Thursday, March 28, 2024
Miles from the Mainstream
D. R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor

On the Brits and "Mack and Mabel"

March 19, 2021 --

LPR has a hunch the Brits appreciate Jerry Herman's  marvelous "Mack and Mabel" a lot more than us Yanks.   This notion is not contradicted by Torvill and Dean's use of the show's overture in their program for the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, or their subsequent use of the song "I Won't Send Roses," in their exhibition in Sarajevo, after winning the gold medal for ice-dancing. The link to that 1984 exhibition is not of the best quality, but LPR wants its clicksters to appreciate just how deeply the Brits care for Jerry Herman's score.  Productions of "Mack and Mabel "in the U.K. have continued since the first production some forty years ago..  Think, too, of that wonderful rendition of "Tap Your Troubles Away" by the John Wilson Orchestra (JWO), featuring Anna Jane Casey at the 2012 BBC Proms.   

LPR, being on record as calling for a JWO American tour, has recently learned that the JWO and singers produce Broadway revivals. Accordingly, LPR has a strong hunch that a JWO production of "Mack and Mabel" on Broadway, after the lights go back on, will get rave reviews and run for a year or more. (The critics were cool to the original, even with Robert Preston and Bernadette Peters as leads.) What do you say, Maestro Wilson?  And, as the JWO is, LPR believes, the true symphonic heir to Arthur Fiedler's Boston Pops, LPR would like to see a JWO Tribute to  Arthur Fiedler, the great conductor who brought great music to the American people at large.  Their conducting styles are rather different, but it seems to LPR that Maestro Wilson, somehow, has inherited Maestro Fiedler's musical DNA.

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