Pipe Dream at Unicorn Theatre

Rarely Produced Rodgers and Hammerstein Musical

By: Charles Giuliano - Aug 08, 2024

 

The Pipe Dream
By Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
Based on Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck|
Directed by Kat Yen
Choreography Isadora Wolfe
Musical direction, Jacob Kerzner
Scenic design, Jimmy Stubbs; Lighting, Evan C. Anderson; Sound, Uptownworks
Berkshire Theatre Group
Unicorn Theatre
Stockbridge, Mass.
July 26 to August 31

Pipe Dream is an obscure, rarely produced musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II based on novels by John Steinbeck. Berkshire Theatre Group is making a strong and risky case for why we should take another look at a musical with a flawed book but richly compelling music.

With a cast of ten and pit band of five musicians, a complex, multi-level, modular set by Jimmy Stubbs has been shoe-horned into the intimate Unicorn Theatre. With a lot of action and multiple settings it’s a busy night for stage hands. At times their constant activity overlaps and interferes with focus on the music.

R&H were not the first choice to bring the rough, slice of life Steinbeck books to Broadway. Set on the largely down on its luck Cannery Row the characters, rowdy men and hookers, were not the usual material for the team’s family friendly musicals. In the books Suzy is clearly a prostitute but that got blurred in the final production much to the chagrin of the author.

After tough previews in Boston and New Haven, with rewrites, it opened at the Shubert Theatre on Broadway November 30, 1955. It featured the opera singer Helen Traubel as Fauna, William Johnson as Doc, (Henry Fonda didn’t pan out) Judy Tyler as Suzy, George D. Wallace as Mac and Mike Kellin as Hazel. The show had received the largest advance ticket sale in Broadway history to that point, $1.2 million. For the first time R&H allowed for group sales.

Shunning backers they invested their own money. Four out of five major New York critics panned the show but praised the score. After opening night sales plunged. Fearing for her reputation Traubel, the only bankable star, left the show. They wanted Julie Andrews to play Suzy but she had other plans. The settled on Princess Summer Fall Winter Spring from the kids show Howdy Doody. Traubel's understudy, Ruth Kobart, played 42 of the show's 245 performances. The show closed after presale and group sales petered out.

We encounter marine biologist Doc, Joe Joseph, at work gathering and researching star fish from tide pools. He would like to write a scientific paper but lacks confidence in his skill. It seems he is a lady’s man as an attractive stylish woman leaves having spent the night.

Cannery Row is a multi-national community of workers. This is expressed in “All Kinds of People.” With pals Mac (Hennesy Winkler) and the comic but dim-witted Hazel (Elijah Dawson) they convey his research in “Tide Pool.”

In the community of uneducated factory workers Doc is widely admired. Into this mix arrives a down- on-her-luck drifter. Suzy (Noa Luz Barenblat) grabs hearts and minds with the poignant “Everybody’s Got a Home but Me.”  A plainclothes cop is willing to cut her some slack but she has to get off the street or get busted for vagrancy.

She has cut her hand breaking a shop window to grab some donuts. (Steinbeck via Victor Hugo?) Who else but Doc is able to stitch her up thus sparking seeds of improbable romance?

We meet the guys at the Palace Flophouse. This occurs after modular stairs are swept aside and several cots are brought in. Their way of life is conveyed in “On a Lopsided Bus” and “Bum’s Opera.”

Across the street is a cat house/ restaurant with Fauna (Sharone Sayegh) as the kind-hearted madam. She teaches table manners to her hookers in the hope that they will become ladies and brides.

It’s unclear whether she has taken in Suzy out of charity, as a boarder, or sex worker. In scenes with her peers in lingerie she is similarly but more modesty attired. This was a sticking point for Broadway in the 1950s. It was a tough sell to have a prostitute as a leading lady but toning that down contributes to the ambivalence of this musical.

By the second act she has left the cat house to take a job as a waitress. She moves into a rent free abandoned boiler. This proves to be an awkward prop when Doc comes to visit with a bouquet of flowers. Their date had been a flop. She complained to Fauna that he never made a move on her.

A video of them in “the pipe” is projected. The image is broken up on a latticed background and only further obscures the scene.

The pace of the longer first act drags and, as usual, Pipe Dream quickens in the second act. Overall, the director, Kat Yen, has done her best to liven a dated musical. While the narrative stumbles along the music is vintage R&H. There are wonderful songs “The Man I Used to Be” “Sweet Thursday,” “Suzy Is a Good Thing,” “All At Once You Love Her” and “The Next Time It Happens.” When Pipe Dream was abandoned its songs found their way into other musicals.

