On Stage
SEIGER, MARVIN
ON STAGE If you've heard it before I'm sorry to repeat the news: Broadway is a market where goods are sold with the hope of making as much money as possible. And the Broadway musical is the prime...
...Leave it to our experienced manufacturers...
...That's all right for a night or two...
...In fact, he is the key element to the saleability of Zorbd...
...First, the kid who is infatuated with the Widow drowns himself...
...You are lifted out of despair into the joys of life...
...It may be a derivative piece of theatricality, but it moved me...
...He pays a lot of money for his ticket (or at least someone does), and he wants all the pleasures purportedly offered by a musical...
...Supposedly every Greek knows the answer, too...
...He uses everybody to satisfy his own insatiable obsession with himself...
...His excuse to his young employer, Nikos, is the plea that we are all murderers and thus we must try to understand and forget...
...I'll bet Harold Prince originally hoped Quinn would take the role, but I won't give you odds...
...There Zorba continues selling his bill of goods and takes charge of redeveloping Nikos* mine...
...As producer and director, he pulls all the right elements together to create a nifty piece of merchandise...
...With that wise casting and the present follow-up, Prince has done himself and the Broadway customer a service...
...Zorbd is a Broadway success...
...Herschel Bernardi is the star, and Maria Karnilova is his co-star...
...It is a carefully concocted entertainment designed for that special fun-loving kind of New Yorker or out-of-towner who likes a "good show...
...But only for a short while...
...Bernardi won so many fans when he took over the role of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof that he was destined to be an attraction in his next production...
...This gem of an idea may hasten the bankruptcy of a tired businessman or give rise to a rash of suicides among some of the elderly citizens of our community...
...You keep seeing Anthony Quinn...
...It fills up the street...
...They know the answer...
...Harold Prince, who will be remembered for Fiddler on the Roof and Cabaret, has brought out another winner...
...He has counsel for everyone, and it looks as if he will succeed...
...Bernardi does very well...
...That kind of Tevye would have been booted out of Kasrilevke head first...
...Zorba slowly catches the spirit and joins in...
...He wants to laugh...
...They everything starts to fall apart...
...For a while people around me were comparing Bernardi to Quinn, and I kept seeing Tevye...
...It has the star, and it has critical approval...
...Making comparisons to the novel or the movie will get us nowhere...
...Moreover compared to some of the other goods in the marketplace, it holds up very well...
...As he says, he allows his head to be controlled by what's in his pants...
...By Marvin Seiger Playing to the Market a commodity on the boards, brand-new for the winter season...
...You walk into the Imperial Theater, and you smell a winner at the marketplace...
...somebody who delights, who tickles, who looks his way and grins at him...
...Prince's most difficult problem was what to do when everybody dies and calamity follows calamity in the second act...
...If not Tony then by all means let it be Herschel...
...Next the newly opened mine blows up, and that is followed by the death of old Hortense...
...What emerges in this production is Zorbd, the treyfe, locked in his own ego...
...Once, in the last act, the Greek chorus idea works beautifully as they appear draped in black shawls, hovering over Zorba's dying mistress, Hortense, ready to swoop down and dismantle her household like the Black Furies...
...It is customer-oriented—and how well the producer knows the buyers...
...Suddenly Nikos purses his lips and lets out a soft whistle that begins to grow louder and louder...
...You're in the lowest moment of the show, and suddenly ineffectual Nikos begins to make with the fingers...
...Catch Tevye in the sack with the landlady, or imagine him telling a neighbor we must try to understand murder because he himself had murdered many times...
...Zorba is a phony...
...Even the Broadway hookers are rooting for it...
...Nor are the sets and costumes any great asset...
...You start off loving the old scamp...
...He had to concentrate on keeping his audience interested with splashy gimmicks, for the music and lyrics are not what I would call "extra special...
...Those who have long believed that after love a cigarette tastes good, or that a glass of milk with a side dish of Hydrox cookies is even better, are in for some disillusionment...
...It's called Zorbd adapted from the Kazantzakis novel (or the movie), with book by Joseph Stein, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb...
...But to live one's life completely without the "head" and allow others to suffer because of it —what's so lovable about that...
...he wants to feel a little horny...
...No matter...
...His nerve overwhelms Nikos and convinces him to take Zorbi along to Crete...
...How is the customer supposed to go out feeling good...
...Everyone is getting a good deal, from the electrician to the lemonade salesman...
...It might have worked...
...I murdered many times, boss," says Zorba...
...So, he provides the expected belly dancer, a wild cafe scene, a phony fight, phonier folk dancing, and the already marked-down sounds of the bouzouki...
...If it's not Ethel, then it should be Mary or Zero of Barbra or Joel—somebody everybody is talking about...
...It is displayed within a real theater, in front of real human beings who are sitting in real seats...
...And the Broadway musical is the prime example of a commodity manufactured under the guise of theater...
...Zorba's contribution to contemporary profundity is, "After love, what else is there...
...The orchestra unloosens heaving sounds that rise to a crescendo...
...Remember not too far back when Man of La Mancha sold us the bill of goods labeled "Dream the impossible dream...
...This one commodity will feed many a family for the next few years...
...Imagine that low moment in the play...
...Zorba joins in, and the black robed chorus follows along...
...You can't get the book out of your mind...
...When everything seems to go to pot, we are told, you simply tense up your shoulders, let your head drop and slowly begin to snap your fingers and sway...
...H |arold Prince had more serious problems, however, than analyzing Zorba's character...
...he wants to feel good all over...
...It was at this moment that I thought how much easier it would have been if our heroes had followed Walt Disney's sage advice and given "a little whistle...
...He disappears completely when Zorba witnesses the murder of the village Widow and does not act...
...Slowly you begin to suspect the irresponsibility and the lack of involvement that is part of Zorb&'s philosophy...
...And now Broadway has just such Marvin Seiger is Professor of Theater and Speech at Hunter College...
...As Bernardi jumps into the sack with Karnilova, Tevye begins to fade away...
...Zorbd has arrived...
...somebody he can identify with, who talks his language...
...Finally, we must examine the last item in our commodity, the homely element known as the "message," which every serious musical must contain today...
...He even tries to use the townspeople of Crete as a modern Greek chorus: They sing occasionally, move set pieces, but most of the time just hang around because the director told them to be there...
...Then the kid's family kills the Widow whom Nikos has just learned to love...
...he wants to be titillated...
...This is Bernardi's moment to turn his impish smile and masterful timing to plaudits and dollar bills...
...Equally important to Broadway's customer is a star whom he has seen before, whose voice he likes, whose special bit delights him...
...What a theatrical device...
Vol. 51 • December 1968 • No. 23
