Happy New Year! Mine got off to a good start with a program called Fie! Fie!
Fi-Fi! I know, I know, that’s a lot of exclamation points. The subtitle of the performance was Forgotten Songs of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Yes, indeed, Fitzgerald wrote the libretto and lyrics to Fi-Fi, which was presented by the Princeton University Triangle Club in 1914. In addition to hearing some of the songs from Fi-Fi, Monday evening’s performance also had a couple of scenes from the show, as well as a recitation of three of Fitzgerald’s poems, and some lively discussion with Andrea Olmstead who has written an e-book, Who Was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Daisy? The crackerjack cast included Nancy Anderson, Nicolas Dromard, Karen Mason, Alli Mauzey, Nick Verina, and Teal Wicks, accompanied by Glen Roven, all under the direction of Ben West.
On to the music. While the setup of the evening was being explained, Mr. Roven provided some period-style underscoring that led us to Ou-La-La, a sweet waltz-song that had a youthful flair—quite appropriate, since Fi-Fi was a student musical. Love or Eugenics, also a waltz, had more of a story, then a march section followed by a jazz section, finishing up with a bit of a vamp. You could have said a bit of a camp about the original production since the Triangle Club was an all-male organization, so the women’s roles were played by male students. In fact, we learned that Fitzgerald was supposed to be in the show but was not allowed to owing to his poor scholastic performance. Yep, bad grades kept him off the boards. But he did get some good press. The show (as did others he wrote with the Triangle Club) traveled after their Princeton performances, to places like Detroit, Louisville, Brooklyn, and Baltimore, where The Sun wrote, “The lyrics of the songs were written by F. S. Fitzgerald, who could take his place right now with the brightest writers of witty lyrics in America.” [This was referenced at the performance I attended; I went to Yahoo! to find the quote.]
The plot of Fi-Fi, as explained by Evan Leslie, of the Library for the Performing Arts, was so convoluted that I couldn’t grasp enough of it to even consider recounting it here. Suffice it to say that there were people pretending to be other people, at least two he-loves-her-but-she-loves-other-he triangles, and … well, I think you get it. Round and Round had its own little convoluted plot and was witty. One of my favorite songs in the show was A Slave to Modern Improvements, which had the character Clover Blossom singing about all of the medical techniques her father had subjected her to. It was very funny (the actress sang with impeccably bad technique), and had lyrics that included “vivisection” and “herbicide.”
Rose of the Night took us back into waltz territory but with a little Latin flair thrown in via tango and cha-cha rhythms. A scene followed with a character named Tracy and a character named Mrs. Bovine. Remember, this is student comedy we were hearing. Tracy was masquerading as the Prime Minister of Monaco, while Mrs. Bovine was the mother of the girl the Prime Minister was courting. Not the real Prime Minister, of course. He was off … see convoluted, above. There was some real humor here; the touches of plot we were hearing matched the snippets of songs. The composers (also Princeton students) were D. D. Griffin, A. L. Booth, and Paul Dickey.
Men was a song that also had heavy vamp appeal. The poems recited—Staying Up All Night, To My Unused Greek Book, and My First Love—were also written during Fitzgerald’s college years. My First Love had underscoring from Reminiscence, the gentle song that preceded it and that indeed had a small reprise after the poem ended. That was a nice directorial touch. The evening ended with The Monte Carlo Moon, also sentimental and very pretty, and then the entire cast singing the patter-style words of Fie! Fie! Fi-Fi! This was an altogether enjoyable experience—good music, fun lyrics, and learning something new about F. Scott Fitzgerald. Happy new year, indeed.
ConcertMeister
Sounds delightful!
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