Mack and Mabel

Mack and Mabel, according to Wikipedia, is a musical first produced on Broadway in 1974, which received eight Tony nominations--including Best Musical--but which won none. The original Broadway production starred Robert Preston and Bernadette Peters and closed after just eight weeks. It tells the story of the romance between Mack Sennett, movie director, and his leading lady, Mabel Normand. between the years 1911 and 1933. It also tells the story of the early film industry in Brooklyn and Hollywood, Mack Sennett's comedic "two-reelers" starring Mabel Normand, then Sennett's Bathing Beauties, then his Keystone Cops, and finally the demise of "movies" after the incursion of the "talkies."

After seeing the production at the University of Cincinnati's College Conservatory of Music (CCM) this afternoon, it is hard to believe that the play was a flop in its original production. Spectacular choreography and costumes, original stage settings, expert music, and powerful and energetic stage performances transformed it into an experience to remember. Then, too, it was the first performance I have ever seen at CCM, a leading school for music in the U.S., with no fewer than five performance venues. I have heard of CCM since we came to Cincinnati two years ago, but somehow the timing was never right to get there. But the timing was right today, and off we went. It will not be our last excursion.

I have loved theater since the first productions I ever saw, two musical comedies in Dayton, Ohio, and two summer Shakespeare plays in Yellow Springs, Ohio, when I was in high school back in the 1960s. When I attended Tufts University I was pleased to discover bi-weekly Cup and Saucer performances in Tufts' small Theater in the Round during the school calendar terms, performance put on by the drama department, with discussions of the plays after each  presentation. Somehow I got myself admitted to a program in London for my junior year, designed for drama and English literature majors, though I was neither, and I went to every single play showing in the West End of London during the fall of 1967. There were theater performances at other times after I returned to New England, in the Merrimack Repertory Theater in Lowell, Massachusetts when we lived in the Boston area; the Yale Rep and the Long Wharf in New Haven when we lived in Connecticut; and occasional Broadway productions. I've even gone to a few live theater productions in Denmark on my many trips there, and attendance at the summer musical revue at Bakken north of Copenhagen has become an almost annual event. But attendance at live theater dropped off dramatically during the decade that we lived in Spain, replaced by mostly classical musical performances, which bridge the language barrier. So it had been a very long time indeed since I had experienced the energy and life of real theater. Until this afternoon. And I loved it again.