Comment on this story What: Strike Up The Band When: Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, June 4 thru 20. Where: Pellissippi State Performing Arts Center Cost: $18 adults, $15 students/seniors, $12 each for groups of 15 or more. Tickets available at the door. Call 584-8173 for info.

Tennessee Valley Players revive vintage Gershwin

by Paige M. Travis

The same year Oscar Hammerstein II’s and Jerome Kern’s Show Boat marked the emergence of the fully coalesced American musical, George and Ira Gershwin teamed up with writer George Kaufman for Strike Up The Band.

The year was 1927, and America’s best composers and lyricists were figuring out how to blend European comic operettas with the native minstrel show into a purely American creation. They knew audiences loved rousing musical numbers, scantily clad dancing girls, and hilarious sight gags and physical comedy. At the time, a musical’s songs didn’t have much to do with the story, and plot lines were flimsy at best.

The Gershwin brothers—composer George and lyricist Ira—were already major players in 1927, known mostly for popular songs like “Swanee” that made singer Al Jolson a star in 1920. When George Kaufman approached them with his script, it was the first time the brothers would write songs specifically for a musical rather than have a plot concocted for already existing songs.

And what a plot it was. Kaufman, who wrote for the Marx Brothers, worked up a political satire about a successful American cheese maker (Mr. Fletcher) who declares war on the Swiss because they refuse to pay a tariff on his imports; several romances occur as side plots. While silly on some levels, the premise is relatively edgy for a musical comedy of its time, which may be why it failed in 1927 and was revived in 1930 as a much lighter piece.

“It speaks to current times, although that’s not why we’re doing the show,” says Edmund Bolt, director of the Tennessee Valley Players’ production. “It’s a cautionary tale.”

Bolt suggests the script was softened to better please Depression-stricken audiences who weren’t in the mood for a satire about corporate meddling in political affairs. Revisions helped the show’s popularity and boosted its musical quality with the addition of a few songs, including “Hanging Around with You” and “I’ve Got a Crush on You,” which TVP will include in their performance of the 1927 script.

For this relatively large musical production of 24 cast members, Bolt has recruited Angela Batey, associate director of the University of Tennessee’s School of Music. In her nine years at UT, Batey hasn’t had time to get involved with any of Knoxville’s community theaters, which she frequently did when she was pursuing her degree in musical theater and teaching high school. Clasping a large, hardbound tome of the musical, Batey is thrilled to be working as musical director with TVP and Gershwin.

“It’s a really difficult score,” she says with an excited gleam in her eye. “It’s typical and atypical. You get a lot of flavor of the Gershwins’ [previous work], but you can see that they’re starting to push the envelope a little bit as far as the orchestrations and the harmonics that they use.”

Although the show is 77 years old, its slapstick humor remains fresh.

“Audiences like to be entertained and see funny things,” says Bolt, who has acted with Clarence Brown Theatre, Knoxville Community Theatre and the Tennessee Valley Players for nearly 30 years. “Serious things have their role, but in musical comedy you really want it to be funny.”

The music has thoroughly inspired the show’s choreographer Kathy Moore, a dance instructor who has worked with the Knoxville Opera and Clarence Brown Theatre.

“I am motivated more by music than language,” she says, enthusing that the score of Strike Up The Band is “fantastic” and “wonderful.” She points out that the show contains long stretches of musical numbers very much like Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operettas.

While the show’s score and text still exists, no record of the original dance moves is available for reference. Moore uses dance research videotapes for suggestions. In the case of Strike Up The Band, the Charleston, which was big in the ‘20s, fits the bill.

“It’s a totally different way of moving,” Moore says of the dance that spawned the moniker “flapper” for women who performed the arm-waving, skirt-shimmying moves.

The cast, which ranges greatly in age and stage experience, earns fervent praise from Bolt, Moore and Batey for their amiable and supportive working relationship. Several players are students at Bearden High School. Andrew Whaley, 18, just graduated from BHS. Bolt calls him a “triple threat” for his talents as an actor, singer and dancer, although he teases that Whaley’s dance skills lack polish. He learned a lot in crash-course rehearsals for CBT’s Oklahoma. He calls the Kansas City dance break “monstrous.” His role as Fred Astaire in Lady Be Good prepared him for his current role as Timothy Harper, the foreman of the cheese company.

“He’s an excited guy who loves working with cheese,” Whaley says. “I play him as the understudy of Mr. Fletcher, like that’s his dream to one day be as good as Mr. Fletcher.”

Gershwin’s score will be performed live with two keyboards and a percussion section. Batey assures that the many “colors” of woodwinds, flutes, clarinets and brass that Gershwin used will be evoked through the keyboards in lieu of a 24-piece orchestra.

“The music is really bridging the gap between vaudeville and the modern American musical,” she says. “The Gershwins’ work was really a pioneer, setting the stage for what Sondheim does today.”

June 3, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 23 © 2004 Metro Pulse