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| Harry Chapin. |
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| Harry Chapin. |
Harry Chapin, the then popular folk-rock balladeer from
Brooklyn, was the star of this extravagantly staged presentation of about 30
songs he’d written, well known through his hit recordings. The
show employed a company of nine backup singers and dancers, as well as three
soloists in addition to Chapin himself. The trio was Kelly Garrett, Delores Hall,
and Gilbert Price, all recognized artists. The critics chose Garrett as the
show’s knockout presence. She and Price each received a Tony nomination for
their supporting performances in a musical.
Spectacular multimedia effects, including closed-circuit TV,
giant slide projections, huge masks, and unusual costumes, along with elaborate
lighting, created by Joshua White of the Joshua Light Show, accompanied the tunes.
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| Delores Hall, Harry Chapin, Kelly Garrett. |
Among the parade of songs were "Six String Orchestra," "Give Me a Road," Sunday Morning Sunshine," "Welfare Ray," "Peace Teachers," "Changing of the Guard," "Taxi," "Battleground Bummer," "Cat's in the Cradle," "Cockeyed John, Give Me a Dream," "Beginning of rhe End," and "The Night That Made America Famous."
The music, unfortunately, found few takers among the
critics, although Martin Gottfried, often a negative outlier, demurred: “you
will rarely find such musical values in the theatre. There are melody and
rhythm, breath-catching voices and gorgeous orchestrations, all magnificently
performed and handsomely staged.” More representative, however, was another
frequent naysayer, John Simon, who said that the songs told “banal or
pretentious stories, and [were] set to variations on one basic tune with minor
changes in rhythm, or even without.” The poor rhymes led Brendan Gill to state
that Chapin had a “tin ear.” “[T]he material was pretty flat,” inserted Douglas
Watt, who described Chapin’s voice as “hoarse but enthusiastic.” “His music is
somewhat monotonous and stereotyped,” chimed in Clive Barnes, for whom the show was “more like an animated record album than a musical.”