The Goodspeed Opera gives its regards to Broadway
There is a song in the Goodspeed Opera House's smashing revival of George M. Cohan's Little Johnny Jones that invariably stops the show: Give My Regards to Broadway. Nearly everybody in the audience has heard the words and smiles in recognition. But to the people who run the Goodspeed, those lyrics might just as well be Scripture: for the past 17 years they have been giving their regards to Broadway by reviving the great musicals of yesterday and the day before —and by adding a few new shows to the list.
The Opera House, a lovely Victorian fantasy that would look more at home on the Mississippi than the Connecticut River, has roamed the theatrical past like a Wurlitzer time machine.
The oldest play it has brought back was John Philip Sousa's El Capitan (1896); the newest was The Happy Time (1968), which preceded Little Johnny Jones (1904) this season. "We are trying to build a national theater," says Executive Director Michael Price. "And we have chosen as our mission the American musical. We are not going to let those wonderful works just sit on the shelf."
The new shows that have come out of the Goodspeed are almost as impressive as the old ones that have gone into it. The Man of La Mancha first had his impossible dream there in 1965, and Shenandoah followed nine years later. Annie also got her start there in 1976, and four years later is still S.R.O. on Broadway. Wherever the orphan goes, she is still remembered fondly in her home town of East Haddam, Conn. The 1% of Annie's box-office gross that the Opera House retained covers a substantial part of its $325,000 yearly deficit. After Johnny
Jones closes Sept. 13, the Goodspeed will open another original musical, Zapata, based on the life of the Mexican revolutionary. Any resemblance to the lucrative career of Evita has probably not gone unnoticed. "We are producing shows for the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, and not for New York," Price says in a well-learned ritual. "But," he adds candidly, "we always hope."
Still, the company's real love is the past and those tuneful shows that they just don't seem to write any more. "Most of the new musicals are not melodic or inventive enough," complains Research Consultant Alfred Simon, who helps the Goodspeed pick its golden oldies. Simon, 72, who played piano for George Gershwin during rehearsals for Of Thee I Sing (1931), has seen almost every Broadway musical since the 1920s and every year prepares a list of half a dozen possible candidates. "I look for good tunes and reasonably good books," he says. "I also look for shows that haven't been brought back before. Little Johnny Jones, for instance, has never been revived professionally until now." Eventually the ebullient Price, 42, a self-described "benevolent dictator," makes the final decision.