Musical Theater Review: 42nd Street taps its way to heaven in London

42^nd Street

Music and Lyrics by Harry Warren and Al Dubin

Book by Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble

Directed by Mark Bramble

Drury Lane Theater, London

February 6, 2018

I have rarely enjoyed a musical as much as the recent performance of 42^nd Street that I attended in London. The musical, which premiered on Broadway in 1980, is a salute to the great musical traditions of the 1930’s: tapdancing, massive production numbers, choreographer Busby Berkeley, and the only-in-America plot device that a nobody can become a star. Premiering in an era of American optimism (remember Reagan’s “Morning in America”--seems like another world), the musical is an unapologetic, at times politically dated vehicle for pure escapism. It does this so well that I did not miss the dark currents and subcontext that I normally seek in theater.

At heart, 42^nd Street salutes the great Warner Brothers musicals of the depression. These were some of the earliest films using sound, as Hollywood technique rapidly evolved from shaky, out-of-focus camera work and tenuous dancing (see this, The Wedding of the Painted Doll from 1929—watch for the creepy dancing preacher) to the subtlety we associate with Top Hat and The Wizard of Oz, just a few years later. Movie musicals were what people wanted to see, both as a tonic to the depression and because they so vividly highlighted the new sound technology. It is truly amazing to watch some of these early musicals and see the sound and video technology leap ahead from film to film. These musicals were of two types. Most familiar to us are the star vehicles for Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, and Dolores del Rio. However, the Busby Berkeley movies like 1933’s 42^nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, and Footlight Parade offered a different type of diversion. While each featured “stars” familiar to the audiences of the time, the true stars were the hundreds of “chorines” that performed intricate choreography for Berkeley’s roaming, salacious camera. The virtuosic dancing chorines were filmed from above, below, side, underwater, in the air—you name it. 

These films were really paeans to female anatomy and charms. They are hard to watch now because the very skimpy plots and mediocre acting mostly mark time until the girls come out for another number. But the musical numbers are wonderful. This was an era when individuality was often subsumed to the collective, rather like dancing Borg. All across the world, leaders tried to revive the depression economy with massive public works projects involving thousands of often-dispensable workers (e.g. Hoover Dam, the German autobahns). It is striking that at the same time Busby Berkeley was filming his hundreds of dancing girls from all angles, that German director Leni Riefenstahl was filming hundreds of marching German soldiers with similar virtuosity. In her landmark 1935 Triumph of the Will the “star” speakers like Hitler and Goebbels are decidedly trumped by the choreographed marching Nazis, creating an effect very similar to the contemporaneous Berkeley musicals. For evidence, compare this (at 1:07:10 note Riefenstal’s innovative little aero-cam going up and down between the swastika banners) to the finale to 42^nd Street the movie. Both directors were pioneering technical virtuosi who knew how to portray mass movements of people, and both advanced film technique in the early years of sound.

The (very) basic plot tells how Peggy Sawyer, the girl from Allentown PA (played by Clare Halse) auditions for a new musical and, after the star breaks her ankle, steps in to achieve fame and the respect of the tyrannical director Julian Marsh (Tom Lister). The musical mostly strips away the bits of 1930’s edge to stay unrelentingly upbeat. For example, the move ends with the again-successful director alone, brooding, seemingly still unsatisfied; the musical ends with more rousing tap dance, now with the cast all in gold, rather like A Chorus Line meets The Ziegfeld Follies. 

There are some awkward moments for a modern audience thinking about #MeToo, like when the middle-aged director, trying to fire up the nervous young debutante Peggy, grabs her and forcefully kisses her (she seems to appreciate the gesture), provoking some nervous muttering in the audience.

42^nd Street the musical improves on the 1930’s film by reducing the silly plot to a minimum and cramming as many dance numbers as possible into the two-hour show. The five musical numbers in the movie are repeated here, but are amplified to 20 by adding more songs by second-generation immigrants Harry Warren (born Salvatore Guaragna) and Al Dubin, who were famed in the 1920’s and 30’s for their songs written for Tin Pan Alley and early Warner Brothers musicals. They were masters of clever, hummable, and danceable tunes like Shuffle off to Buffalo, We’re in the Money, and The Lullaby of Broadway. The songs are often risqué in a very innocent, charming sort of way; my favorite is the wonderfully ageist “Young and Healthy”, a salute to premarital sex.  See the film version featuring juvenile Dick Powell, the blonde bombshell Toby Wing in furs, and (pre-stardom) Ginger Rogers in the chorus, and the amazing Busby Berkeley choreography including the classic overhead shot and the ending “girl tunnel”. Its lyrics feature these gems:

I’m young and healthy,

So let’s be bold.

In a year or two or three

Maybe we will be too old.

If I could hate you

I’d keep away.

That ain’t my nature….

I’m full of Vitamin A!

Technically, this musical has much better leads than the film: as the naïve Peggy Ms. Halse is far superior to the film’s clunky Ruby Keeler (wife of megastar Al Jolson), and Stuart Neal is dynamite as the “juvenile” tenor (a 1930’s term for the high voiced, fresh-faced male partner for the star female).  US regional accents are done well by the mostly-British cast. The dancing is every bit as accomplished. Director Mark Bramble puts about 30-35 dances on stage, about as many as even the large Royal Drury Lane can hold.  

While this cannot match the hundreds sometimes seen in Berkeley’s films, the effect is still thrilling. The dancing is more egalitarian, with male dancers featured as well as female, unlike in Berkeley's films (the lady's man was married six times). Director Mark Bramble (b. 1950), who also was co-author of the musical, may not have lived in the 1930’s but seems to unerringly channel its spirit. He started his career working with famed producer David Merrick, who was involved in some of these productions, so is part of a chain of tradition. I am glad this chain still exists, since we may never again (thankfully) have the ability to pay hundreds of talented dancers a minimum wage to create these song-and-dance spectaculars. Short of seeing the Rockettes at Christmas at Radio City Music Hall (another 1930’s edifice) London’s Drury Lane theater is now the place to be to experience this exciting time capsule of tap dance, intricate coordination, and fun. I think that you, like me, will feel sore in your facial muscles at the end of the show, since you have been grinning the whole time.