The movies are famous for sequels. Some are actually as good as or better than the original, but many are at best unnecessary and at worst an insult to the original. While there are often revivals, Broadway Musicals are not known for spawning sequels.
There has been no “West Side Story – The Next Generation”, “Return of the Music Man”, “Cabaret II – Back to Berlin”, or “Guys and Dolls and a Baby”.
There were two actual Broadway Musical “sequels” in the early days of the genre.
The1906 George M. Cohan musical “Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway” had a 1907 sequel titled “The Talk of New York”.
The first Pulitzer Prize winning musical, 1931’s “Of Thee I Sing” with book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind and music and lyrics by the Gershwins, begat the less successful 1933 sequel “Let ‘Em Eat Cake”.
During my lifetime, which began in the 1950s, there have been, to my knowledge, three musical sequels with the same characters and similar situations as the “inspiration” that take place after the story of the original production.
The first is “Bring Back Birdie”, obviously a sequel to the classic “Bye Bye Birdie”, which had 31 previews and only 4 performances (the original had 607) back in early 1981 at the Martin Beck Theatre. It reunited the creative team of Charles Strouse and Lee Adams and librettist Michael Stewart. Chita Rivera reprised her role as Rosie, but Albert and Mae Peterson, Dick Van Dyke and Kay Medford in the original, were played by Donald O’Connor and Maria Karnilova. There was no sign of the McAfee family from the original, the patriarch of which was played by Paul Lynde.
In the sequel, 20 years after the end of the original, Albert, now an English teacher, is offered $20,000 if he can find Conrad Birdie, who has disappeared into obscurity, and persuade him to perform on a television show. Albert takes a leave of absence and locates Conrad, now overweight and the mayor of Bent River Junction, AZ.
I was in the audience for one of the 35 performances. There was an unsuccessful try at updating the innovative “Telephone Hour” production number idea using videos. And Donald O’Connor considered attempting to reprise his “Singing in the Rain” off the wall back flip during one of his solo numbers, but thought better of it considering his age. Despite its short run, Chita Rivera was nominated for a Tony and a Drama Desk Award as Best Actress in a Musical for BBB2. The original “Bye Bye Birdie” was nominated for, and won, many Tonys, including Best Musical, Best Actor in a Musical, Best Direction, and Best Choreography.
Ken Mandelbaum writes in his book, “Not Since Carrie, 40 Years of Broadway Flops” – “’Bring Back Birdie’ may rank as the worst Broadway musical ever to be created by top-level professionals. The book was tasteless and ridiculous.”
I met BBB librettist Michael Steward, who also wrote the books for “Hello Dolly” and “42nd Street”, when he was a guest lecturer on one of my post-tax season transatlantic crossings on the QE2 back in the 1980s. I saw the original “Bye Bye Birdie”" during its Broadway run, but with “Match Game” host Gene Rayburn and not Dick Van Dyke. I also saw the inferior Broadway revival of a few years back.
“Annie”, which first promised Broadway audiences in early 1977 that “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow”, had not one but two attempts at a sequel.
The first was “Annie 2: Miss Hannigan’s Revenge”, which opened at the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC in December 1989 to “universally disastrous reviews”. Wikepedia reports that “extensive reworking of the script and score proved futile, and the project was aborted before reaching Broadway.”
The second attempt was made in 1993, with a completely different plot and score. “Annie Warbucks” opened off-Broadway at the Variety Arts Theatre, where it ran for 200 performances. It never made the transition to Broadway. I did not see either sequel.
The third Broadway Musical sequel, which did briefly make it to Broadway, was “The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public”, which had 28 previews and 16 performances in the spring of 1994. The original’s creative team returned for the sequel, including Tommy Tune as co-director and co-choreographer. It told the tale of the best little whorehouse in Las Vegas.
Miss Mona, madam of the original Chicken Ranch, is coaxed out of retirement to take over the Las Vegas brothel “Stallion Fields”, which has been seized by the government and is being run by the IRS in hopes of recovering $26 Million in back taxes. Mona is once again at odds with a zealous right-wing politician trying to close the “house” down.
The New York Times review indicated that, while it had all the glitz one expects from Las Vegas, and even had Siegfried and Roy (portrayed by one actor – half Siegfried and half Roy), “What is ain’t got is fun”.
Dee Hoty, who played Miss Mona, was nominated for a 1994 Tony as Best Actress in a Musical. I also did not see this fiasco.
While “Lorelei”, which I did see, opens and ends years after the original “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” story takes place, it is not so much a sequel as a revival of GPB, created to capitalize on the popularity of Carol Channing after “Hello Dolly”. So it doesn’t count. In the show Lorelei remembers her earlier Atlantic crossing while embarking on another after many years of marriage.
“Lorelei” opened January 27, 1974, at the Palace Theatre and ran 320 performances. It had updated lyrics by Comden and Green and a new book by Kenny Solms and Gail Parent with a few scenes and songs thrown in to book-end the original show and score. In addition to Carol Channing, the show also featured Peter Palmer (Broadway’s “Little Abner”), Dody Goodman, and Lee Roy Reams, who would many years later appear again with Carol in one of the revivals of Dolly.
So, there you have it – Broadway’s experimentation with sequels. Did I miss any?
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