Too Many Girls
April 26–May 5, 2013
Carpenter Performance Hall
Irving Arts Center
Lyric Stage was proud to present the premiere of the restored TOO MANY GIRLS April 26-May 5 in the Irving Arts Center’s Carpenter Performance Hall. Performances were April 26, 27, May 2, 3 and 4 @ 8:00 pm and April 28 and May 5 @ 2:30 pm.
Immortalized as the film on which Lucille Ball met Desi Arnaz, TOO MANY GIRLS has music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart and a book by George Marion, Jr. The light-as-a-feather plotline finds four Ivy League football players hired by the wealthiest man in America to escort his daughter to Pottawatomie College. The girls far outnumber the boys on campus, which is sheer joy for the four “protectors.” Complications arise when one of the boys falls for the heiress, thus violating the “antiromantic” clause of his contract with her father.
Lyric Stage’s production featured the Lyric Stage orchestra playing the original Broadway orchestrations. The delightful Rodgers & Hart score includes “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” “I Like to Recognize the Tune,” “Give It Back to the Indians” and “You’re Nearer.”
TOO MANY GIRLS was directed and choreographed by Ann Nieman with music direction by Lyric Stage Music Director Jay Dias. Scenic design was by Randel Wright with costumes by Drenda Lewis and lighting design by Julie Simmons. Sound design was by Bill Eickenloff.
The TOO MANY GIRLS cast included Drew Aber, Mary McElree, John Campione, America Barcenas, Daron Cockerell, Michael Whitney, Tanner Hanley, James Williams, Jon Morehouse, Jonathan Bragg, Carlee Cagle, Maranda Harrison, Cathy Pritchett, Joseph Holt, Emily Ford, Colleen LeBleau, Jessica Lemmons, Mallory Michaelann, Jessica Taylor, Lexie Showalter, Katie Moyes Williams, Brendon Gallagher, David Ray, Dominic Pecikonis, Dustin Simington, Johnny Lee, Parker Fitzgerald, Peter DiCesare and Zak Reynolds.
Rodgers & Hart
Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) and Lorenz Hart (1895-1943) wrote their first shows together when both were still students attending Columbia University. After writing a series of musical comedies for the University’s Varsity Shows and other charities, they made their professional debut with the song “Any Old Place With You,” featured in the 1919 Broadway musical comedy A LONELY ROMEO.
Their breakthrough came with the score for a 1925 charity show, THE GARRICK GAITIES, which introduced the classic valentine to their hometown, “Manhattan.” From 1920 to 1930 Rodgers & Hart wrote an astonishing array of musical comedies for Broadway and London’s West End. At their pinnacle the team was writing an average of four new shows a year, and among these were: DEAREST ENEMY, BETSY, PEGGY-ANN, THE GIRL FRIEND, CHEE-CHEE and A CONNECTICUT YANKEE.
In 1930 the team relocated to Hollywood, where they contributed songs and wrote the scores for several movie musicals, including the landmark LOVE ME TONIGHT starring Maurice Chevalier; THE PHANTOM PRESIDENT starring George M. Cohan; HALLELUJAH, I’M A BUM starring Al Jolson; and MISSISSIPPI starring Bing Crosby and W.C. Fields.
They were lured back to New York by legendary Broadway producer Billy Rose in 1935 to write the songs for his circus musical spectacular, JUMBO. Their score introduced “The Most Beautiful Girl In The World,” “My Romance” and “Little Girl Blue,” and Rodgers & Hart were back on Broadway.
From 1936 to 1943 Rodgers & Hart wrote a series of Broadway musical comedies, each of which seemed to top the one before in terms of innovation and box office success. ON YOUR TOES (1936), BABES IN ARMS (1937), I’D RATHER BE RIGHT (1937),I MARRIED AN ANGEL (1938), THE BOYS FROM SYRACUSE (1938), TOO MANY GIRLS (1939), HIGHER AND HIGHER (1940), PAL JOEY (1940), and BY JUPITER (1942) dazzled Broadway in spectacular succession, and collectively offered such classic songs as “There’s A Small Hotel,” “I Wish I Were In Love Again,” “My Funny Valentine,” “Where Or When,” “The Lady Is A Tramp,” “Spring Is Here,” “Falling In Love With Love,” “Sing For Your Supper,” “This Can’t Be Love,” “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” “It Never Entered My Mind,” “Bewitched,” “I Could Write A Book,” “Nobody’s Heart,” and “Wait Till You See Her.”
