Talkin’ Broadway: Sweet Charity (Apr. 21st, 2024) Study Guide.
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Sweet Charity (Apr. 21, 2024)
Study Guide:
Talkin’ Broadway - Sweet Charity
April 21st, 2024 | 2-4pm
West Bloomfield Library
4600 Walnut Lake Rd,
West Bloomfield Township, MI 48323
Co-Hosts:
Liz Lombard is an acclaimed singer, actor, improv artist, and pediatric occupational therapist. Her career in musicals led her to earn her master's degrees in occupational therapy, specializing in sensory processing and pediatrics. She founded The Sensory Concierge to support neurodiverse families as they step outside their daily routines to attend concerts, shows, and other special events. Favorite roles include Miss Clavel in national tour of Madeline and the Bad Hat, May in Age of Innocence, Merry-Go-Round, Hope in the Fringe Festival’s Storytime with Mr. Butterman, and Tracy Partridge in the Fringe Festival’s The Bardy Bunch. She can be found most evenings performing a variety of show tunes for her 3-year old twins, while her husband dances along (quite well!).
GENERAL NOTES:
Sweet Charity is a musical with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields and book by Neil Simon. It was directed and choreographed for Broadway by Bob Fosse starring his wife and muse Gwen Verdon alongside John McMartin. The musical premiered on Broadway in 1966, where it was nominated for nine Tony Awards, winning the Tony Award for Best Choreography. The production also ran in the West End as well as having revivals and international productions.
Premiered and Notable Productions - After a tryout at the Shubert Theatre in Philadelphia starting Monday, December 6, 1965, it moved to Detroit's Fisher Theatre for a month, and then premiered on Broadway at the Palace Theatre on January 29, 1966, and closed on July 15, 1967, after 608 performances and 10 previews. It was conceived, directed, and choreographed by Bob Fosse, who wrote the original libretto under the pen-name "Bert Lewis", from Robert Louis Fosse.The show starred Gwen Verdon, John McMartin, Helen Gallagher, Thelma Oliver, James Luisi, Arnold Soboloff, Sharon Ritchie, Ruth Buzzi, and Barbara Sharma. Scenic and lighting design were by Robert Randolph and costume design was by Irene Sharaff. The production was nominated for 9 Tony Awards, winning for Fosse's choreography.
1966 Broadway starring Gwen Verdon
1967 West End
1986 Broadway revival
2005 Broadway revival starring Christina Applegate
2006 US tour
2009 West End revival
2016 Off-Broadway starring Sutton Foster
Synopsis - Charity Hope Valentine always tries to look on the bright side of life, despite working in a rundown dance hall and contending with a seemingly endless run of bad dates. The show starts off with her getting pushed into a lake by current beau Charlie, after which he steals her purse. Charity details the account to her coworkers at the dance hall, convincing herself and skeptical dancers Nicki and Helene that Charlie actually tried to save her. Determined to find love, Charity falls for suave actor Vittorio Vidal, but their romance is all too brief after a rendezvous in his apartment leads to an awkward closet-eye-view of Vittorio reconciling with an ex-mistress. However, when Charity finds herself stuck in an elevator with the reserved Oscar Lindquist, it turns out that she may have finally met her match. After going on several dates, Charity keeps her heart on her sleeve but her occupation close to her chest. Oscar proposes to Charity and they plan to get married. Unfortunately, Oscar calls off the wedding after realizing he will always worry about the “other men '' involved in Charity’s occupation, which he knew about the entire time. Heartbroken and confused, Oscar pushes Charity into the lake, just like the beginning, to free her from the coils of her job. Oscar runs off, and Charity emerges from the water addressing the audience with, “Did you ever have one of those days?” A fairy ends up joining Charity for a brief moment and she is reminded that at least she has her purse this time. She walks off into the sunset as signs read “And she lived…hopefully…ever after.” *HOWEVER, this ending has been changed many times to reflect more modern ideas and bring more dynamic change to Charity herself.
Themes - Some argue that you could not produce this musical today, or that a revival of this particular show is a tricky balancing act. Critics claim the most recent iteration, starring Sutton Foster, in 2016, was mostly successful in moving in a more modern direction. The director, Leigh Silverman, found that the story is fundamentally about women endangered by men, poverty, and a lack of education. Transposing the turbulent “Where Am I Going?” from its original position in the middle of the second act and combining it with a haunting reprise of the opening number, “You Should See Yourself,” Silverman’s production ends not with hope or moxie but a nervous breakdown.
1967 Film
Sweet Charity (full title: Sweet Charity: The Adventures of a Girl Who Wanted to Be Loved) is a 1969 American musical comedy-drama film directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse in his feature directorial debut, written by Peter Stone, and featuring music by Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields.
