as "Dangerous Age" and "Close Harmony." It was nice twist to have his Austrian psychiatrist played by a woman, Jean McCormick. Also better than the part’s originator was Rob Ventre in Jack Cassidy's part. Ventre is a muscular hunk with Clark Gable looks and a big, strong, beautiful voice. He has great comic timing on such numbers as "My Fortune Is My Face," (the love song to himself,) "I’m With You," and "My Heart Is Like a Violin." You believed he was a swashbuckling action movie star. Lexi Windsor, with platinum blonde wig and squeaky singing voice (in the Tina Louise part), took a page from the Jean Hagan character in Singing itn he Rain . The book is full of funny dialogue, and Lilley was hystercally funny in the show-stopping monologue in which Hope animatedly enacts the entire scenario of a cliched film plot about a romance between a classical violinist and a prizefighter.

If Fade Out-Fade In has not had the enduring fame of other Styne-Comden & Green shows (Bells Are Ringing, Do Re Mi), Opening Doors fulfilled its mission with a first-rate concert staging.

(Pictured: Sarah Lilley)

Joe Regan, Jr.
Cabaret Scenes
March 9, 2009
www.cabaretscenes.org