The partnership disbanded temporarily early in 1943 when Rodgers collaborated with Oscar Hammerstein II on OKLAHOMA! The Rodgers & Hart partnership resumed with a revision of their 1927 musical comedy A CONNECTICUT YANKEE, and the new production (which featured six new songs including “To Keep My Love Alive”) opened on Broadway November 17, 1943. Already ill at the time, Lorenz Hart died less than a week later.
Too Many Girls: Punch Shaw Review
It has football. It has girls. Do you really need to know anything more?
Lyric Stage’s production of the 1939 Rodgers and Hart musical Too Many Girls, which opened Friday, is a magnificently produced valentine to old-time musicals that overflows with first-rate singing, dancing and acting.
As it has done with several works from American musical theater’s past, Lyric Stage has resurrected the original score and delivers it with a dynamite pit orchestra of more than 30 players, conducted by music director Jay Dias. And the cast onstage proves itself worthy of such instrumental largesse by clearing the bar set so highly by the pit crew.
Too Many Girls: Elaine Liner Review
At Lyric Stage, a Revival of Too Many Girls Worthy of the Show’s Loveable Lineage
If only college life were ever as naive and boisterous as it was in the 1939 musical Too Many Girls, now getting a sis-boom-beautiful revival at Irving's Lyric Stage. Out at New Mexico's fictional Pottawotamie U, the football team has started winning, thanks to four Ivy League transfers who know what they're doing on the gridiron and also happen to dance with Broadway flair. Cheering them on is a passel of pretty girls, each wearing a yellow beanie representing virginity.
By the end of the second act of this silly, charming piece of musical-comedy cotton candy, the boys have won the big game against the "Texas Gentiles" and are ready to score some extra points with the coeds. Watch them toss those beanies into the air. Everybody sing!
Too Many Girls, with its popcorn score by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, and a cornball book by George Marion Jr., arrived on Broadway, and then a year later hit the movie screen, at the end of an era. Shows like Oklahoma! and Carousel, with darker plots and more sophisticated music, were on the horizon.
For the past seven decades, Too Many Girls has been known primarily as the show that introduced Lucille Ball to Desi Arnaz. She played the female lead, giddy heiress Consuelo Casey, in the movie. Desi played conga drum-beating Argentinian football star Manuelito Lynch on Broadway at age 19 and again in the film, where he met and fell in love with Lucy and set in motion the future of television.
The musical that introduced them, however, has been nearly forgotten. The old-fashioned frippery yielded only one popular tune — "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" — and never again graced the Great White Way.
Directed and choreographed at Lyric Stage by Ann Nieman, the current production benefits from this company's dedication to reviving American musicals with top talent, plus original arrangements played by a full orchestra (36 musicians for this one, conducted by Jay Dias). There really is nothing like the bone-buzzing thrill of a soaring overture, like the eight-minute one for Too Many Girls, played in a pit in front of the stage, something you don't get in Broadway theaters anymore.
Lyric's cast couldn't be cuter. As Manuelito, John Campione borrows Desi's swoony accent and hairstyle. Good-looking, bright-voiced New York actor Drew Aber plays the romantic lead, Clint Kelley, hired by an East Coast millionaire (James Williams) to bodyguard wild daughter Consuelo (pert Mary McElree) at the New Mexico college.
Looking and screlting like a young Carol Burnett, Daron Cockerell gets her teeth into "Cause We've Got Cake," a huge production number about cake. (Hey, you have to love a musical that devotes one whole song to cake.) And Cockerell also does a show-stopping solo with the bitterly funny "Give It Back to the Indians," Rodgers and Hart's satirical answer to their own 1929 love song to the Big Apple, "I'll Take Manhattan."
Listen closely to the lyrics in Too Many Girls and you'll catch references to 1939 pop culture figures such as "café society" columnist and fashion dandy Lucius Beebe and bandleader Eddie Duchin, whose name lyricist Lorenz Hart rhymes with "Elsa Maxwell's two chins." For those of us who love seeing these old shows brought back to life, even for two weekends in Irving, hearing stuff like that is icing on the big, sweet Rodgers and Hart cake.