Friday, July 10, 2020

209. EL GRANDE DE COCA COLA. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975


Sally Willisn, Ron House, Diz White.
EL GRANDE DE COCA COLA [Revue/Show Business] A: The Cast; SC: an idea by Ron House and Diz White; CH: Anna Nygh; DS: Mischa Petrow; P: Jack Temchin, Gil Adler, and John A. Vaccaro in the Low Moan Spectacular Production; T: Mercer Arts Center/Oscar Wilde Room (OB); 2/13/73-4/13/75 (1,114)

Ron Silver, Jeff Goldblum
An unusually popular Off-Broadway comedy and musical revue, originally done in England and elsewhere in Europe, which ran for over two years. It opened as El Coca Cola Grande but the Coca Cola company’s lawyers forced the producers to change the title to one they felt was more positive for the product.

Clive Barnes found himself “roaring with laughter” at the “fast and furious . . . , outrageously silly and beautifully done” show. John Simon guffawed hysterically at this “adorably idiotic” show: “this White-House extravaganza is surely the biggest fun house yet.” And Brendan Gill guaranteed his readers it was the funniest show in town.

What plotline it had was about Senor Don Pepe Hernandez, the sleazy owner of a sleazy cabaret in a sleazy part of Trujillo, Honduras, and his failure to sign international nightclub stars to appear in his already publicized “Parade of the Stars.” He has even gotten financial backing from his uncle, manager of Trujillo’s Coca Cola plant. (This background is explained in a program note.) To save the situation, Done Pepe recruits his stalwart, but completely untalented family, to don the grease paint and go on in a variety of guises, imitating the class acts they couldn’t get to appear.

Jeff Goldblum, Myra Turley.
The ludicrous inanity of the acts and their presentation in a bizarre pidgin Spanish, which remained understandable no matter how little Spanish the audience had, created a farcical hodgepodge that had visitors rolling helplessly in the aisles. The smooth British company (Ron House was an expat American) carried out their tasks in quick-change routines presenting such things as a pair of clumsy tango dancers, girl singers who can’t carry a tune, a black Mississippi blues singer who gets lost on stage, unbalanced acrobats, and a sketch about Toulouse Lautrec supposedly given by a Parisian acting company.

Everyone involved onstage (including Alan Shearman, Sally Willis, and John Neville-Andrews) was considered perfect. House proved an absolute comic genius. “Not only are his vocal and visual Hispanisms histrionic delights,” chuckled Simon, “but even his basic expression—a smile that sweatily modulates from unctuous to terminal hysteria—is a marathon mirth-begetter.”

A number of different actors joined the cast during the run, among those in the second season being Ron Silver and Jeff Goldblum, as pictured above. On August 10, 1973, the show moved to Plaza 9. 

White and House won the Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Book Writers.