AL HIRSCHFELD: IT’S IN THE CARDS By Peter Filichia
Zero Mostel as Peter Pan?
Carol Channing as Lady Macbeth?
Robert Preston and Sammy Davis, Jr. as the Dromio twins in THE BOYS FROM SYRACUSE?
Sounds crazy, no? But in 1964, Al Hirschfeld – arguably the world’s greatest caricaturist – decided to have some fun. He imagined how these lofty entertainers would look in roles they’d never be chosen to play.
He called his series of drawings “Unlikely Casting.”
And now Hirschfeld himself is involved in an example of “Unlikely Casting.” The illustrious artist has been matched with something he or you most assuredly never saw coming.
Tarot cards.
David Leopold, the Creative Director of The Al Hirschfeld Foundation, joined forces with Emily McGill. She’s a former Broadway publicist (of the Denzel Washington A RAISIN IN THE SUN, among others) but is now a spiritual practitioner. Together they’ve produced more than four dozen cards, each sporting a Hirschfeld (with appropriate Ninas, of course), that reflects a certain tarot card.
(This had to be something Nina never knew was coming.)
The first card is The Fool, represented by Candide. Well, that’s one way of looking at the lad. He does sing (to a haunting Leonard Bernstein melody) that whatever his teacher taught him, “It Must Be So.”
(Well, yes and no …)
You might expect to see Hirschfeld’s caricature of Robert Rounseville’s Candide from the original 1956 production. No, here’s Jason Danieley from the 1997 revival. McGill has mixed and matched Hirschfeld’s work from both original productions and subsequent ones.
One performer who will always be associated with both the original and revival productions is Yul Brynner in THE KING AND I. McGill assigns him the tarot card called The Emperor, stating that such a man has the qualities of “a strong father.” In the scene where we heard Richard Rodgers’ stirring “The March of the Siamese Children,” Brynner’s expressions made us see that His Lord and Master truly does love his kids.
Jim Dale, who won a Tony for the title role of BARNUM, is on The Magician Card. You may argue that his being The Greatest Showman of the 19th century isn’t the same thing as being a magician, but anyone who can accomplish anything in show business is definitely making magic.
(Actually, Barnum might have enticed more customers to come and follow him if he’d been able to play Cy Coleman’s delightfully infectious “Come Follow the Band” outside his circus tents. Only the most curmudgeonly will disagree.)
Tarot devotees know the word “Hierophant,” but McGill will have to teach others that it’s a person who has “ancient wisdom and religious learnings but can also get stuck in rigidity.”
Have you already guessed that must be Tevye?
Here’s Hirschfeld’s interpretation of Zero Mostel in the 1977 revival. Be glad that he wasn’t recorded then, for in the 13 years that had passed since Mostel had originated the role, he had become a parody of his former self. But his 1964-65 Tony winning performance is, as you’ll hear for the first or 50th time on the cast album, exquisite. We are all the richer for his original “If I Were a Rich Man.”
Hirschfeld’s caricature of Sandra Church as Louise in GYPSY gets The Death Card. If that seems extreme, McGill says that the card “doesn’t always mean dying; think transition and change.” As she concludes in her short essay, “Louise dies, and Gypsy Rose Lee is born.”
(Nothing against Church, but that rebirth and development is better served on GYPSY’s the first revival recording – better known as the Angela Lansbury one. Zan Charisse’s “Let Me Entertain You” gets an additional two and a half minutes that had been denied Church. In the great tradition of musical theater songs moving the action forward, this recording shows Rose’s lesser-loved child going from her shaky debut at Wichita’s one and only burlesque theater to total confidence at the apex of burlesque: New York’s Minsky’s.
The card called The Chariot may make you wonder if Hirschfeld was actually around in 1899 to immortalize the first Broadway production of BEN-HUR. Although he lived to be a mere five months short of reaching 100, he was only six when the play debuted.
McGill says The Chariot represents “direction, balance and being in the driver’s seat.” So why is RAGTIME’S Coalhouse Walker, Jr. chosen for this card when he suffers a tragic demise? McGill has a fine rebuttal in stating that “Coalhouse chooses his direction at every moment.”
(Would, though, that Coalhouse’s stirring anthem “Wheels of a Dream” had borne fruit. However, how we love hearing the optimism that he and his beloved Sarah share at that moment.)
So, is The Devil represented by Mr. Applegate in DAMN YANKEES, singing his tour-de-force “Those Were the Good Old Days” – so great a song that an encore is a must?
No. Sweeney Todd will serve. (And Mrs. Lovett will serve in her own way, too.) Of all the Sweeneys we’ve seen, you can’t do better than Len Cariou. The Hirschfeld in which Sweeney is reunited with a “friend” is McGill’s choice.
That 42ND STREET gets The Star Card seems apt. McGill didn’t choose Hirschfeld’s Tammy Grimes as Dorothy Brock but Wanda Richert as Peggy Sawyer, who supplanted Brock after injuring her. McGill would argue that because the Star Card involves “hope, grace and dreams,” newcomer Sawyer would seem to be a more logical pick than the established ol’ pro.
But don’t forget that Julian Marsh (the always terrific Jerry Orbach) had to rekindle Sawyer’s “hope, grace and dreams.” The discouraged rookie was all set to return to Allentown until he delivered a dynamic “Lullaby of Broadway.”
(Hmmm, why is the song called that? It isn’t a lullaby at all. “Showstopper” would be a more accurate description.)
That McGill chose Leslie Uggams in HALLELUJAH, BABY! for “Temperance” might surprise you. However, she says this tarot card is “a reminder that everything is constantly changing form,” and that’s logical for this 1967 Best Musical Tony-winner. It traveled from the turn of the 20th century right up to the 1960s and showed the many changes that time had made.
Book trouble made it the only musical to get that Tony after it had been closed. Still, it does have a great Jule Styne, Betty Comden and Adolph Green score that’s enhanced by its orchestrations that reflect each decade’s style of music.
They were by Peter Matz, who was an important building block in Barbra Streisand’s early career. And speaking of her, THE HIRSCHFELD BROADWAY TAROT started me thinking about I CAN GET IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE.
No, not “Miss Marmelstein,” the excellent comedy song that made critics and theatergoers take immediate note of Streisand. What instead came to my mind was “When Gemini Meets Capricorn.” Marilyn Cooper, the future Tony-winner for WOMAN OF THE YEAR, offered her opinion on astrology: “It’s kinda fun to half-believe it.”
So, to all skeptics, you don’t even have to half-believe in tarot cards or what they allege to do in helping your self-exploration or introspection. But you’d better believe that any opportunity to revisit Al Hirschfeld’s masterful caricatures is best not left to chance.
Peter Filichia can be heard most weeks of the year on www.broadwayradio.com. His new day-by-day wall calendar – A SHOW TUNE FOR TODAY – 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year – is now available for pre-order on Amazon.
