Ravinia 2022, Issue 5

ONCE UPON A TIME: ALAN MENKEN’S BROADWAY ALAN MENKEN (b.1949) joined lyricist Glenn Slater and writers Bill and Cheri Stein- kellner in adapting the hit film comedy Sister Act , starring Whoopi Goldberg, for the mu- sical theater stage. The original production at the Pasadena (CA) Playhouse opened on October 24, 2006, and became the venue’s highest-grossing production. Three years later, Sister Act moved to the London Palla- dium in the city’s West End theater district, where it opened on June 2, 2009, and en- joyed an 18-month run. The musical reached the Broadway Theatre on April 20, 2011, in a heavily revised version that ran for 561 per- formances. This production received five Tony Award nominations in 2011, including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Original Score Written for the Theatre, but lost to the juggernaut production of the year— Book of Mormon . Nightclub singer Deloris Van Cartier, the girlfriend of two-timing gangster Curtis Jack- son, stumbles upon Jackson and his cronies committing a murder. She reports the crime to a police officer named Lt. Eddie Souther, enters the witness protection program, and is placed in the last location anyone would ever search for her—a convent. Now known as “Sister Mary Clarence,” she struggles with the holy life of sacrifice and abstinence, escaping briefly to a local bar. For that transgression, Mother Superior orders her to join the choir, a frightful ensemble that she teaches to sing in a disco style. The newly vitalized choir’s reputation spreads, and they are invited to perform before the Pope in a televised per- formance. The gangsters recognize Deloris in her nun’s habit and conspire to infiltrate the convent and kidnap her before the trial, which is hastily rescheduled for the follow- ing day. Deloris’s identify revealed to both gangsters and nuns, she must leave the con- vent. After one night in the outside world, she realizes that her sisters are more important than her singing career. Deloris returns to the convent during choir rehearsal, where she is Alan Menken ambushed by Curtis, who threatens to shoot one of the sisters. Eddie enters in the nick of time, arrests the gangsters, and kisses Deloris. The convent choir welcomes Deloris’s return, and Mother Superior accepts her slightly unconventional “sister.” The entire company sings for the Pope. The historical Newsboys’ Strike of 1899, in which newspaper hawkers in New York City shut down the city’s two largest newspaper publishing companies, provided the storyline for the 2011 musical Newsies by composer Alan Menken with lyrics by Jack Feldman and book by Harvey Fierstein. The Span- ish-American War of 1898 boosted newspa- per sales, prompting publishers to change the pay scale for its lowest-paid workers. News- boys (and girls), mostly children of immi- grants and the poor, sold papers for one pen- ny but now kept only 40% of profits instead of the prewar 50%. Sales volume allowed the paper sellers to collect a meager wage. When the four-month war came to an end, newspa- per sales dropped to normal levels and all but two publishers returned to the 50% pay rate: Joseph Pulitzer of The Evening World and William Randolph Hearst of the New York Evening Journal . Angered by the lost income, “newsies” on Long Island staged a strike, lat- er joined by their compatriots in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The publishers reached a com- promise with the newsies after approximately two weeks. In 1992, Walt Disney Pictures produced a film version of this episode in American labor history with songs by Menken and Feldman. The movie Newsies was an utter flop, and the songwriting team earned the dubious honor of Worst Original Song (“High Times, Hard Times”) at the 13th Golden Raspberry Awards. Twenty years later, Disney resurrected News- ies on Broadway as a fully staged musical at the Nederlander Theatre, following a brief tryout at the Paper Mill Playhouse the previ- ous year. This production struck gold: Men- ken and Feldman won the 2012 Tony Award for Best Original Score, and Menken won the 2012 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music. A film version of the stage musical also became a popular success for Disney. The movie adaptation of Hans Christian An- dersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” originally pub- lished as part of his Fairy Tales Told for Chil- dren (1837), launched the so-called Disney Renaissance in 1989, exactly 30 years after the company’s last animated film, Sleeping Beau- ty . A series of highly popular animated films were released over the next decade, approxi- mately one film per year. Disney executives tapped the acclaimed songwriting team of composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman, whose Little Shop of Horrors had re- cently enjoyed successful Off-Broadway and London runs, to create distinctive musical personalities of the human and merman/ mermaid cast. Audiences greeted the release on November 17, 1989, with widespread en- thusiasm, pouring into the theaters and purchasing home videos in