Yule Logged

First came that song. Irving
Berlin’s “White Christmas” is arguably the biggest-selling single in
the history of recorded music, with more than 100 million copies sold,
50 million for Bing Crosby alone. More than 300 million Americans know
every word and can sing it from memory. Yet when Crosby first sang it
on NBC Radio’s Kraft Music Hall in December 1941, right after
Pearl Harbor, he didn’t think much of it. Shortly after the song was
featured in the 1942 Paramount movie Holiday Inn with co-stars
Der Bingle and Fred Astaire, where it won an Academy Award. Twelve
years later it was featured in Paramount’s 1954 repackaging of Holiday Inn, titled White Christmas, the first movie filmed in the VistaVision process and the box-office champ of the year. 

Five decades later, the second movie was
transformed, with both cuts and additions, into a stage musical, where
the song is heard at the beginning and the finale. During the opening
night’s packed house for the Talent Company’s presentation of White Christmas,
now playing inside the New Times Theater at the New York State
Fairgrounds, Berlin’s durable chestnut still glistens eyes all across
the room.

With many inexhaustibly popular songs
like “Danny Boy” or “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” the misleadingly
bland surface for “White Christmas” covers the deep appeal of a subtext
that’s hard to articulate. Crosby might have missed this the first time
around, but Berlin knew what he was doing. He composed “White
Christmas” poolside in southern California in 1940 and boasted to his
secretary, “I just wrote the best song I’ve ever written. Hell, the
best song anybody’s ever written.” 

Like Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, “White
Christmas” is a secular celebration of the holiday, emphasizing family
(“. . . while children listen”). And like other songs from the early
World War II years, there’s an unmistakable note of melancholy and loss
(“ . . .like the ones I used to know”). On that latter theme “White
Christmas” is a first cousin of “As Time Goes By,” from the movie Casablanca (also 1942).

The rooting of the song in World War II
helps to explain the peculiar book for the musical. In adapting the
1954 vehicle for the stage in 2004, when it opened in San Francisco,
David Ives and Paul Blake changed supporting characters and added songs
but still hewed to the plot elements, such as they are, in the movie
scenario nailed together by old Hollywood regulars Norman Krasna,
Norman Panama and Melvin Frank. Outwardly it’s a backstage romance
about putting on a show, only it’s supposed to be in a Vermont country
inn facing bankruptcy. The male song-and-dance team of Bob Wallace (Bob
Brown), the prime singer, and Phil Davis (Gary Troy), the prime dancer,
are looking to make it big, in Miami or possibly on The Ed Sullivan Show,
when they meet up with the Haynes sisters. The elder Betty (Colleen
Wager) squabbles with the somewhat dour Bob, a tension we know will
resolve easily, while the younger Judy (Brandi Ozark Weston) teams more
easily with the womanizing Phil. 

Overlying this is the major storyline we
almost forget. In a prologue set in the battlefield in 1944, Bob and
Phil are serving under the iron-pants Gen. Henry Waverly (Bill
Coughlin), who scowls at show business. The second scene jumps forward
10 years to Vermont where the retired general, who longs to return to
service, is running the financially strapped Columbia Inn during an
unexpected winter heat wave. Holding the fort for him is a
smart-talking assistant concierge, Martha Watson (Christine Lightcap),
a role greatly expanded from the film. Now she has saltier dialogue
(“We might as well be married; all we do is squabble and we don’t have
any sex.”) plus she sings three numbers. If that were not enough, the
general has a precocious granddaughter named Susan (Julia Goodwin) who
proclaims, “Call me Broadway Sue,” and who wants to get into the show.

While there’s not much tension in any of
these plot threads, they provide settings for tunes of widely different
themes. “Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep,” an Oscar nominee from
the 1954 movie, is still a duet with Wager and Brown. “The Best Things
Happen When You’re Dancing,” written when it was still hoped that Fred
Astaire would be in the 1954 cast, becomes a dance duo for Weston and
Troy. It’s also one of the biggest production numbers in the first act,
with choreography by Michael Groesbeck.

Other numbers are moved around for more
resonance. “Blue Skies,” an older Berlin song passed off as part of a
medley-duet in the movie, here becomes the climax of the first act,
with a singing-and-dancing Bob Brown and most of the company. Eugene
Taddeo puts everyone in spotless white costumes with white fedoras,
another evocation of five-decades-old styles. The lesser Berlin song
“Snow” gains from being expanded into a larger production number,
especially well-staged by director Dan Tursi, with all the principals
and comic lines from supporting players like Gennaro Parlato. “Let Me
Sing and I’m Happy,” previously a duet for Crosby and Danny Kaye, is
now a novelty song for Lightcap, reprised as a showstopper for
granddaughter Susan.

The four songs dropped from the movie
will never be missed, but all those added become strong assets. By
bending the plot a bit, Betty has somehow left snowy Vermont to take on
a gig at the tony Regency Room in New York City. The movie has this
same segue, even though travel in 1954 was still by train. Anyway, this
becomes the setting for “Love, You Didn’t Do Right By Me,” from actress
Wager in an elegant black gown (one of Taddeo’s best costumes,
incidentally), which is followed in tandem with Bob Brown’s “How Deep
is the Ocean.” With the exception of the title song, these are the peak
musical moments of the evening. When Ives and Blake wrote the 2004 show
they knew this was going to work well, so they reprise “How Deep” a few
scenes later.

New also to the 2004 version is the
great old Berlin song, “I Love a Piano,” now a duet for Troy and
Weston, while “Love and the Weather” tells that Brown and Wager might
really have something going on despite what they say. Lightcap’s Martha
also gets much fun with the addition of “Falling Out of Love Can Be
Fun,” with backups from Wager and Weston.

Talent Company producer Lightcap has
pulled out all the stops for this big holiday production, calling up
Equity player Gary Troy from New York City and young company veteran
Weston from Virginia. Nadine Cole’s six players in the pit ensure lush
sounds for Berlin classics. And Heather Hartkopf’s adaptable set allows
shifts around the world and time, ably lighted by Cindy Shippers. Keyed
to its classic Irving Berlin number, this White Christmas hits all the right notes. After all, 300 million Americans can’t be wrong.                                     

This production runs through Dec. 13. See Times Table for information.