They're Playing Our Song - V 7.0

In the World of Len, "They're Playing Our Song" is the big winner.  I have seen no other Broadway show in person more than this musical.  Seven times now, counting the latest production I saw last week at Jason Alexander's Reprise Theater Company in Los Angeles.  I cannot explain why this musical continues to resonate with me.  It is complete serendipity.

My longtime friends will remember when I was first exposed to this show written by Neil Simon with music crafted by Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager.  It was February of 1979 and I saw it about two days after it opened at the Imperial Theater in New York.  The tickets were a birthday present from a good friend of mine. I don't know why, but the whole production with Lucie Arnaz and Robert Klein as the stars just clicked perfectly for me. So much so, that I wound up seeing it another five times.  And I still see it from time to time on You Tube in this clip with horrible audio. 

Admittedly, it's a big pepperoni pizza.  A meal that's essentially not very nutritious, but still tastes so damn good.  It was one of those shows that I simply had to share with all my other friends individually. I must have been incredibly annoying. But the time I had seen it for the final time, I think the leads were being played by Henny Youngman and Ethel Kennedy.

So, years later, back it comes one more time.  When Jason Alexander's Reprise announced they were going to revive it for two weeks with him in the lead, I immediately soaked up two tickets for me and Djinn From The Bronx, my birthday benefactor from decades ago.  As a matter of fact, she is legally forbidden from seeing "They're Playing Our Song" without me.  Off we trooped to UCLA's Freud Playhouse and, for the first time, I saw the show while not wearing a Qiana printed shirt.

The reviews here have been unkind.  It's cheesy.  It's sitcom-ish.  It's unmemorable.

Well, I like cheese.  And sitcoms.  And I fondly remembered it all once again.

Maybe it's a dog whistle with music.  But, "They're Playing Our Song" still hits all the best nerves in my body.  Jokes that are thirty years old still hit the mark with raucous laughs.  And the songs (at least the ones they didn't replace) were infectious.  I wasn't the only one responding.  The audience was quite receptive, despite the fact that most were over the age of 75 and up way past their bedtime Ovaltine.

By the way, when you go to see a show with an audience that has been largely bussed in from a Woodland Hills nursing home, there are several things you need to remember.  Old people don't know how to turn off their newfangled cell phones.  There were buzzes in the audience all night long.  Missed calls, maybe a few malfunctioning pacemakers.  There's a reason why most of them are in bed as soon as Katie Couric signs off the CBS Nightly News.

And, up in the men's room at intermission, two urinals don't cut it when the line is ten deep and has an average age of 90.  All those TV commercials about slow urine flow?  I now know their target audience.  Bladder relief shouldn't take more than five minutes.

And, now back to our show...

While they weren't exactly Robert Klein and Lucie Arnaz, the Reprise leads were just fine, thank you very much.  Jason Alexander is an accomplished stage and musical actor.  He was the right amount of nebbish for the role.  As for Stephanie J. Block, I wouldn't know her from a package of Hostess Ring Dings.  The bio lists a whole passel of Broadway accomplishments and she can add this one to the list.   There's a whole chemistry in the writing as it is.  These two added their own ideal seasonings to the blend.

There was an added treat to the festivities.  A few minutes before the show started, an old guy tottered past me on his way to his front and center seat.  My God, he looks like Marvin Hamlisch if Marvin Hamlisch was really old.  Oops, I forgot.  Marvin Hamlisch is old and that was him.  The composer was acknowledged during the curtain call and he was applauded for both his music and his ability to stand up in one fluid motion.

The Reprise producers, along with the original writers, tinkered with the show to so-so results.  Back when, "They're Playing Our Song" was considered a "light" musical because it had only eight songs.  Okay, so they added several for this one.  And inexplicably removed one of the best ones in the first version, "I Still Believe in Love."  The new Hamlisch-Sager songs included were some retreads of their hits about two dozen years ago.  And one new ditty, "Kill Leon," seemed to have wandered in from the road company of "Young Frankenstein."  It was jarringly bad.

But, I'm quibbling.  It was a great night and I was one of the youngest people in the room.  Taking me back to the original glory of the show of my youth.  When I was still one of the youngest people in the room.

Dinner last night:  Prime rib at Saltgrass in Dallas.