"Okay, I Give Up"

I have never done this before. 

There was supposed to be another entry in this series, but I am abandoning the project and I am calling it a day.

Here’s what I was hoping to do, and I failed.

I wanted to communicate to you the sensations I experienced watching some iconic performances in live musicals.  The thing is, the cliché holds true.

You had to be there.

Skillful writers can convey an emotion.  My intention, however, was to the cut out the middleman – the problematical me – and show you archival footage of those actual performances. 

The trouble is…

They didn’t make any.

Or hardly any.  With the exception of my first offering, Gwen Verdon’s delightful “If they could see me now…” from Sweet Charity which seemed like it derived directly from the actual production, my selected examples wound up being a reprised rendition from an awards show (Zero Mostel’s “If I Were A Rich Man”), two original cast audio recordings (“The Bum Won” from Fiorello! and Barbra Steisand in I Can Get It For You Wholesale) and a movie sampling from The Music Man, which I never saw onstage anyway although I did see all the others (Robert Preston’s “You’ve Got Trouble.”)

Finding no YouTube selections from the original onstage productions, there was nothing really I could show you.  At least not the way I intended to.  (Exception With An Explanation:  I saw a clip of Ron Moody’s onstage rendition of  “Reviewing the Situation” from Oliver! But the visual quality was so terrible, I had to give it a pass.)

Oh well.  I guess I made a mistake.  (I am reminded of Kramer’s agonizingly agitated, “I didn’t think it through!”)

Today, I shall bow out with an inimitable Force of Nature.  The clips comes from some TV show.  

Still…

Imagine seeing this in person.

Which I almost did.   We were outside the theater and I really wanted to get tickets.  But my mother thought the show was too adult for me, especially watching it with her.  So I missed it.

I wish I hadn’t.

Ladies and gentlemen…

My Grand Finale.

The “I never saw it in person” version of the “not taken directly from the stage version” of, well…

Curtain up!

Light the lights!