Gay Icons Of The Past #7: One Night in Bangkok

[PeterRS]

Now what has one of the most popular disco numbers of the 1980s to do with Gay Icons? I wonder how many are aware that this song comes from a Broadway musical? "Chess", written by the chess-loving Tim Rice who in the 1970s had made himself a nice fortune as the lyricist for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Evita" and then later for Disney with lyrics for Elton John’s “The Lion King”, opened in London in 1984. To write the music, Rice commuted to Sweden to discuss the idea with the ABBA boys, Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson. They liked the idea. In the view of many, including me, the resultant music remains one of the greatest Broadway scores of all time. Sadly, though, internal Broadway feuding and international rapprochement as Gorbachev's star was rising, rendered Tim Rice's book and lyrics about a Cold War love affair set alongside a chess match between a Russian and an American all but redundant. It struggled along in London for three years but then collapsed spectacularly on Broadway with a loss of over US$6 million. Some years later Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Aspects of Love", his first post-"Phantom" musical, lost $8 million after it too died on Broadway, thus becoming Broadway's most expensive flop up to that time. This was eclipsed by the massive $60 million loss when “Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark” also collapsed in 2017. Broadway can be an unforgiving beast.

Included in the original London cast of “Chess” were Elaine Paige (Grizabella in the original “CATS”) and actor/singer Murray Head who had featured in the first full mouth-to-mouth on-screen kiss with actor Peter Finch in John Schlesinger’s 1971 movie “Sunday, Bloody Sunday.”

If Broadway IS New York, now it also belongs to the world. Musicals had always toured internationally, mostly in locally produced versions often quite far from the Broadway originals. When Andrew Lloyd Webber teamed up with the struggling gay London producer, Cameron Macintosh, though, a new idea was born: cloning musicals. Macintosh realized that audiences in Sydney, Berlin and Tokyo not only wanted to see a hit show, they wanted to see exactly the same show as audiences in London and New York. Thus the musicals' franchise was born. The result: everyone involved in their shows - "CATS" and "Phantom of the Opera" (and let's not forget that Cameron had also produced on his own two other blockbusters, "Les Misérables" and "Miss Saigon") - started achieving profits earlier producers could not even dream about. A few years ago Forbes Magazine estimated Macintosh’s wealth at over US$1 billion!

 

As the relatively recent book "Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway" by Michael Riedel illustrates, the relationships between theatre owners, producers, directors, PR teams, performers and critics have usually contained far more drama offstage than on. Perhaps less so in its beginnings during the Great Depression when all audiences wanted were bright lights, glitz, glamour, chorus girls - and more chorus girls! Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II changed all that. When the curtain went up on their first collaboration "Oklahoma" in 1943, the audience literally gasped, for this show and four others that followed from the same team transformed the musicals' genre from musical comedy to serious musical theatre, with real story lines and real people living all but real lives. A string of great musicals followed, starting with "West Side Story" by the gay quartet of Stephen Sondheim (lyrics), Leonard Bernstein's gorgeous music, the book by Arthur Laurents and stunning choreography by Jerome Robbins. Others included "My Fair Lady" and "Fiddler on the Roof". Thereafter the Dance Musical came to the fore with the brilliant - and gay - Michael Bennett conceiving and directing "A Chorus Line" and David Merrick producing "42nd Street". But soon Broadway itself was threatened with one of the world’s mega-disasters.

The sexuality of those on Broadway has always been the stuff of gossip. The distinguished British actress, the late Dame Peggy Ashcroft once said, "Of course I knew Laurence Olivier and Danny Kaye were having a long-term affair. So did all of London. So did their wives. Why is America always the last to know?" Perhaps it's the Puritan streak in America that encourages people to look the other way. Those who faced up to reality knew full well that Broadway and the Broadway musical had always relied on gay men, gay girls and a few theatres-full of bisexual men and women for its success, and the toll of those who died in the early years of AIDS was horrifically high. It was not just the male dancers and the dozens of boys in the chorus who were dying by the week. Directors Michael Bennett ("A Chorus Line”), Tony Richardson, Joe Layton ("Barnum"), song writer Peter Allen, Larry Kert who played Tony in the original "West Side Story" and the lead in Stephen Sondheim’s “Company”, lyricist Howard Ashman, choreographer Michael Shawn, publicist Frank Nathan - the obituaries just went on and on. 

In memory of all those who died,  I would like to pay my tribute by including here the Anthem from "Chess", with its beautiful melody sung fabulously by the Swedish singer Tommy Körberg whom I saw in the original London production. Benny's smile at the end says it all!

But after all the crying and all the funerals, the Broadway musical picked itself up. To this day it continues to present some of the finest entertainment in the world. More recent shows are again the talk of the town – “The Lion King”, “Wicked”, “Hamilton” and others along with revivals like “Cabaret” at Studio 54 which I saw some years ago with the androgynous Alan Cumming superb as the Master of Ceremonies. 

Before the pandemic, 70% of all New York visitors attended a Broadway show. That equates to more than forty million seats sold - just to tourists! So I salute Broadway and its musicals as my final Gay Icon. Of course there are dozens more. But I wanted to keep the list relatively small. Some have said I should have included Liberace. He was indeed very gay and very much an icon. But was he not more of an icon for the middle-aged ladies who attended his Las Vegas extravaganzas and made him the highest earning artist in the world? 

I could certainly have added living icons like Sir Ian McKellan and Bette Midler. Since coming out at the age of 49, Sir Ian has been a champion for gay rights. I love the true story of his visit to Singapore in 2007 to perform "King Lear".  Taking part in a live morning radio show, he was asked what he would like to see in Singapore, "Can you recommend a nice gay bar?" he quipped.  The programme controller had a fit and pulled the plug on the rest of interview.

The ‘Divine’ Ms. Midler owes much of her fame to gay audiences. After all, her career more or less began when she sang regularly at the famous Continental Baths, New York’s huge gay sauna, often accompanied by the young Barry Manilow on the piano. But they are still alive, thank goodness, and so do not fit with a series looking to the past. Perhaps another reader will contribute