Review by Ron Fassler
I’m a longtime fan of MasterVoices, a performing arts organization which continues to thrive after undergoing many changes in its long history. Founded in 1941, it has been under the artistic leadership and baton of Ted Sperling since 2013. Sperling, a Tony Award winner for his orchestrations for The Light in the Piazza (2005) conducts the MasterVoices hundred plus all-volunteer chorus and its thirty plus orchestra. Their mission with these once-a-year concerts is to perform neglected masterpieces of the American musical theatre (actors perform with books in their hands). I attended last evening’s one-night only presentation of George and Ira Gershwin Strike Up the Band, culled from two versions; one in 1927, which closed out of town, and one in 1930, which rewrote its story and plotline. I thoroughly enjoyed prio MasterVoices presentations of Gershwins’ Of Thee I Sing in 2017 and its sequel, the lesser known Let ‘Em Eat Cake, in 2019, so I was hoping that their getting to the rarely produced Strike Up the Band would be a fun romp. All have books by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind and here Sperling and Laurence Maslon have dilligently culled together sometime new (maybe, I don’t know) from the two prior productions. I’d love to report this worked out well, but it has not. In spite of offering some of the best Broadway talent around the night fell flat and clocked in at approaching three hours.

I don’t think it’s a good use of space to get into its cheesy story. And by that I mean it involves a cheese baron who starts a war with Switzerland for reasons that only a musical comedy would attempt. Now this is patently ridiculous and it’s supposed to be, which is fine. I guess my hope was that with Kaufman once having written for the Marx Brothers that Strike Up the Band might have a similar brand of the brothers’ rich and satirical comic anarchy. It does not (though that’s precisely what the show was going for). The first version in 1927 closed out of town and a reworked one played Broadway for six months in 1930. Whoever’s responsible for the jokes in this version shouldn’t even take credit as they’re awful. You’re in trouble when someone with the incredible comic energy of Christopher Fitzgerald can’t make anything land. It’s not about the age of the writing—Shakespeare and Molière can still be funny—it’s the probability that it wasn’t very funny to begin with. The biggest mistake of all is to offer up a new book in its entirety in the cavernous Carnegie Hall, acoustically challenging and hardly built for comedy. The singing and the orchestra sounded great, but whenever the dialogue kicked it, it was deadly. The evening would have been much better served if the book had been pared back to the bare minimum (Encores! has done this off and on with excellent results over the years). My suspicion is that by showing off the work they did on a new book that Sperling and Maslon are hoping this will make the show one that might get produced regionally. I doubt it highly. When a character shouts, “This is calumny of the first order!” what audience are they shooting for? Grammar enthusiasts?

I’ll confess that when the overture began and a solo clarinet was heard, thoughts of “Rhapsody in Blue” filled my head and heart. But the music hardly reaches any of those heights. Yes, the title number is a catchy march and the show is responsible for producing one true standard, “The Man I Love.” What the score does is lean purposely and heavily into Gilbert and Sullivan. But even more than G & S, the way the chorus responded in their songs sounded more like ditties composed for Marx Brothers films (again with the Brothers on the brain). I guess it’s because of how much fun it would be to see their recklessness let loose on this silly stuff.
There’s some really fun and charming choreography from Alison Solomon. Sperling takes credit for directing the actors and again, with such limited rehearsal time, everyone certainly attempted their best, some successfully and others less so. I was taken with Bryce Pinkham’s old fashioned tenor sound and Shereen Ahmed is a sight to see as well as a voice to listen to, especially when matched with Pinkham. They’re grand on the aforementioned “The Man I Love,” the best song in the score, as well as another lovely duet “Hoping that Someday You’d Care,” previously unbeknownst to me. Claybourne Elder lent his excellent voice to the little he had to sing and David Pittu certainly knows his way around creating a comic character, but oh the material is so weak. Victoria Clark was on hand (sounding better than ever) and Phillip Attmore and Lissa deGuzman contributed some really nice dance moves in their adorable duet, an up tempo “I’ve Got a Crush on You,” which I assume is how the song was first written. Having been introduced to it by Frank Sinatra more than fifty years ago, it was an ear opener to hear it sung briskly minus the tender longing. Sadly, the role of the CEO who starts the war was ill-fitted to John Ellison Conlee’s talents. It needs someone like Guy Kibbee from the old Warner Bros. musicals of the 1930s or JK Simmons at his most comedically brusque.

I’m sorry to report that Strike Up the Band doesn’t make the case that it’s any sort of neglected masterpiece. Perhaps just listening to the fine 1991 studio cast recording that’s still in print and features Brent Barrett, Rebecca Luker and Jason Graae is all you really need.
Strike Up the Band was at Carnegie Hall October 29. For more information on MasterVoices visit: https://www.mastervoices.org
Photos by Toby Tennenbaum.
Headline photo: Justin Keats, Fiona Claire Huber, and Derek Luscutoff in Strike up the Band.