Even when not their best work, for pure Broadway history, never miss a chance to see vintage R&H. The uniformly fine cast and musicians put their heart and soul into a memorable production.

The Pipe Dream
By Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
Based on Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday by Johnteinbeck
Directed by Kat Yen
Choreography Isadora Wolfe
Musical direction, Jacob Kerzner
Scenic design, Jimmy Stubbs; Lighting, Evan C. Anderson; Sound, Uptownworks|
Berkshire Theatre Group
Unicorn Theatre
Stockbridge, Mass.
July 26 to August 31

Pipe Dream is an obscure, rarely produced musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II based on novels by John Steinbeck. Berkshire Theatre Group is making a strong and risky case for why we should take another look at a musical with a flawed book but richly compelling music.

With a cast of ten and pit band of five musicians, a complex, multi-level, modular set by Jimmy Stubbs has been shoe-horned into the intimate Unicorn Theatre. With a lot of action and multiple settings it’s a busy night for stage hands. At times their constant activity overlaps and interferes with focus on the music.

R&H were not the first choice to bring the rough, slice of life Steinbeck books to Broadway. Set on the largely down on its luck Cannery Row the characters, rowdy men and hookers, were not the usual material for the team’s family friendly musicals. In the books Suzy is clearly a prostitute but that got blurred in the final production much to the chagrin of the author.

After tough previews in Boston and New Haven, with rewrites, it opened at the Shubert Theatre on Broadway November 30, 1955. It featured the opera singer Helen Traubel as Fauna, William Johnson as Doc, (Henry Fonda didn’t pan out) Judy Tyler as Suzy, George D. Wallace as Mac and Mike Kellin as Hazel. The show had received the largest advance ticket sale in Broadway history to that point, $1.2 million. For the first time R&H allowed for group sales.

Shunning backers they invested their own money. Four out of five major New York critics panned the show but praised the score. After opening night sales plunged. Fearing for her reputation Traubel, the only bankable star, left the show. They wanted Julie Andrews to play Suzy but she had other plans. The settled on Princess Summer Fall Winter Spring from the kids show Howdy Doody. Traubel's understudy, Ruth Kobart, played 42 of the show's 245 performances. The show closed after presale and group sales petered out.

We encounter marine biologist Doc, Joe Joseph, at work gathering and researching star fish from tide pools. He would like to write a scientific paper but lacks confidence in his skill. It seems he is a lady’s man as an attractive stylish woman leaves having spent the night.

Cannery Row is a multi-national community of workers. This is expressed in “All Kinds of People.” With pals Mac (Hennesy Winkler) and the comic but dim-witted Hazel (Elijah Dawson) they convey his research in “Tide Pool.”

In the community of uneducated factory workers Doc is widely admired. Into this mix arrives a down- on-her-luck drifter. Suzy (Noa Luz Barenblat) grabs hearts and minds with the poignant “Everybody’s Got a Home but Me.”  A plainclothes cop is willing to cut her some slack but she has to get off the street or get busted for vagrancy.

She has cut her hand breaking a shop window to grab some donuts. (Steinbeck via Victor Hugo?) Who else but Doc is able to stitch her up thus sparking seeds of improbable romance?

We meet the guys at the Palace Flophouse. This occurs after mudular stairs are swept aside and several cots are brought in. Their way of life is conveyed in “On a Lopsided Bus” and “Bum’s Opera.”

Across the street is a cat house/ restaurant with Fauna (Sharone Sayegh) as the kind hearted madam. She teaches table manners to her hookers in the hope that they will become ladies and brides.

It’s unclear whether she has taken in Suzy out of charity, as a boarder, or sex worker. In scenes with her peers in lingerie she is similarly but more modesty attired. This was a sticking point for Broadway in the 1950s. It was a tough sell to have a prostitute as a leading lady but toning that down contributes to the ambivalence of this musical.

By the second act she has left the cat house to take a job as a waitress. She moves into a rent free abandoned boiler. This proves to be an awkward prop when Doc comes to visit with a bouquet of flowers. Their date had been a flop. She complained to Fauna that he never made a move on her.

A video of them in “the pipe” is projected. The image is broken up on a latticed background and only further obscures the scene.

The pace of the longer first act drags and, as usual, Pipe Dream quickens in the second act. Overall, the director, Kat Yen, has done her best to liven a dated musical. While the narrative stumbles along the music is vintage R&H. There are wonderful songs “The Man I Used to Be” “Sweet Thursday,” “Suzy Is a Good Thing,” “All At Once You Love Her” and “The Next Time It Happens.”

