“Row,
Row, Row Your Lifeboat”
The
Unsinkable Molly Brown, original book by Richard Morris (Thoroughly Modern Millie) and score by Meredith Willson (The Music Man), is not a familiar musical theatre classic on the level of Oklahoma! or West Side Story. A modest hit with 532 performances after it opened
in November 1960, it’s never had a Broadway revival and is best known from its 1964
movie version starring Debbie Reynolds, nominated for an Academy Award, and
costarring Harve Presnell, who played opposite Tammy Grimes in the Broadway
original.
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| David Aron Damane, Beth Malone. All photos: Carol Rosegg. |
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| Company of The Unsinkable Molly Brown. |
This revamped, overlong version (two and a half hours),
the work of Dick Scanlan (Thoroughly
Modern Millie), has been in development in a number of staged readings going
back to 2009. A full staging was seen in 2014 in Denver (where much of the plot
transpires), starring the delightfully cast Beth Malone. Happily, she also heads
the Transport production, which offers even more revisions.
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| David Aron Damane, right, and company. |
In brief, Scanlan has thoroughly revised Morris’s
script (published in the February 1963 issue of Theatre Arts, in case you’re a collector), radically changing the
plot and dialogue, reducing the cast from around 35 to 16 (with much doubling),
and greatly simplifying the visual elements.
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| Beth Malone, David Aron Damane. |
Musically, the show offers 10 of Willson’s original
songs, including the best known, “I Ain’t Down Yet,” along with such generally
entertaining numbers, redolent of mid-century Broadway, as “Belly Up the Bar,
Boys,” “I’ll Never Say No,” “Beautiful People of Denver” (with some new lyrics
by Scanlan), and “May Never Fall in Love with You.” Five other Willson songs have
been interpolated, including “He’s My Friend,” written for the movie, while
five new songs, with music by Willson and lyrics by Scanlan have been added.
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| Shina Ann Morris, Paula Leggett Chase, Kaitlyn Davidson. |
Yet, despite what would seem a plethora of musical
numbers, long passages go by without any, as the new book devotes so much time
to dialogue scenes that the show often gives the impression of being a play
with songs instead of a traditional musical.
There is no overture, the action beginning in front of
the show curtain as Margaret “Molly” Brown (Malone)—her real nickname was
actually “Maggie”—is being questioned in a Senatorial hearing regarding her
experiences aboard the Titanic, whose
sinking she not only survived—thus the nickname that gives the show its title—but
became famous for the bravery she displayed in doing so. Much as it seems like
a framing device, the show never returns to the hearing.
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| Company of The Unsinkable Molly Brown. |
Having perused the 1960 script beforehand, I was
continually surprised by just how different Scanlan’s version of the story was
from Morris’s. Margaret Tobin
Brown (1867-1932), of course, was a vibrantly eccentric, nouveau riche woman
born dirt poor in Missouri, who moved to the silver mining town of Leadville,
Colorado, and fell in love with a poor miner named J.J. Brown (David Aron
Damane; the 1960 version calls J.J. “Johnny”). They became fabulously rich when
J.J. discovered a rich vein of gold, and assumed social prominence in Denver,
although faced with rejection from the highest elites.
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| Beth Malone, Kaitlyn Davidson, and company. |
The previously uneducated Molly acquired erudition (including
foreign languages) while never abandoning her earthy vernacular, eventually was
separated from J.J., devoted herself to philanthropic endeavors, and became
famous, as noted, as a Titanic survivor/heroine.
Scanlan’s adaptation seeks to provide a more accurate
depiction of Molly Brown’s biography, with emphasis on her good deeds and her
proto-feminist, suffragist behavior. He delivers infusions of liberal concerns,
many reflecting those of today, such as voting, the treatment of immigrants,
the unequal distribution of wealth, the role of women, and the importance of
unions. At a few points, in fact, the audience couldn’t help clapping at what
it apparently took as slaps at our current administration.
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| Beth Malone. |
Snappily staged and choreographed by nine-time Tony
nominee Kathleen Marshall (Wonderful Town,
Anything Goes), this is a polished
production with Broadway quality performers doing first-rate work.
The reed-slim Malone (Fun Home), her hair worn boyishly short, is unsinkable as the
raucous, insistently spunky Molly, a friendly bolt of lightning juicing
everything around her. Damane, a baritone built like an NFL linebacker, makes a
powerful, if stolid, J.J., while the ensemble—all of whom dance, sing, and act
with suitable panache—provides versatile support in a variety of roles.
Scenically, the show has a rather neutral look in a
set by Brett J. Banakis that uses a rear wall covered with old newspaper pages
to set the period tone, regardless of what furniture is placed before it. He
provides a clever idea, though, when gold is discovered (behind a door in the
back wall!) and a jagged line lights up across the wall, suggesting a vein of
ore. Later, the set above that line flies off, displaying an outline for the
Denver scenes that hints at the Rocky Mountains.
Sky Switser’s costumes convey the essence of turn-of-the-late
19th and early 20th-century clothing without being too fussy, but the new
script avoids the comic opportunities created in the original for scoffing at
the overdone clothing worn by the newly wealthy J.J. and Molly when they try to
put on airs. (The pretty gown worn by Molly when she gets dolled up is by Paul Tazewell.) Peter Kaczorowski’s lighting does its best to make everything look
interesting, especially during the scene in Lifeboat #6 when Molly rises to the
occasion.
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| David Aron Damane, Beth Malone. |
The
Unsinkable Molly Brown has lots of glowing ore to mine in
its appealing music and performances, but it also contains too much plotting,
an excess of obvious wokeness, and a heaviness where ebullience is required.
In this vein, I’ll conclude by offering related examples
of how Morris’s telling differs from Scanlan’s. Morris’s script hints at Molly’s
possible liaison, while abroad, with a European prince. That’s now completely
gone. On the other hand, much is made by Scanlan of Molly and J.J.’s marital
problems following her discovery that he had an affair.
Morris’s happy ending is a romantic one, with Molly
and J.J. happily united before the palatial Rocky Mountains mansion J.J.’s
built for her. The assembled company thereupon sings “I Ain’t Down Yet,” followed
by a wordless, music-only reprise, with everybody joining in for the final
phrase: “I ain’t down yet.”
In the current version, J.J. (now ailing and leaning
on a cane) appears at the dock where the Titanic
survivors have gathered. Seeing his condition, Molly hugs him, which so
moves the immigration officer he agrees to take in the illegal immigrants. The
political point made, everyone cheers and Molly turns directly to us, saying, with
no music, “We ain’t down yet.” Curtain.
Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand St., NYC
Through March 22
