Is Can-Can Still A Win-Win?

Cole Porter's Can-Can had its world premier at Philadelphia's Schubert Theater (now the Merriam) in March, 1953. Porter and his producers Feuer and Martin and author Abe Burrows knew that Philly was a tough tryout town but Porter's name still carried a certain cachet from the Main Line to the Union League.
So, they all journeyed by train to the City of Brotherly Love where Porter ensconced  himself on Rittenhouse Square in a suite at the Barclay Hotel while the cast  (except for the star of the show, Lilo) stayed at a less elegant establishment.
Can-Can was a crowd pleaser from the get-go.
The show had the largest advance sale ever for Philadelphia, $195,000 ($1.7 million in today's dollars). After a six-week run the show grossed more than $300,000 ($2.6 million today).
Now, Can-Can is back again just 90 miles up the road from its birthplace in a new production  at New Jersey's fabled Paper Mill Playhouse through October 26. And, once again it's headed to Broadway.
This is a production that keeps all of Porter's songs (even reinserting Who Said Gay Paree? which was dropped out of town) while updating Burrows' book with revisions by David Lee and Joel Fields.
Incorporating both the quick-takes, pratfalls and lowbrow antics of Abe Burrows and the high-spirited sophistication of Cole Porter, Can-Can has always been of two minds. On the one hand it's a highly-polished, romantic love story of two opposites who naturally attract. On the other, it's an irreverent, bawdy comedy that pokes fun at the elites, the establishment and the whole notion of restraint in a place such as Montmarte in the 1890s.
But aren't such juxtapositions really the very essence of traditional musical comedy?
Because, when Can-Can isn't being sweet and sentimental amidst the mellow sounds of a concertina on a starry-eyed Paris night, it's being loud, boisterous and bombastic in a Parisian music hall. Which amounts to a kind of win-win for music and comedy.
The story revolves around Pistache, a Parisian café owner, who decides to feature the scandalous dance the Can-Can at her establishment. But her defiance of the law may end her profitable business and destroy whatever chance she has to rekindle a romance with her one true love, Aristide. A secondary love story involves the artist, Boris and his showgirl friend Claudine. Added to this quartet is a self-possessed, certified villain, Hillaire who succeeds in creating two love triangles.

The cast of this production is top-rate but Broadway standouts Kate Baldwin as Pistache and Jason Danieley as Aristede dominate the proceedings and they will surely win your heart. Baldwin is appropriately sassy and fetching while Danieley is dashing, pensive and charming all at once. And their voices are well-suited to the great songs that Cole Porter has provided from the haunting I Love Paris to the full-throated, exuberant I Am In Love to the effervescent C'est Magnifique. What a joy it is to hear these Cole Porter tunes performed pitch-perfect, in context once again.

Kudos as well to Greg Hildreth, Mark Price and Justin Robertson who form a delectable comic trio as Boris, Hercule and Etienne.

Of course, Can-Can is unthinkable without dazzling dance numbers and in this production the entire ensemble will treat you to to high-kicks, leaps, splits and even somersaults rarely seen on Broadway these days. With a brassy orchestra right on stage, the theater reverberates to the contagious beat of the dance that scandalized Paris. And the dance costumes are suited to the revelry. OooohhLaLa!

To be sure, the show will need some tightening and polishing before its Broadway arrival, particularly at story setup in the beginning and then again in the second act where multiple scene changes race toward an appropriate denouement. But all of this would seem to be easily accomplished.

Which is to say that Can-Can would be good-good for Broadway - especially right now in the age of Isis and Ebola. 

Because, during a time when it's often hard to find honest-to-goodness melody in new Broadway musicals, Core Porter's score remains tunefully intoxicating.

And while crassness now too often passes for humor, Abe Burrows' lively jocularity (with an updated book) keeps us laughing with no fear of an aftertaste.

And how bad could that be?

Or, to quote Mr. Porter himself: "It's all right with me."

CLICK HERE for more information and/or tickets to Can Can.