REVIEW: Jerry Herman’s “Mack and Mabel” at Encores!
Jerry Herman didn’t want to write it.
Following the failure of “Dear World” in 1969, he swore he’d never again pen a title song for one of his musicals. After all, how could he ever hope to match the lighting-struck-twice success of “Hello, Dolly!” and “Mame”?
Nevertheless, producer David Merrick demanded.
And so, “When Mabel Comes in the Room”—not quite titular but clearly filling the role—tops act two of “Mack and Mabel”, Herman’s ill-fated 1974 collaboration with bookwriter Michael Stewart that would end up being his greatest flop on Broadway, closing after only 66 performances and sending him, heartbroken, into a period of semi-retirement in California.
And yet, it is this moment, atop act two, when the new Encores! production of “Mack and Mabel” that opened last night at New York City Center finally comes to life most vividly, reaching heights of musical theatre ecstasy that few but Herman could ever conceive, let alone execute. It’s heaven.
“When Mabel Comes in the Room” is the non-title “Jerry Herman title song” we never knew we had, one that slyly builds and builds toward a jubilant and satisfying frenzy that has the effect of causing autonomic bursts of happy tears and grinning smiles across an auditorium of 2,000 strangers.
It simultaneously symbolizes all that is right and all that is wrong about this rarely-seen musical gem: a boffo song that serves a dramatically ill-founded moment.
The cast of “Mack and Mabel” perform “When Mabel Comes in the Room”. Photo by Joan Marcus
A tragic love story set in the silent film comedy world of the 1910s and 1920s, “Mack and Mabel” is a musical flashback narrated by groundbreaking film director Mack Sennett (Douglas Sills) as he reflects on his heyday at the birth of the movie industry in Brooklyn on the eve of his famed studio shuttering in 1938 following the rise of “talkies”.
The abrasive and despotic Mack discovers lovable deli clerk Mabel Normand (Alexandra Socha) and makes her a mega-star of the “two-reeler” slapstick flickers. Nicknamed the female Charlie Chaplin in her prime, Mabel falls hard and fast for Mack, her Svengali, but he’s incapable of expressing his love for her, or even making the simplest gestures of affection. Herman’s masterfully terse lyrics to Mack’s non-love song, “I Won’t Send Roses”, reveal more about his character than pages of scene work could ever do.
The company ships out to nascent Hollywood, where Mack creates his iconic “Bathing Beauties” and “Keystone Kops” but can’t cope with Mabel’s desire to prove herself as an “artist” with “integrity” amid pratfalls and pies in the face. The movies are what bind Mack and Mabel together, and what tear them apart.
After Mabel discovers Mack with silent film star Mae Busch, she leaves him to go work for director William Desmond Taylor (Michael Berresse). After five years estranged, she returns in act two, only to find Mack unchanged and unchangeable. She leaves him once again, but soon descends into drug abuse—“pills, powder, and dust”—and tawdry tabloid gossip, ultimately dying at the age of 38 before she and Mack can ever find a happy ending together.
That tragic ending—the true love story—is the most controversial aspect of “Mack and Mabel”. It is what keeps it from being the buoyant romp audiences expected in 1974, but it is also what allows the musical to operate on a deeper, more lasting level, because the story of Mack and Mabel taps into universal truths about the human condition—the heartbreak of love, the joy of creation, and the anguish of two people who are inexorably drawn to each other but just can’t ever seem to make it work.
That’s as a common a romance as any “happy ending” provides. After all, happy endings are only happy because that’s where the authors choose to stop telling the story (see: “Into the Woods”). The tension between the sadness of Mack and Mabel’s unrealized relationship and the joyfulness of the work they made together is not as discordant as decades of lore about this musical suggest.
Indeed, for all the fuss, “Mack and Mabel”—at least as presented at Encores! with book revisions by Francine Pascal, sister of the late-Michael Stewart—is tonally cohesive, with Herman’s superlative tunes appropriately punctuating moments of bliss, like Mack’s creation of the “Bathing Beauties” (“Hundreds of Girls”) and “Keystone Kops” (“Hit ‘Em on the Head”), underscoring more painful and bittersweet ones (“I Won’t Sent Roses” and “Time Heals Everything”), and even introducing an uncharacteristic dose of Kander and Ebb-style theatrical irony with “Tap Your Troubles Away”, overlaying a funny vaudeville number by Lottie Ames (Lilli Cooper) with scenes of Mabel’s abuse and the murder of Taylor.
The musical starts without an overture or a big splashy number, but instead a scene introducing an angry and bitter Mack Sennett (the sublime “Overture” on the cast album was originally, in fact, the entr’acte, and is presented as such here), and progresses at a workman’s pace through all of act one, setting up the story and introducing characters. The most successful scenes and production numbers exist in act two, and that’s when the show really takes off. It’s a shame it takes as long as it does.
Legendary director and choreographer Gower Champion was the third creative force behind the crafting of “Mack and Mabel” in 1974, after Herman and Stewart, and his mark can still be felt in that progression of songs in act two, choreographed with showbiz flavor and pizzazz by director Josh Rhodes.