Even when not their best work, for pure Broadway history, never miss a chance to see vintage R&H. The uniformly fine cast and musicians put their heart and soul into a memorable production.

The Pipe Dream
By Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
Based on Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck

Directed by Kat Yen

Choreography Isadora Wolfe
Musical direction, Jacob Kerzner
Scenic design, Jimmy Stubbs; Lighting, Evan C. Anderson; Sound, Uptownworks

Berkshire Theatre Group
Unicorn Theatre

Stockbridge, Mass.

July 26 to August 31

Pipe Dream is an obscure, rarely produced musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II based on novels by John Steinbeck. Berkshire Theatre Group is making a strong and risky case for why we should take another look at a musical with a flawed book but richly compelling music.

With a cast of ten and pit band of five musicians, a complex, multi-level, modular set by Jimmy Stubbs has been shoe-horned into the intimate Unicorn Theatre. With a lot of action and multiple settings it’s a busy night for stage hands. At times their constant activity overlaps and interferes with focus on the music.

R&H were not the first choice to bring the rough, slice of life Steinbeck books to Broadway. Set on the largely down on its luck Cannery Row the characters, rowdy men and hookers, were not the usual material for the team’s family friendly musicals. In the books Suzy is clearly a prostitute but that got blurred in the final production much to the chagrin of the author.

After tough previews in Boston and New Haven, with rewrites, it opened at the Shubert Theatre on Broadway November 30, 1955. It featured the opera singer Helen Traubel as Fauna, William Johnson as Doc, (Henry Fonda didn’t pan out) Judy Tyler as Suzy, George D. Wallace as Mac and Mike Kellin as Hazel. The show had received the largest advance ticket sale in Broadway history to that point, $1.2 million. For the first time R&H allowed for group sales.

Shunning backers they invested their own money. Four out of five major New York critics panned the show but praised the score. After opening night sales plunged. Fearing for her reputation Traubel, the only bankable star, left the show. They wanted Julie Andrews to play Suzy but she had other plans. The settled on Princess Summer Fall Winter Spring from the kids show Howdy Doody. Traubel's understudy, Ruth Kobart, played 42 of the show's 245 performances. The show closed after presale and group sales petered out.

We encounter marine biologist Doc, Joe Joseph, at work gathering and researching star fish from tide pools. He would like to write a scientific paper but lacks confidence in his skill. It seems he is a lady’s man as an attractive stylish woman leaves having spent the night.

Cannery Row is a multi-national community of workers. This is expressed in “All Kinds of People.” With pals Mac (Hennesy Winkler) and the comic but dim-witted Hazel (Elijah Dawson) they convey his research in “Tide Pool.”

In the community of uneducated factory workers Doc is widely admired. Into this mix arrives a dow- on-her-luck drifter. Suzy (Noa Luz Barenblat) grabs hearts and minds with the poignant “Everybody’s Got a Home but Me.”  A plainclothes cop is willing to cut her some slack but she has to get off the street or get busted for vagrancy.

She has cut her hand breaking a shop window to grab some donuts. (Steinbeck via Victor Hugo?) Who else but Doc is able to stitch her up thus sparking seeds of improbable romance?

We meet the guys at the Palace Flophouse. This occurs after mudular stairs are swept aside and several cots are brought in. Their way of life is conveyed in “On a Lopsided Bus” and “Bum’s Opera.”

Across the street is a cat house/ restaurant with Fauna (Sharone Sayegh) as the kind hearted madam. She teaches table manners to her hookers in the hope that they will become ladies and brides.

It’s unclear whether she has taken in Suzy out of charity, as a boarder, or sex worker. In scenes with her peers in lingerie she is similarly but more modesty attired. This was a sticking point for Broadway in the 1950s. It was a tough sell to have a prostitute as a leading lady but toning that down contributes to the ambivalence of this musical.

By the second act she has left the cat house to take a job as a waitress. She moves into a rent free abandoned boiler. This proves to be an awkward prop when Doc comes to visit with a bouquet of flowers. Their date had been a flop. She complained to Fauna that he never made a move on her.

A video of them in “the pipe” is projected. The image is broken up on a latticed background and only further obscures the scene.

The pace of the longer first act drags and, as usual, Pipe Dream quickens in the second act. Overall, the director, Kat Yen, has done her best to liven a dated musical. While the narrative stumbles along the music is vintage R&H. There are wonderful songs “The Man I Used to Be” “Sweet Thursday,” “Suzy Is a Good Thing,” “All At Once You Love Her” and “The Next Time It Happens.”

Even when not their best work, for pure Broadway history, never miss a chance to see vintage R&H. The uniformly fine cast and musicians put their heart and soul into a memorable production.