The film stars Shirley MacLaine and features John McMartin, Chita Rivera, Paula Kelly, Stubby Kaye, Ricardo Montalbán, Sammy Davis Jr., and Barbara Bouchet. It is based on the 1966 stage musical of the same name – also directed and choreographed by Fosse – which in turn is based on Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, and Tullio Pinelli's screenplay for Fellini's film Nights of Cabiria (Le Notti di Cabiria, 1957). Whereas Fellini's film concerns the romantic ups-and-downs of an ever-hopeful prostitute, the musical makes the central character a dancer-for-hire at a Times Square dance-hall.
Anyone who saw the recent series about Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon will be aware that Ms. V did not get the lead role in Sweet Charity when it was produced as a film, even though Fosse directed. It’s still the same old story… Andrews / Hepburn. But that aside, Shirley MacLaine should be lauded for her performance, as coached by Ms Verdon.
Source Material - Based on the screenplay for the 1957 Italian film Nights of Cabiria. However, whereas Federico Fellini's black-and-white film concerns the romantic ups-and-downs of an ever-hopeful prostitute, in the musical the central character is a dancer-for-hire at a Times Square dance hall. Rome was changed to New York, and Cabiria (meaning prostitute) as Charity’s profession was changed to a taxi dancer in the American musical version.
Creative Team & Background - Sweet Charity is based on the 1957 Frederico Fellini film Nights of Cabiria about a prostitute with a heart of gold who is in search of real love. When it was adapted as a stage musical, it was decided to tone her profession down by making her a dance hall hostess. Sweet Charity is the story of how this optimistic girl (named Charity), who literally wears her heart on her sleeve (tattoo) as she wends her way through a parade of men who treat her badly. It’s hard not to see her as pathetic because of how desperate she seems, but it is also hard not to root for her because she genuinely deserves to be loved.
Sweet Charity has a book by Neil Simon, an episodic story where we get to watch Charity put herself through an obstacle course of heartache to find love. It is a testament to Simon’s ability to shape loveable characters that he manages to keep us interested.
Bob Fosse (creator/director, choreographer) Bob Fosse was a choreographer, director, performer, and visionary changemaker in the theatre world. Beginning in the 1950s, he reshaped Broadway dancing with his innovative and influential choreography that was as precise as it was sensual. His moves set several of musical theatre’s most famous shows in motion, and the dancing is now just as iconic as the songs and stories.
Dance is intrinsic to the success of any production of Sweet Charity. This may have something to do with the fact that the original production was conceived, directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse, and that he shaped it to be a vehicle for his muse (and wife), accomplished dancer Gwen Verdon. Fosse made Sweet Charity a dance show, and frankly, the musical just doesn’t work without a strong choreographer helping to tell the story, and an amazing dancer in the lead. Fosse used his usual tangle of angled contortions executed by limber, precise dancers, and this is what truly made Sweet Charity an event. It is an impressionist work painted in broad strokes of heightened movement. It is a ballet about the heart and a modern dance piece about the mind.
Bob Fosse's Iconic Choreography from Sweet Charity | TUNE
So mesmerizing!!!!! Musical punctuation at it’s finest. You can almost feel all the moves in your bones just sitting there watching!
What is Fosse? Fosse’s full-bodied signature jazz choreography created a style and a language that speaks for itself. Movements, and stillness, are meticulous. His signature jazz moves include curved shoulders, hip rolls and thrusts, turned-in knees and toes, sideways shuffling, insistent finger snaps, and the famous jazz hands. Hats, particularly bowlers, are a classic Fosse tool to make the dance more dynamic.
Neil Simon (book) Neil Simon began his career writing comedy for some of radio and television's top talents in the 1940s. Turning to the stage, he enjoyed his first major hit with Barefoot in the Park in 1963, and later scored Tony Awards for The Odd Couple (1965), Biloxi Blues (1985) and Lost in Yonkers (1991). Simon also became a successful screenwriter, earning acclaim for both original and adapted works. In addition to his numerous Tony and Academy Award nominations, Simon in 1983 became the first living playwright to have a Broadway theater named in his honor. He passed away on August 26, 2018, due to complications of pneumonia.
Music - Cy Coleman (music) and Dorothy Fields (lyrics) conjured a bouquet of songs that evoke whimsy, heartache, humor, and determination. The music takes us into the mind of a character whose emotions are traveling at high velocity. Her big numbers “You Should See Yourself”, “If My Friend Could See Me Now”, and “I’m A Brass Band” explode with vitality and strong character development. The musical’s most well-known number “Big Spender” is a cool, detached number for a chorus line of dance hall girls who have become emotionally detached in order to do their jobs. “There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This” is a frenetic, visceral cry for these same ladies who dream of getting out of their ten-cents a dance profession.
