Lerner & Previn's 'Coco' Casts Another Spell

Backstage Babble's Charles Kirsch brings Coco to 54 Below

No doubt I first heard about Charles Kirsch in the context of his age. From the time he was very young, not even a teenager, Charles Kirsch was doing a podcast called Backstage Babble where he interviewed Broadway legends.

I could certainly understand the appeal. A precocious kid, the incongruity of him talking in a serious way to Broadway legends about shows written when they were practically kids. It writes itself.

But in the last year I’ve had a couple opportunities to watch Kirsch, now a high school senior, up close as he leads panels. And part of what’s so genuinely impressive is the craft of his questions. He asks the kinds of things that generate interesting, meaty responses. He understands the assignment.

But last night at 54 Below, where Kirsch produced and hosted a fond recollection of Alan Jay Lerner and André Previn’s 1969 musical Coco, I learned that Kirsch appreciates something else, something more important than the right questions to ask. He appreciates that behind all the shows and the stars, Broadway is about inviting people—both cast and crew and passionate fans—to touch once again into the profoundly meaningful community that is the theater.

Even before 54 Sings Coco began, I found myself filled with an unexpected welling up of gratitude. Certainly there was the thrill of being in proximity to some actors and artists that I recognized. But for me the deeper feelings seemed connected just to being in the company of so many people who clearly loved this show and were so happy to be able to hear parts of it sung once again.

As is often the case at 54 Below showcases like this, Kirsch and music director Michael Lavine used the occasion of the show to spotlight a set of fantastic performers, some of whom we haven’t had the chance to see in a role like this in a minute. How I relished getting to watch Penny Worth, Isabel Keating, Sara Gettelfinger, Christine Andreas, Josie Du Guzman, Paula Leggett Chase, and Jean Precce (from the original company of Coco) each create their own inimitable version of both Coco and Katharine Hepburn, who famously played the role in her one and only Broadway musical.

Equally enchanting were the men: Lenny Wolpe as the young Coco’s traveling salesman father, who promises to come back in 6 weeks for her first communion only to pass away on the trip, exuded the kindliness that she felt from him before he said a single word; Adam Grupper as Coco’s womanizing business partner had us laughing from the start with Lerner’s playful variations on how there’s always another fish in the sea, only to suddenly draw us up short at the end with a stricken look that uncovered the unspoken depths of his loneliness; Brad Oscar as the hilarious queer designer with little patience for Coco’s old fashioned ideas was a bounding font of joy, while Ben Jones delivered two heartbreakingly tender renditions of Lerner and Previn’s material. And there were so many other great performances as well.

Hepburn in the original production.

In his review of the show in 1970, Times reviewer John S. Wilson proposed Coco as the end point of the golden age of Broadway that had begun with Rodgers & Hammstein’s Oklahoma! “It can be said for ‘Coco’ that it is far from the worst musical of these waning days of the genre,” Wilson said, seeming to damn with faint praise. But he was happy to make his condemnation all too clear: “It is bland and superficial and it would be totally forgettable if it were not for the presence of Katharine Hepburn.” While he praises Hepburn for “that marvelously contoured face, the forceful thrust of her chin, the flashes of fire and laughter in her eyes, the determined stride of her sturdy, no‐nonsense walk,” he also notes her “singing voice is, essentially, her speaking voice rampant on a field of vibrato.”

During the 54 Below show Kirsch revealed a famous Broadway legend that in fact, Hepburn’s casting had been a mistake. Supposedly, Previn, Lerner and producer Freddie Brisson had gone to see Chanel in France, and asked her who she thought should play her in their musical. “Hepburn,” she said. They thought she meant Katharine. In fact she meant Audrey.

Wilson would prove to be entirely wrong in his obituary for Broadway. Company, Follies, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Pippin, among others, were all just around the corner, in Company’s case just a few months’ away. But he wasn’t completely wrong about Coco (though that doesn’t keep me from wanting to see a big retooled production that celebrates the marriage of fashion and show tunes). Hepburn is a force of nature, but her vocal range and tonal quality made writing for her a challenge. Truly, part of the thrill of seeing such a talented group of women tackle the material at 54 Below last night was getting to discover new parts of it through them.

Where other houses that produce encores like this can sometimes seem to do so with their eyes set a bit too much toward the future production potential—although immediately I am reminded of that great Kander & Ebb song, “It’s a Business,”—here the gift was left entirely to the moment. What was valuable was not what might come of this some later day, but what was offered to us in the here and now. And in that way Kirsch, Lavine, and their company actually brought us back to that sense of anticipation not only that people back in 1969 felt waiting for the curtain to rise on Coco, but that we all have each time we go to the theater; and the shared sense of wonder that follows so often after it does.

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Thanks to Charles Kirsch, Michael Lavine, 54 Below, and the cast and crew of 54 Sings Coco. And apologies for my lack of photos. I had such a good time I forgot to take any!