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Yahoo!Cy Coleman belongs in the pantheon of pop composers, both for his contributions to the great American songbook and to the Broadway musical. Yet the prolific songwriter, who died in 2004 at the age of 75, is too often overlooked, or at least underrated.
This may be due to his chameleon-like quality. Coleman’s comfort working in many styles makes his sound hard to pin down. On the other hand, his astonishing variety—the composer and accomplished jazz pianist worked in genres ranging from blues to country to classic Broadway razzle-dazzle—makes his music perfect for a revue.
“He didn’t like repeating himself,” said lyricist and director David Zippel, a longtime Coleman collaborator and creator of The Best Is Yet to Come, a celebration of his work opening Saturday night at the Rubicon Theatre. “Part of the joy will be to hear songs in all of these disparate styles, and realize one man created all of these in his lifetime.”
Zippel reports the revue, which he plans to move to an off-Broadway theater in the fall, features a mixture of familiar and obscure material. “One third consists of classic Cy Coleman pop songs like ‘The Best Is Yet to Come’ and ‘Witchcraft,’ ” he said. “One third is his well-known theater songs. The other third consists of songs he was writing toward the end of his career—some of them with me. These are songs people haven’t heard, which I feel are really worth hearing.”
They’ll be performed by an eight-piece swing band (an unusually large ensemble for a small theater) led by veteran singer/pianist Billy Stritch, and a five-person cast of Broadway veterans. Among them will be Tony Award winner Lillias White, who will sing—among other things—a bawdy ballad Coleman tailored for her talents for his 1997 musical The Life.
His other Broadway hits included On the 20th Century (featuring lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green), Barnum, The Will Rogers Follies, Wildcat (which produced the song “Hey, Look Me Over”), Sweet Charity (which gave us “Big Spender” and “If My Friends Could See Me Now”) and City of Angels, a jazzy 1989 film noir musical that was his first collaboration with Zippel.
As a collaborator, “He was a backward and forward and sideways kind of guy,” Zippel recalled. “Sometimes he would come at me with a melody and say, ‘How about this?’ Sometimes I’d throw a chunk of a lyric at him, and we’d go back and forth. It was almost always based on how the song would function in the show as a dramatic piece.”
So what defines a Coleman song? “The core is melody,” Zippel said. “His melodies are so robust, no matter what style he’s writing in. I may be flattering myself to say this, but he picked really good lyricists—particularly Carolyn Leigh, his first partner. He wrote Little Me and a string of pop hits with her. She is particularly well-represented in this show.”
Zippel originally presented the idea of a revue to Coleman in 2003, the year before the composer’s death. “He said, ‘That’s for after I’m gone. Let’s write something new,’” Zippel recalled.
So they kept working on a variety of projects, including a show about Napoleon and Josephine called simply N. “It’s about their private lives,” Zippel said. "They were madly in love with one another, but never at the same time. The music is Franco-inspired—different from anything he ever wrote. There are three songs from that in the show.”
Another unfinished project represented in the revue is Pamela’s First Musical, an adaptation of a children’s book by the late Wendy Wasserstein. “It was such a happy collaboration,” Zippel recalled. “We did a workshop at Lincoln Center. We were about to go out of town (to do a tryout production) when Cy died. It was postponed a year, and then Wendy died.
“The show is in pretty good shape. Last spring, we did a concert version of it starring Donna Murphy as a benefit for Broadway Cares. The response was terrific. I think it will eventually be produced.”
Zippel became acquainted with the Rubicon four years ago, when he met artistic director Karyl Lynn Burns and director of new works Michael Jackowitz at a dinner party in Los Angeles. Subsequent visits to Ventura to see shows convinced him it would be a good place to work.
“The company really is the perfect size,” he said. “It is large enough to be able to properly support the work, yet small enough to be flexible and to move swiftly to make the kind of changes that happen naturally in the process of development.”
“The Roundabout Theatre in New York wanted to do a workshop (of this material), but I was looking for a theater company that actually wanted to present it,” he added. “This way we learn so much more.”
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The Best Is Yet to Come previews July 9-18, opens July 19, and runs through August 2 at the Rubicon Theatre, 1006 East Main Street, Ventura. Call 667-2900 or visit rubicontheatre.org for tickets and information.
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