pure poetry
by Douglas Messerli
P.
G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, revised by Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse,
revised again by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman (book), Cole Porter (music and
lyrics) Anything Goes / the
production I saw was on December 1, 2012 at Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles
The
musical Anything Goes has been
rewritten so many times, adding Porter’s songs from other musicals while subtracting
several of the original songs, that one might almost describe what I witnessed
the other day as a shadow of its first conception, even if, arguably, the
layering revisions have burnished it into a better work. Most of the changes,
however, have been to the story, and since the silly couplings and un-couplings
of the work hardly matter, it is hard to be interested in the “ur-text.” I will
be glad to except Timothy Crouse’s and John Weidman’s assurances that they were
“purists” “but only to a point.” What is important is that they restored as
much of Porter’s score as they could, adding only three wonderful Porter songs
“Friendship,” “It’s De-Lovely,” and “Goodbye, Little Dream, Goodbye.”
Yet this chestnut has been immensely
popular since its 1934 opening in New York, running 420 performances even
during the great depression, and reappearing in successful productions in
England and New York in 1935 (261 performances), 1962, 1987 (784 performances),
1989 and 2011 (521 performances). What I saw was a sold-out performance of the touring
version of the 2011 production. Why has it succeeded again and again?
The answer, quite obviously, is not just a
cast of talented singers and dancers (a requirement of course!) but Cole Porter,
who in this and other works turns what might have been tin-pan ditties into
pure American poetry. Sure, the music itself is spritely and often borders on a
kind regularized jazz. But those words! No one, not even Stephen Sondheim, can
write as wittily idiomatic lyrics while pulling his audiences into a kind of
licentious world that hints of everything from adultery and drug addiction to
sexual orgies and open homosexuality, with his characters simultaneously
hoofing up innocent-seeming line dances across the stage.

The fun begins with this show’s very
first song, “I Get a Kick Out of You,” where Broadway libertine Reno Sweeney (the
talented Rachel York) tells Billy about her frigidity concerning everyday life:
So tell me why should it be true
That I get a kick out of you?
Some get a kick from cocaine.
I’m sure that if I took even one sniff
That would bore me terrific’ly too
Yet I get a kick out of you.
Or consider the wonderful shifts in the
notion of “friendship” in the song titled that. It begins as a song of spirited
support of one being for another, in this case the musical’s two major
“hustlers,” Reno and Moonface Martin (the 13th most wanted
criminal):
If you’re ever
in a jam, here I am
If you’re ever in a mess,
S.O.S.If you’re so happy, you land in jail. I’m your bail.
But
gradually as they each try to outdo one another is imagining life-saving
necessities, the song becomes a kind of contest which reveals that underneath
their “perfect friendship” there is not only an open competiveness but a true
hostility:
If they ever
black your eyes, put me wise.
If they ever
cook your goose, turn me loose.If they ever put a bullet through your brain, I’ll complain.
The
lyrics grow even more outlandish as they imagine the worst for one another:
If you ever lose your mind, I’ll be kind.
And if you ever lose your shirt,
I’ll be hurt.If you ever lose your mind, I’ll be kind.
If you ever in a mill get sawed in half, I won’t laugh.
It
finally ends with imagining each other being eaten by cannibals, in which the
second half answers “invite me.”
These are not the words of supportive
human beings, but of criminals who might turn on each other in a minute.
Pluming the unconscious depths of American’s fascination with violence—notably
present in the entertainments of the 1930s—Porter has created almost a paean to
the macabre, a world wherein people land up in jail, put bullets through
brains, lose their minds, get sawed in half, and are consumed by cannibals,
lines somewhat reminiscent of William Carlos Williams’ observation “the pure
products of America / go crazy” and Allen Ginsberg’s opening line in Howl: “I saw the best minds of my
generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked….”
Hearing once more the musical’s title
song, “Anything Goes,” I realized that, once again, the most important thing about
this work is its lyrics—which unfortunately, in the quick-paced rhythms, got
somewhat lost in York’s rendition; suddenly it became clear to me that the
original Reno, played by Ethel Merman, with her emphatic pronunciations of
every word, may have been the perfect Porter interpreter.

Like the peeved reactions of conservative
parents through the mid 1960s, Porter presciently reiterates the very same
issues of change in his opening refrain:
Times have
changed
And we’ve
often got a shock,When they landed on Plymouth Rock.
If today,
Any shock they should try to stem,
‘Stead of landing of Plymouth Rock,
Plymouth Rock would land on them.
The
song goes on to explain the topsy-turvy morality of the contemporary world:
And good’s bad today,
And black’s white today,
And day’s night today,
When most guys today
That women prize today
Are just silly gigolos
Porter
might almost have added: “Or are gay today.” Indeed, Porter does add himself,
indirectly, to that list:
Good
authors too who once knew better words,
Now only
use four letter wordsWriting prose, Anything Goes.
In such an “anything goes” atmosphere
Porter was freed up to even question the normal structure of his songs, to
query and even challenge the standard introductory lead-ins and normalized language
of Broadway music:
[hope]
I feel a
sudden urge to sing
The kind
of ditty that invokes the spring
[billy]
I’ll control my
desire to curse
While you crucify
the verse.
[hope]
This verse
I started seems to me
The
Tin-Pantithesis of a melody.
[billy]
So spare us all
the pain, Just skip the darn thing and sing the refrain…
Of
course, what they sing is “delightful, delicious, de-lovey, delirious” in its de-construction
of the English language, letting themselves go in thrilling, drilling
(de-de-de-de) of words that suggest being out of control.
Indeed, Porter’s lyrics almost always seem
to be slightly over the top, about to spill over into pure ridiculousness as
they finally do in “You’re the Top,” where the same couple, Reno and Billy,
again in an attempt to outdo one another, compare each other with almost
anything that comes to mind, from the Louvre Museum, to a symphony by Strauss,
to a Shakespeare sonnet and even Mickey Mouse. Blithely jumping across the
bodies of outstanding individuals, expensive drinks, glorious visions of
nature, national institutions, celebrity salaries, to end in marvelous
industrial creations, moving across the whole society as if it were all of one
glorious piece, again not unlike Williams in his Spring and All.
You’re
the top!
You’re
Mahatma Gandhi.You’re the top!
You’re Napoleon Brandy.
You’re the purple light
Of a summer night in Spain,
You’re the National Galley
You’re Garbo’s salary,
You’re cellophane.
Never
has the simple metaphor been used to such an extreme example! At one grand
moment the couple compare each other to the great romantic poets only to
suddenly drop into the most banal of American consumer products:
You’re
Keats.
You’re
Shelley,You’re Ovaltine. (,)
hinting
at the purist poetry possible!
Los Angeles,
December 4, 2012
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