SONS OF A CHORUS LINE By Peter Filichia
With all the talk about A CHORUS LINE’S 50th anniversary, let’s remember that without this excellent 1975 musical, there wouldn’t have been an excellent 2001 musical.
It told of Edward Kleban, A CHORUS LINE’s lyricist, whose work netted him the Tony, Drama Desk and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards, as well as the Pulitzer Prize.
After that? Kleban planned original musicals (GALLERY), musical versions of plays (A THOUSAND CLOWNS) and films (THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY). He also wrote the music for each because, first and foremost, he considered himself a composer. But none of the shows even reached off-Broadway.
Still, they featured terrific songs, and that they were sitting fallow irked Linda Kline, who’d been his longtime companion before his heartbreaking death from cancer in 1987. She could have arranged the songs into a revue, but she knew that a theatergoer’s hearing one song after another, no matter how great each is, doesn’t offer much emotional appeal.
So, Kline enlisted Lonny Price to collaborate with her on a story that could incorporate some of Kleban’s dozens of songs.
They fictionalized Kleban into a character that they called Harold, whose goals and dreams were to write scores for Broadway musicals. Stephen Schwartz attended a reading, and he suggested they just make the musical about Kleban himself. Producer Marty Bell went one giant step further; he said he would only be involved if Kleban were the main character.
So, Kline and Price slightly changed their story. Now Kleban would be writing a musical about Harold, who would still have the aforementioned goals and dreams.
Where to begin the story? The collaborators chose Kleban’s memorial service that was held on February 12, 1988, 46 days after the 48-year-old’s death. Although it actually took place at the New York Shakespeare Festival, where A CHORUS LINE started, Kline and Price chose the Shubert Theatre, where on that night the musical would play its 5,213th performance (out of the 6,137 it would amass).
The big surprise is that one of the “guests” is Kleban himself. He says that he’s making “a Thornton Wilder return” to hear his friends’ pro and con remarks. One of them suggests that “after CHORUS LINE, nothing happened” because “he was blocked.”
No, Kleban insists, he wrote and wrote. His perfectionism got in the way.
When you hear A CLASS ACT’s 13 tracks, you’ll be surprised that he wasn’t as pleased as you.
The story segues to his stay in a mental institution (yes, you read that right). Kleban should be worried about his state of being, but composer-lyricist that he is, he’s hoping there can be “One More Beautiful Song” in the cosmos.
That song itself proves that Kleban himself provided it.
Once he’s released from the facility, Kleban returns to work at Columbia Records where he produced musical theater albums. One had an original Broadway cast (HALLELUJAH, BABY!). Two had original off-Broadway casts (JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS and NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD MEN). One had a revival cast (SOUTH PACIFIC), and one was a soundtrack (CINDERELLA). Part of his legacy is that they’re all still available in one form or another.
Many of us would have lusted for that job, but Kleban didn’t much like it. He instead lived for “Fridays at Four,” as detailed in the ebullient song Kleban wrote celebrating the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop, where he could air his newest songs and hear those by other writers.
(Wait until you hear the song that another composer-lyricist wrote for a musical about Helen Keller.)
These days, the workshop now includes the words “Lehman Engel” between “BMI” and “Musical,” to honor the founder who taught there for more than two decades. Engel liked to say that he invented the term “charm song” to describe the type of ditty that “makes the audience smile”: “Put on a Happy Face” and “Standing on the Corner” are two well-known ones, but “Go Visit Your Grandmother” (70, GIRLS, 70),“Another Wedding Song” (CLOSER THAN EVER), and “Bargaining” (DO I HEAR A WALTZ?) fit the description, too.
To honor those and others, Kleban wrote one he called – what else? – “Charm Song,” which Kline and Price had Lehman sing.
It’s terrific, but you may be even more impressed with “Paris Through the Window,” which Kleban performs in class, about how he lit up when he first saw the City of Light.
Engel lit up, too. He deemed Kleban his prize pupil even before A CHORUS LINE came into being.
Into every life a little love must fall, and Kleban sure loved the ladies. Kline and Price didn’t use real names here, so don’t infer that there really was a Mona when you hear “Entering Mona.” That title sounds salacious, but Kleban was above making smarmy jokes. “Under Separate Cover” details various items that Kleban sent to a girlfriend, indicating that the box also contains his love.
One of Kleban’s most spritely songs shows what made him quit his day job. He was influenced by a certain French painter who chucked it all to concentrate on his art. Hence the song “Gauguin’s Shoes” which turns into a delightful quodlibet.
(That’s a piece where one song is sung, followed by a different one, and then they’re sung simultaneously, showing that the composer meticulously worked to make them fit together.)
Fast forward to 1972, when a revisal of the 1919 smash-hit IRENE is being readied. New songs are needed, so Engel recommends Kleban, who gets the job.
And loses it, when he doesn’t please director John Gielgud.
Kline and Price were smart to end Act One by having Sophie, the girlfriend that he may well have loved most, buoying him and inspiring him to “Follow Your Star.”
(You won’t be faulted if you infer that she was actually Linda Kline.)
Despite the devastation at losing IRENE, there’s a wisp of a harbinger as the first-act curtain falls: the orchestra plays the vamp from A CHORUS LINE’S finale, “One.” It’s soft and subtle, but it’s there, and reminds us that the story will eventually turn brighter in Act Two.
Yes and no. In “Better,” where Engel and his students all have good news to relate, Kleban has the best of all: “Barbra Streisand is recording one of my songs!”
(An irony: in real life, the song in question actually was “Better.”)
Yes, indeed, Streisand did record it, but when she cherry-picked the songs for her new album, she decided not to include it.
Worse was to come, when Kleban goes to see Sophie. It’s not a mere visit, but an appointment, for Sophie has become an oncologist. Kleban puts on a happy face with “Scintillating Sophie” in order to mask his fear, for he hasn’t felt well lately.
When they were a couple, they had their ups and downs – and more downs. But as Sophie points out, throughout the time they’ve known each other, they’ve had “The Next Best Thing to Love.”
A CLASS ACT was nominated for five Tonys but lost them all to THE PRODUCERS. However, if the awards had a Best Song category (which it should), “The Next Best Thing to Love” would have represented the one prize denied Mel Brooks. Listen and hear what the next best thing to love is, and you may well find yourself nodding your head.
What’s remarkable about A CLASS ACT is that every one of Kleban’s songs feels as if it had been originally and specifically written for Kline and Price’s libretto. Plenty of jukebox musicals have shoehorned their songs into new books; HAPPY NEW YEAR and HIGH SOCIETY immediately come to mind. Here, though, you’d swear that Kleban had still been on the scene writing songs for his life story.
In addition to co-writing the book, Price was A CLASS ACT’S director and star – joining George M. Cohan, Noel Coward, and Anthony Newley as those who’ve had those three credentials for a Broadway musical. But despite his participation and Kline’s, A CLASS ACT remains Edward Kleban’s show.
Peter Filichia can be heard most weeks of the year on www.broadwayradio.com. His calendar – A SHOW TUNE FOR TODAY: 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year – is now available on Amazon.
