March 4-10, 2004

art

The Great Coleman

Prince of the prince: Composer Cy Coleman (center), with The Great Ostrovsky actors Bob Gunton and Louise Pitre at the Prince Music Theater. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

With a career that's the stuff of legend, award-winning composer Cy Coleman returns to Philly with a world premiere.

by Steve Cohen

Cy Coleman is Broadway royalty, with more hit shows than any living American songwriter. He’s been called "a permanent jewel in Broadway’s musical crown." His shows are from the same classic fabric as Richard Rodgers and Irving Berlin. But not quite. Would any of those icons ever compose a song titled "Don’t Fuck Around With Your Mother-In-Law"? Not likely. Cy Coleman did, exhibiting his trademark mix of traditional and contemporary styles.

His latest show, The Great Ostrovsky, with book and lyrics by Avery Corman, has its world premiere Saturday at the Prince Music Theater. "I came down to see the Prince's production of It's Better With a Band by my friend David Zippel," says Coleman, "and saw that they did good work. Then I got to talking with Marjorie [Samoff, the Prince's artistic director]. I told her about my latest project, a comedy about an over-the-top star of the American Yiddish theater," says Coleman.

Samoff sang in a Yiddish choir when she was younger and has long been interested in the influence of Yiddish theater on the American musical. Corman, author of Oh, God! and Kramer vs. Kramer, originated the idea and went to Coleman with it, and Corman wrote the script and lyrics. Coleman was familiar with the idiom because both his parents were immigrants and spoke Yiddish at home. They even took him to Yiddish-language plays in Lower Manhattan. "Of course I know the genre and I use it to spice things up, but mainly this is a pop score," says Coleman. "Do you know, Yiddish theater used to be very big in Philadelphia? The playwrights used to adapt familiar stories and give them happy endings. Like Romeo and Juliet live happily ever after. We use this in our show."

Ostrovsky plays on the phenomenon of Yiddish theater in New York City in the '20s, and the immigrant audiences who loved it. The musical comedy centers around the trials of David Ostrovsky (played by Bob Gunton), a star of this new type of theater who is trying to balance his art with commercial demand. The show also stars Louise Pitre, Rachel Ulanet, Paul Kandel and Jonathan Hadary. Prince director-in-residence Doug Wager directs, with choreography and co-direction by Patricia Birch.

Coleman and Philadelphia have a long connection. His first show, Wildcat, ran here at the Erlanger in 1960. His next hit, Little Me, also played the Erlanger in its pre-Broadway tryout in 1962. Sweet Charity opened at the Shubert (now the Merriam) before its 1965 Broadway premiere, and I Love My Wife played the Forrest here before its 1977 New York run.

"When Little Me was here," Coleman recalls, "Bobby Fosse changed the staging of one of the songs, cutting out a few lines of the lyric. My partner, Carolyn Leigh, was furious and she ran out of the theater onto Market Street, made a left turn and ran toward City Hall. She found a traffic cop and brought him back into the theater where she commanded him to "arrest that manâ' and she pointed to Fosse. She was an intense woman. We knew we had a hit when the cop asked if he could stay and watch the second act."

Coleman was the youngest child of a New York carpenter and his wife who gave him piano lessons when he was 4. He became a child prodigy, played at Carnegie Hall and entered the New York College of Music in his early teens. "Then I rebelled," says Coleman. "I wanted to do something on my own." He formed a jazz trio and began playing in clubs, "originals and standards, mainly Rodgers and Hart." He played opposite Sarah Vaughn at Cafe Society and Ella Fitzgerald at Bop City. "We made recordings, and I was on TV all the time."

Composing came easy to Coleman. "It was natural. My whole life was music." As a teenager he wrote a group of piano preludes in the style of George Gershwin. Playing in clubs, Coleman composed many of his own tunes and scored a pop hit with "Why Try to Change Me Now." Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and others had hits with Coleman songs such as "Witchcraft" and "Best Is Yet to Come."

Little Me was a successful collaboration with Neil Simon, Carolyn Leigh, Bob Fosse and star Sid Caesar. Fosse then asked Coleman to do Sweet Charity and teamed him with lyricist Dorothy Fields. Later came Seesaw, I Love My Wife, On the Twentieth Century, Barnum, City of Angels, Will Rogers Follies and The Life. Coleman has also written for many films and has amassed a collection of Tonys, Emmys and Oscars.

Coleman is at work on two other musicals: The Private Lives of Napoleon and Josephine with Larry Gelbart and Zippel, and Pamela's First Musical with Zippel and Wendy Wasserstein.

Speaking of his Yiddish heritage in light of Ostrovsky, Coleman says that he was born Seymour Kaufman. "My first music publisher asked me to change my name to Cy Coleman. He convinced me that it was close enough and I wasn't escaping Judaism. I called my mother. She said, "Seymour, do what makes you happy.'"

The Great Ostrovsky runs March 6-28, $25-$48, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700.