DU BARRY WAS A LADY
at the Civic Theatre
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Porter’s words and notes seemed destined for each other–just what should happen when a composer fuses them himself. Those songs save DuBarry Was a Lady from itself. A vehicle tailored to the talents of Ethel Merman and Bert Lahr, DuBarry Was a Lady feels as if Porter dashed it off between cocktail parties. But that was his gift–making it look easy. His compositions conceal his efforts the way his life hid its pain (DuBarry Was a Lady was written shortly after Porter’s crippling fall from a horse).
The intrigues matter only for the songs they trigger, such as May’s invigorating “Come on In,” a raunchy barker’s anthem that immediately stirs a fever of expectancy. Porter also gave May the jaunty “When Love Beckoned on 52nd Street,” a ballad he jazzed up, then neatly changed into an up-tempo swing waltz. Louie sings a hilariously crude patter song, “It Ain’t Etiquette,” that warns against throwing rocks at parties or writing smut on your hostess’s bathroom walls (you can all but see Lahr leering between the stanzas).
Aping Lahr’s lisp, the rubber-faced Garrison mugged well–and never better than in his salacious question-and-answer duet with Criswell, “But in the Morning, No!” With its typical Porter double entendres–on “sell your seat,” the “breast stroke,” and “double entry”–this song seems daring even today.
In Kiss Me, Kate Porter’s whiplash lyrics and plush score meet a witty book by Sam and Bella Spewack that mocks the backstage spats of Alfred Lunt and his wife Lynn Fontanne. Kiss Me, Kate depicts two overly sensitive artistes, feuding ex-spouses who almost sabotage an opening night of The Taming of the Shrew (the Lunts’ private life was the stage). Fortunately, life imitates art. After the usual misunderstandings and a run-in with a couple of culture-loving gangsters, temperamental Lilli (“I Hate Men”) falls back in love with Fred (“So in Love Am I”).
In a show rich with deft character roles, Rick Boynton shone as a winsome, self-effacing Paul. His voice a comic quaver, Bob O’Donnell was a hoot as the garrulous Baptista. In the vaudevillian “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” (which DuBarry Was a Lady’s “It Ain’t Etiquette” anticipates), Dan Frick and Anthony Cesaretti played their oafish gangsters with a boffo deadpan.
