Melbourne Reviews

To many, the “Golden Age of Broadway” is the 1920s and 1930s. Prolific composers like George Gershwin and Cole Porter had many of their biggest hits. Songs from such musicals went on to be popular in their own right, becoming part of the “Great American Songbook”. Of course, many unsuccessful shows have scant records of ever existing. But maybe only a bit of luck kept some composers – like New-Yorker Wilbur Weissman – from fame and longevity. We get to consider whether the works of this neglected artist deserved more in The Forgotten Songbook.  

Somewhat mischievously, the show is not what it might seem from its blurb or promo video. The Melbourne season will be finished by the time this is online, but if you don’t want spoilers for any further season, you should stop reading now.

The big secret (unless you were a reviewer), announced near the show’s end, is that Weissman’s life and works are fictional. Knowing this in advance prevents one from getting excited about a curated tour through the works of an obscure composer. Finding out later might make some audience members feel as if they’ve been had.

The tunes are actually courtesy of composer Emerson Hurley, who also provided piano accompaniment for singers Karla Hillam and Jonathan Guthrie-Jones. Hurley is clearly quite a fan of Broadway songs from the first half of the 20^th century. We could listen to an offering and recognise the influence of a classic like “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)” (by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer for the movie musical The Sky’s the Limit, 1943). The musical content was generally quite agreeable, which certainly demonstrates talent, but some rhymes could be a touch strained. We may start to wonder whether making tunes that reference classics so heavily is achieving much more than a form of musical recycling.

We could be nudged into this kind of thinking by some quite odd choices made in the production. Both Hillam and Guthrie-Jones are capable in their roles, whether this is through their singing, or the liberal sprinkling of dance routines, which effectively recalled the era. However, Guthrie-Jones, from very early on, had a habit of making big facial expressions. Some would have noted the similarity to Jim Carrey well before the performer acknowledged this likeness. The schtick risks undercutting the sincerity that schmaltzy love songs need in order for an audience to treat them seriously, at least for the purposes of the story around them.

This kind of wrinkle suggests that, whilst there may be a lot of ideas amongst the ensemble, the show might have benefitted from a scrutiny of whether they all deserved a place.

Some choices were just odd, maybe due to a lack of historical awareness, like the tune about the McCarthy hearings on “Un-American Activities” of the early 1950s. Such a flippant treatment didn’t seem appropriate for hearings that disrupted careers and ruined lives.

There’s also a b-story of a dispute between Hallam and Guthrie-Jones that appears late in the second act, and which is resolved very quickly and neatly. It feels too late in the piece to try and connect Weissman’s obscurity to the difficulty of performers like Hillam and Guthrie-Jones have had in getting their big break.

From a musical standpoint, Hurley is a talented pianist, able to inflect tunes with the kind of melancholy or hopefulness that makes the best Broadway offerings much more than a nice melody. There were some amusing, almost-believable reasons why some of Weissman’s seemingly solid musicals ran into difficulties that sunk their runs.

Hallam and Guthrie-Jones harmonise well. They also effectively mimicked scenes popularised by vintage Broadway, say from the “screwball” (“battle of the sexes”) comedies that still influence comedy today.

Let’s consider this short run akin to an off-Broadway trial. After some tightening, I suspect that Wilbur Weissman could yet have more to say about the randomness of fame.