Cy Coleman (composer) Cy Coleman was an American composer, songwriter, and jazz pianist. Born Seymour Kaufman to Eastern European Jewish parents and raised in the Bronx, Coleman was a child prodigy at the piano; starting at the age of six, he was giving recitals at Steinway Hall, Town Hall, and Carnegie Hall. He studied composition, conducting, and orchestration at New York City’s High School for the Performing Arts and at the New York College of Music, but instead of devoting himself to classical music as expected, he turned to jazz. He formed and led the Cy Coleman Trio, enjoying great popularity as a club attraction and recording artist.
Cy Coleman’s first successes as a writer of popular songs were shared with lyricist Joseph Allen McCarthy (“The Riviera”), but he soon teamed up with Broadway veteran Carolyn Leigh to score several single hits (“Witchcraft,” “The Best Is Yet To Come”) and to write musicals Wildcat (for Lucille Ball’s Broadway debut, 1960) and Little Me (with Sid Caesar in multiple roles, 1962). Coleman had not, however, found Carolyn Leigh easy to work with and, meeting Dorothy Fields at a party, asked her to collaborate with him. The result was Sweet Charity (1966), with book by Neil Simon, and starring Gwen Verdon, and two more joint projects, one a work on Eleanor Roosevelt which was abandoned, and Seesaw (1973), which enjoyed a substantial Broadway run.
Dorothy Fields (lyrics) - lyricist and librettist, was born in Allenhurst, NJ. Her father, born Lewis Maurice Schoenfeld, was famous as a member of the comedy duo Weber and Fields, but left performing in the year of Dorothy’s birth to become a successful Broadway impressario. Although Lew Fields cautioned his children against pursuing careers in the theater, Dorothy’s two older brothers, Joseph and Herbert, also became successful on Broadway, the former as a writer and producer, and the latter as a writer and Dorothy’s sometime collaborator. Dorothy collaborated with a number of Broadway’s top composers during the heyday of American musical theatre, producing the lyrics for many classic shows. She was one of the first successful Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood female songwriters.
Fields’ work habits were highly disciplined. Typically, she would spend eight weeks researching, discussing, and making notes on a project, before settling into an 8:30 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. daily work routine. She worked at a bridge table in her apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and preferred to write with pencil on a yellow legal pad. She kept notebooks in which she copied passages from Dryden, Shaw, and Thoreau; unusual synonyms for commonly used words; humorous proverbs; rhyming phrases; odd-sounding words; and anything else that might come in handy in writing a lyric. Tall, slender, and well dressed, with chestnut hair and hazel eyes, she spoke well and was active in charitable causes throughout her life.
Her penultimate musical, “Sweet Charity,” written with composer Cy Coleman and librettist Neil Simon, was the biggest hit of the 1965-1966 season. Songs such as “Big Spender” and “If My Friends Could See Me Now” proved that Fields, despite her advancing age, had not lost her knack for up-to-the-minute slang and phraseology. In 1971, Fields became the first woman inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Her last show, “Two for the Seesaw” (1973), also written with Coleman, was not a popular success, but her lyrics were praised for their evocation of modern life in New York. She died at home in New York City.
Fun Facts -
The ending has been changed many times! SWEET CHARITY endings 1966-2010
In the original ending, Oscar decides he cannot marry Charity because he’s worried about all of the “other men” she dances with.
The Origin of Sweet Charity
It was originally going to be a one act–to be called “Two Choruses of Melancholy Baby.” They had Elaine May write a straight play one act “The Larger World of Fate” or “Cops and Robbers” to base a musical off of. It was a play about Verdon being a cat burglar. Too similar to Drag the Cat musical, so they moved on.
When Fosse couldn’t get the rights to the play Chicago to turn into a musical, he found Nights at Cabiria for his new wife Gwen. Martin Charnin, who wrote Annie and more, was originally on board to write the book, but Fosse ghosted him. He attended opening night with a stenographer to write down every word that was said, in order to see what of his original writing was retained for the broadway premiere.
How Neil Simon join the team!
Fosse needed help with the script since he was now writing it by himself, so he called up his good friend Neil Simon for some notes. He knew he needed to get Simon on board, so he played them Big Spender and Simon agreed!
Simon came on so late that most printed compositions of the show had his writing pseudonym, Bert Lewis! This eventually changed for Broadway billing.
Special Treatment
Producers turned the Palace Vaudeville theatre into a Broadway theatre just for Sweet Charity!
Badass Verdon
Verdon had a sore throat for some of the run, feeling like something was stuck in her throat. She was right: a feather from a boa, part of one of her Charity costumes, had lodged itself in her vocal chords. She sang every night, pushing through the pain, up until no sound would come out. She took a week off from the show and had it surgically removed.
