Review
Special to the Times

LA TIMES
Los Angeles, California
JANUARY 2005

“Broadway” salutes Merman with sincerity and shtick

by DAVID C. NICHOLS

The golden age of the American musical is resurrected in Ethel Merman's Broadway, now shaking The Hermosa Beach Playhouse like a well-tempered jackhammer. Despite some quirks, Rita McKenzie's acclaimed 1992 salute to Broadway's greatest belter is a rip-roaring exercise in devoted replication

From her legendary 1930 debut in the Gershwins' Girl Crazy, throughout her remarkable career, the singing stenographer born Ethel Agnes Zimmermann was a nonesuch. Her trumpeting power, tactile timbre and pristine diction were the very sound of the Great White Way for four decades. A generation that knows her only from television's The Love Boat or the film Airplane! has little idea of her nonpareil place in the pantheon.

That's the inequity McKenzie, a veteran of the Los Angeles cast of Ruthless!, hopes to redress. Her conceit, co-written with director Christopher Powich, finds late-career Merman (McKenzie) selling her life story to a Hollywood producer (the audience).

After a prelude by musical director Ron Snyder's swell combo, the curtains reveal chandeliers, a convenient armchair and the Merm, posing in Peter L. Smith's keen lighting. "I never needed a microphone when I was on Broadway," Merman cackles, and despite modern-day amplification, her opening It's Good to Be Here proves the point.

Combining biographical patter, name-dropping and many of the standards Merman immortalized, Broadway agreeably mixes sincerity and shtick. Act 1 goes from Merman's Astoria, NY, beginnings through World War II years, dotted with anecdotes, corny humor and self-assessment. A medley from Anything Goes launches Cole Porter remembrances, while her film debut in We're Not Dressing features pith helmet, whip and audible elephants. The act ends with Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun and a delightful audience sing-along. Act 2 brings Call Me Madam and Perle Mesta, marital travails, the career-topping Gypsy and a touching reference to family tragedy.

McKenzie inhabits the gestures, expressions and bombastic energy of her subject as easily as she displays costumer Eric Winterling's glitzy get-ups. However, at the reviewed performance, McKenzie was fighting a cold, which blurred the illusion. Glottal grace notes are tricky with a raw glottis, and the Merm's fabled breath control was less in evidence than the notorious wide vibrato.

Yet McKenzie's overall aspect is apt, her spirits spot-on. Nailing the sustained C in I Got Rhythm or tearing into Some People with raucous force, McKenzie channels Merman's essentials, like Bob Kingdom as Dylan Thomas or Jim Bailey as Judy Garland. "Broadway was very good to me," she bleats toward the end. "But then, I was very good to Broadway." Yes, she was, and this hearty homage will do nicely for Mermaniacs.