The Keystone Kops ballet, cut for Broadway but restored in every production since, gives a cheerful look at what made silent comedy all the rage, though Mr. Rhodes and company could benefit from more time to hone the precision required of the style. By Sunday, they might just get there.
Major Attaway as Fatty Arbuckle performs “Hit ‘Em On the Head”, the Keystone Kops ballet. Photo by Joan Marcus
Champion was unable to match the magic of the movies, interpolated through the use of video projection in 1974, with the stage business of his live performers. Mr. Rhodes smartly corrects for this film action vs. stage action competition by eschewing the text’s direction and withholding the use of any video projection until the closing moments of the show when Mabel is finally shown in all her youthful glory, a mournful juxtaposition to her untimely death.
That was the moment that made me weep, when everything heretofore presented clicked into place.
With the always-superb Encores! orchestra on full display, under the leadership of music director Rob Berman, Mr. Rhodes takes a nod from Champion and original set designer Robin Wagner’s concept, placing the show in a movie studio, and maintaining that sense of ersatz silent film scene-setting throughout with the use of props and flats that establish a consistent, enchanting, and impermanent atmosphere (set design by Allen Moyer).
Ms. Socha’s Mabel has a spine of steel that belies a delicate exterior, and a wonderfully expressive face made for the medium of silent film. She delivers a portrait of great vulnerability and persistence, never more present than in scenes with Mack. Her performance on opening night gives the impression of one that will only continue to deepen and grow as this seven performance run progresses and she discovers how to fill the expanse of City Center’s auditorium while maintaining the intimate gestures that give her performance such power.
Mr. Sills’ Mack bellows, growls, and barks as the script calls for, but also displays a winning confidence and a complicated masking of his true emotions. Mr. Sills sings Herman’s score with gusto, and effortlessly shifts back and forth from being in the story and commenting on it as narrator—a tricky feat aided by Ken Billington’s effective lighting design (blues and greens for the narration, reds and oranges for the scenes).
Alexandra Socha as Mabel and Douglas Sills as Mack. Photo by Joan Marcus
The two are an undeniably good pair, as they were when they presented the first two songs from “Mack and Mabel” at “Hey, Look Me Over!” for Encores! in 2018.
But despite re-writes by Ms. Pascal, and decades of handwringing, the genesis of Mack and Mabel’s love story comes down to just two scenes on a train early in act one that still fail to establish a strong enough basis upon which to hang the rest of their story.
Likewise, we don’t see enough of Mabel’s relationships with her fellow actors and crew members to earn that great return in act two (“When Mabel Comes in the Room”), and the device of Mack’s narration robs us of an equal look into the mind of Mabel—an imbalance caked into the very structure of the musical.
The characters of vaudeville hoofer Lottie Ames (Ms. Cooper), screenwriter Frank (Ben Fankhauser)—who is in love with Mabel—comedian Fatty Arbuckle (Major Attaway), and a new composite character named Freddie (Evan Kasprzak), sidekick to Fatty, aren’t fully sketched, but nevertheless provide foils for Mack and Mabel, even as haphazardly realized on the page, and add doses of vitality to the story. Ms. Cooper, in particular, radiates a star quality, and brings new humor and insight to her interpretation of the eleven o’clock number, “Tap Your Troubles Away”.
“Mack and Mabel” is not a forgotten masterpiece, but rather a beloved curiosity. It’s a musical that has all the right elements—a fascinating true story set in a rich milieu, a bounty of complicated characters, and a score that is among the best in musical theatre history.
And it’s a musical that, as Encores! Artistic Director Jack Viertel puts it, almost works—and that might just yet with the benefit of more time—but nevertheless, still falls short, just like the romance of its central characters.
In the end, the greatest gift Encores! provides is a chance to see a show like “Mack and Mabel” staged without compromise, with a 28 piece orchestra and a 30 member cast of top-notch musical theatre talent who miraculously put together a Broadway-quality performance in just 12 days of rehearsal.
After 46 years, audiences at New York City Center finally have a chance to see what “Mack and Mabel” is all about. The result is bittersweet—both thrilling and sad. Like its titular characters, the show is flawed, and that is, and will always be, part of its irresistible beauty.
Listen to my episode of “The Fabulous Invalid” podcast all about this production of “Mack and Mabel” HERE
Bottom Line: After 46 years away from New York, audiences at City Center finally have a chance to see what Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart’s 1974 flop “Mack and Mabel” is all about thanks to a new Encores! production. The result is bittersweet—both thrilling and sad. Jerry Herman’s score shines, alongside performances by Douglas Sills, Alexandra Socha, Lilli Cooper, and a top-notch ensemble, and the atmosphere of old Hollywood is superbly spun. Still, this is not a musical masterpiece, but a beloved curiosity—a good musical that almost works. Perhaps someday, it might.
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“Mack and Mabel”
Encores!
New York City Center
131 West 55th Street
New York, NY
Running time: 2 hours and 35 minutes (one intermission)
Remaining Performances:
Thursday, February 20th at 8PM
Friday, February 21st at 8PM
Saturday, February 22nd at 2PM and 8PM
Sunday, February 23rd at 2PM and 7PM
Discount Tickets