Late in Verdon’s run, when she got a bit tired, she would cut her Act II ballad “Where Am I Going” to save energy (and she never liked it in the first place). One patron complained of this shift, noticing it right away as this was THE song he went to see the show for, and demanded his money back. He wrote letters to Vernon exclaiming that he felt “cheated” to have missed this moment he paid money for. Verdon did the math to find out just how much money that song would have cost in the fraction of his ticket price, and sent him a check with that amount.
Historical Context-
Feminism and the 1960s
Since the 19th century, women have been protesting against men in the struggle for sexual equality. The movement became known as the struggle for feminism. Feminism is a social and political movement that is most generally concerned with the relationship between sex, gender, and power. Feminists are especially concerned with patriarchy (rule by men, or a gender hierarchy in which men dominate or exploit women). When feminism began in the 1800’s, it started as a response to the perception that women are oppressed and subordinate to men. Society held women down until the first organized woman’s rights convention at Seneca Falls in New York in 1848. After this convention, the movement known as feminism began. Feminists are split into two separate categories, depending on the era and decade. The early feminists are referred to as the first wave, and the feminists during and after the 1960’s are referred to as the second wave. During the second wave of feminists, specifically during the 1960’s, there was a large focus on the “de jure” (officicially mandated) and “de facto” (unofficially mandated) inequalities. There were largely concerned with issues of quality, such as the end to discrimination and oppression.
A taxi dancer is a paid dance partner in a ballroom dance. Taxi dancers work (sometimes for money but not always) on a dance-by-dance basis. When taxi dancing first appeared in taxi-dance halls during the early 20th century in the United States, male patrons typically bought dance tickets for a small sum each. When a patron presented a ticket to a chosen taxi dancer, she danced with him for the length of a song. She earned a commission on every dance ticket she received. Though taxi dancing has for the most part disappeared in the United States, it is still practiced in some other countries.
The term "taxi dancer" comes from the fact that, as with a taxi-cab driver, the dancer's pay is proportional to the time they spend dancing with the customer. Patrons in a taxi-dance hall typically purchased dance tickets for ten cents each, which gave rise to the term "dime-a-dance girl". Other names for a taxi dancer are "dance hostess" and "taxi" (in Argentina). In the 1920s and 1930s, the term "nickel hopper" gained popularity in the United States because out of each dime-a-dance, the taxi dancer typically earned five cents.
The Presidential Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW) and National Organization for Women (NOW)
There were numerous major events organized by the second wave feminists during the 1960’s. In December of 1961, President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10980 which created the Commission of the Status of Women to be overseen by none other than Eleanor Roosevelt. Between the years 1961 and 1963, the commission investigated the role of women in different aspects of society, such as the enforcement of women’s legal rights, women’s earnings in the business world and a woman’s right to education and a career. In 1963 the Commission announced that it found women to experience inequalities in society, women earned less than men and were taken less seriously by the business community. While the commission was a research committee, many of its members realized that the country needed action to protect its women. In 1966 a group of commission representatives met to discuss the lack of enforcement of non-discrimination based on gender. Concerned with this lack of enforcement, this group created the National Organization for Women (NOW) that would work to ensure that legislation was enforced and overcome other forms of discrimination.
Objectification of Women
The manner in which society has historically viewed women has led to the oppression of the female segment of society. As opposed to valuing personal attributes and talents of a woman, some people (mostly men) focused on a woman’s physical attractiveness and submissiveness. As a result of this mentality, countless numbers of women have experienced negative psychological effects believing their intelligence and abilities to be unimportant. How this mentality affects women remains a matter of debate. Many academics, psychologists and sociologists believe that as young girls experience the transfor-mation into girls to women, they will experience feelings of anxiety and fear. Not only do they experience difficulty growing up, they develop a sense that power and respect may be earned solely through their looks.
Major Awards -
1966 Tony Award for Best Choreography (won)
1966 Tony Award for Best Musical (nominated)
1966 Tony Award for Best Music and Lyrics (nominated)
1966 Best Performance by a Leading Actress (nominated)
1966 Best Direction of a musical (nominated)
Casting Notes - Broadway Revival opened on April 4th, 2005. 7 different actors were up for the role. Paula Abdul was pegged to star and choreograph the show. Then in 2003 Jenna Elfman would do it. Then later she backed out and Marissa Tomei was in the role, but did not get asked to continue after workshops. Jane Krakowski was next, fresh off her Tony win for Nine, but clashed with Neil Simon about rewriting Charity to reflect a more modern approach. Christina Applegate eventually got the role and moved to Broadway with the show. She broke a bone in her foot during the Broadway tryout, so icon Charlotte D’Ambroise took over for her briefly, but they eventually just closed the tryout early. Late in the Broadway Revial’s run, a huge rumor went around that Britney Spears would be Applegate’s replacement. Spears was allegedly in talks to join the cast and move the show to a larger theatre down the street, first the Hilton, now known as the Lyric Theatre.