record volume. Menken and Ashman received Academy Awards in 1989 for Best Original Score and Best Original Song (“Under the Sea”). The musical theater adaptation of The Little Mer- maid reached Broadway on January 10, 2008, and closed after 685 performances at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. The show received two Tony Award nominations in 2008, in- cluding Best Original Score. A live Disney film remake is in production, scheduled for release on May 26, 2023. Princess Ariel, the carefree 16-year-old daughter of King Triton (the son of the sea gods Poseidon and Amphitrite), has grown discontented with her underwater existence. She collects human artifacts, secretly observes their celebrations, and longs to join their world on land, even though contact between humans and mermen/mermaids is forbidden. When the handsome Prince Eric washes over the side of his ship during a violent storm, Ariel rescues him from the waves, swims him to shore, and sings a lullaby. Eric awakens to an empty beach and a faint memory of a beau- tiful voice. King Triton discovers his daugh- ter’s disobedience and angrily destroys her collection of human artifacts. Ursula, the sea witch, dispatches her slithery moray eel assis- tants, Flotsam and Jetsam, to lure Ariel with a Mephistophelian offer: Ursula will transform Ariel’s mermaid tail into legs so that she can return to Eric. In exchange, she must sacrifice her voice. The mute Ariel must receive a kiss of true love from Eric within three days or remain human forever. Ursula turns herself into the beautiful Vanessa and, with Ariel’s voice, bewitches Eric. A scuffle during their wedding ceremony releases Ariel’s voice, en- raging Ursula, who grows to gargantuan size and proclaims herself ruler of Atlantica. Eric steers his shattered ship toward the monstros- ity, spearing her with the broken bowsprit. Her death liberates all the captive mermen/ mermaids, including King Triton who grants Ariel permission to marry Eric. Original poster for The Little Mermaid The encounter between Powhatan natives liv- ing on the eastern coast of North America and English representatives of the Virginia Com- pany sent to colonize their lands has produced much mythmaking, romanticization, and controversy over the past four centuries. Walt Disney Pictures chose to emphasize the rela- tionship between the strong-spirited Powha- tan princess Pocahontas and the English ad- miral Capt. John Smith in the 1995 animated film Pocahontas . The voice cast included Irene Bedard, Mel Gibson, Christian Bale, David Ogden Stiers, Linda Hunt, and Billy Connolly. The film reached movie theaters on June 16, 1995. Composer AlanMenken and lyricist Ste- phen Schwartz, who created the soundtrack, won the 1995 Academy Awards for Best Orig- inal Musical or Comedy Score and Best Orig- inal Song (“Colors of the Wind”). In 1607, Capt. John Smith approaches the coast of North America aboard the ship Su- san Constant with a crew and group of set- tlers tasked with establishing a colony named Jamestown. Meanwhile, the native Powhatan people look forward to the wedding of Poca- hontas, the daughter of Chief Powhatan, and the warrior Kocoum. Too free a spirit for mar- riage, Pocahontas shares her dreams and fears with Grandmother Willow, who warns of the impending arrival of English settlers. Upon landing on shore, the colonists begin construc- tion of their settlement and, driven by the av- aricious Governor Ratcliffe, launch the search for gold. John Smith and Pocahontas spend more and more time together, fall in love, and kiss, which provokes an angry response from Kocoum. Defending the captain who had saved him from drowning during the voyage, the young crew member Thomas shoots and kills Kocoum. John orders Thomas back to the settlement and accepts blame for the crime. Chief Powhatan reprimands Pocahontas for her disobedience and sentences Capt. John Smith to death the next morning. Both sides— natives and colonists—prepare for battle. Pocahontas convinces everyone to lay down arms but Ratcliffe is bent on war and fires a shot that strikes John. The Powhatan treat his wounds, but John must return to England to fully recover, leaving Pocahontas behind. One Thousand and One Nights , the epic col- lection of Middle Eastern folk tales known more familiarly as The Arabian Nights , pro- vided the storyline for the movie/musical/ movie Aladdin . Disney released its original animated film in 1992 with a soundtrack by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman and with voicing by Scott Weinger, Linda Larkin, Robin Williams, Gilbert Gottfried, and others. Aladdin earned two Oscars and became the highest-grossing an- imated film ever with more than $500 mil- lion in sales. Its theme song, “A Whole New World” as sung by Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle, won the 1994 Grammy Award for Song of the Year. The musical theater adaptation of Aladdin —book by Chad Beguelin, music by Menken, and lyrics by Ashman, Beguelin, and Tim Rice—opened at Seattle’s Fifth Avenue RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE 29