The Pipe Dream
By Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
Based on Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck

Directed by Kat Yen

Choreography Isadora Wolfe
Musical direction, Jacob Kerzner
Scenic design, Jimmy Stubbs; Lighting, Evan C. Anderson; Sound, Uptownworks

Berkshire Theatre Group
Unicorn Theatre

Stockbridge, Mass.

July 26 to August 31

Pipe Dream is an obscure, rarely produced musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II based on novels by John Steinbeck. Berkshire Theatre Group is making a strong and risky case for why we should take another look at a musical with a flawed book but richly compelling music.

With a cast of ten and pit band of five musicians, a complex, multi-level, modular set by Jimmy Stubbs has been shoe-horned into the intimate Unicorn Theatre. With a lot of action and multiple settings it’s a busy night for stage hands. At times their constant activity overlaps and interferes with focus on the music.

R&H were not the first choice to bring the rough, slice of life Steinbeck books to Broadway. Set on the largely down on its luck Cannery Row the characters, rowdy men and hookers, were not the usual material for the team’s family friendly musicals. In the books Suzy is clearly a prostitute but that got blurred in the final production much to the chagrin of the author.

After tough previews in Boston and New Haven, with rewrites, it opened at the Shubert Theatre on Broadway November 30, 1955. It featured the opera singer Helen Traubel as Fauna, William Johnson as Doc, (Henry Fonda didn’t pan out) Judy Tyler as Suzy, George D. Wallace as Mac and Mike Kellin as Hazel. The show had received the largest advance ticket sale in Broadway history to that point, $1.2 million. For the first time R&H allowed for group sales.

Shunning backers they invested their own money. Four out of five major New York critics panned the show but praised the score. After opening night sales plunged. Fearing for her reputation Traubel, the only bankable star, left the show. They wanted Julie Andrews to play Suzy but she had other plans. The settled on Princess Summer Fall Winter Spring from the kids show Howdy Doody. Traubel's understudy, Ruth Kobart, played 42 of the show's 245 performances. The show closed after presale and group sales petered out.

We encounter marine biologist Doc, Joe Joseph, at work gathering and researching star fish from tide pools. He would like to write a scientific paper but lacks confidence in his skill. It seems he is a lady’s man as an attractive stylish woman leaves having spent the night.

Cannery Row is a multi-national community of workers. This is expressed in “All Kinds of People.” With pals Mac (Hennesy Winkler) and the comic but dim-witted Hazel (Elijah Dawson) they convey his research in “Tide Pool.”

In the community of uneducated factory workers Doc is widely admired. Into this mix arrives a dow- on-her-luck drifter. Suzy (Noa Luz Barenblat) grabs hearts and minds with the poignant “Everybody’s Got a Home but Me.”  A plainclothes cop is willing to cut her some slack but she has to get off the street or get busted for vagrancy.

She has cut her hand breaking a shop window to grab some donuts. (Steinbeck via Victor Hugo?) Who else but Doc is able to stitch her up thus sparking seeds of improbable romance?

We meet the guys at the Palace Flophouse. This occurs after mudular stairs are swept aside and several cots are brought in. Their way of life is conveyed in “On a Lopsided Bus” and “Bum’s Opera.”

Across the street is a cat house/ restaurant with Fauna (Sharone Sayegh) as the kind hearted madam. She teaches table manners to her hookers in the hope that they will become ladies and brides.

It’s unclear whether she has taken in Suzy out of charity, as a boarder, or sex worker. In scenes with her peers in lingerie she is similarly but more modesty attired. This was a sticking point for Broadway in the 1950s. It was a tough sell to have a prostitute as a leading lady but toning that down contributes to the ambivalence of this musical.

By the second act she has left the cat house to take a job as a waitress. She moves into a rent free abandoned boiler. This proves to be an awkward prop when Doc comes to visit with a bouquet of flowers. Their date had been a flop. She complained to Fauna that he never made a move on her.

A video of them in “the pipe” is projected. The image is broken up on a latticed background and only further obscures the scene.

The pace of the longer first act drags and, as usual, Pipe Dream quickens in the second act. Overall, the director, Kat Yen, has done her best to liven a dated musical. While the narrative stumbles along the music is vintage R&H. There are wonderful songs “The Man I Used to Be” “Sweet Thursday,” “Suzy Is a Good Thing,” “All At Once You Love Her” and “The Next Time It Happens.”

Even when not their best work, for pure Broadway history, never miss a chance to see vintage R&H. The uniformly fine cast and musicians put their heart and soul into a memorable production.