"HIGH SPIRITS:" 'Encores!' Revives Itself

Encores! pulled off not one but four revivals this month with its singular production of a little-known yet eminently worthy 1964 musical called High Spirits.

Number one: Encores! revived a lovely show, one that I’d never paid much attention to before (yes, call me a Neanderthal). In other words, a very nice discovery.

Number two: In doing so, Encores! revived itself — namely, its original purpose, which, of late, had grown a little murky, as the series often appeared to be firing up revivals for quick-bucks transfers straight to Broadway. High Spirits is not going to Broadway (at least I don’t think it is, but what do I know?). It did, however, prove to be the perfect show for a two-week retrospective executed with proficiency and affection.

Number three: Encores! further revived itself by returning to its practice of full on-book performance, with everyone up there on that stage lugging their scripts (sometimes secreted in some very sweet spots). It isn’t that I love the sight of scripts during a show, but I have been advocating (in my head) for this return for a while now because it’s how Encores! was conceived. Scripts remind the audience (and the performers) that this is not a finished, polished product. It’s a romp, on the fly, at a very high level of execution. It makes everything feel slightly improvisatory. It makes everything a little wilder.

Number four: With High Spirits, Encores! revived the opening of a Broadway musical in February. That just doesn’t happen anymore. The current frost on Broadway openings extends from the filthy, icy (currently re-piling) snow at our curbs, to every theater in and around Times Square. It’s a chill, empty echo that just feels ominous. High Spirits sort of filled that void.

This was especially nice because High Spirits is one of Broadway history’s noble misses, adapted from Blithe Spirit — Noel Coward’s wonderfully wacked 1941 play and, later, 1945 film, about a husband who inadvertently brings back the ghost of his first wife via the seance machinations of a slightly daft medium (is there any other kind?), to the consternation of his second wife. High Spirits was directed by Coward himself (with some uncredited help from Gower Champion apparently). It was written by the supremely accomplished Hugh Martin, of Hollywood musicals distinction (composer of the score to Meet Me In St. Louis, among others), with lyrics by Timothy Gray, about whom I can tell you very little except that he exceeded himself with his superlatively smart lyric contribution here.

High Spirits had the misfortune to open in 1964 opposite Funny Girl, Hello Dolly and, soon, Fiddler. Talk about a tough crowd! The show received 8 Tony nominations and lost all of them, mostly to Dolly. I am not here to tell you that High Spirits deserved to win any of those awards; Hello Dolly, et. al., are better shows. But that’s why awards are meaningless. High Spirits is beyond awards. It’s well made, bitingly clever, at times perfectly delightful, and simply deserves to survive.

At Encores, it came fully back to life, resuscitated for the first time since 1964 with a dream cast: Phillipa Soo as Wife #2, the ever-so-buttoned up Ruth; Katrina Lenk as Wife #1, the slithery, shivery Elvira (a role originated on Broadway by Tammy Grimes); Steven Pasquale as the ladies’ loving but irritatingly self-centered husband, Charles; Rachel Draitch stealing scene after scene with droll under-power as the slow-moving maid, Edith; and the magnificent Andrea Martin as the dotty medium, Madame Arcati, more than measuring up (I’m quite sure) to her legendary predecessor in the part, Beatrice Lillie.

The script is largely Coward’s witty original, updated to 1964, mostly by a dance chorus of “beatnik” Arcati acolytes, who shimmied, shaked and bugalooed across the City Center stage in Ellenore Scott’s deliriously Fosse-esque choreography. (Her Fosse quotes were everywhere, delivered with overt, winking, panache.) Martin and Gray’s tasty score runs the gamut of Golden Age 60’s Broadway tropes, from bittersweet ballad (“Was She Prettier Than I?”), to perky activity ode (“Bicycle Song”); swinging seductive tease (“You’d Better Love Me”); kicky contrapuntal duet (“Where is the Man I Married?”); twitchy dance break (“Go Into Your Trance”); tongue-twirling Cole Porter-esque list song (“Home Sweet Heaven”); and on and on. All of the songs are memorable, partly because they remind you of other, more indelible songs. Which, in an Encores! context, is still great fun.

The songs were enhanced by irresistible orchestrations crackling with 60’s pizazz, credited to one Harry Zimmerman (I believe he was the Carol Burnett Show’s first music director!), abetted by (an again uncredited) master, Luther Henderson (whom I so admire, I once profiled him for The NY Times/ HERE).

The vibe inescapably conjured the zippy theme music to Bewitched, the beloved, witchy, 60’s sitcom that also kicked off its run in 1964. The crack Encores! orchestra has rarely sounded better to me, or at least more tickled to be playing anything quite like High Spirits.

And then there was the moment when Andrea Martin, chewing through her very wordy Madame Arcati monologues (and much of the scenery), got lost in a thicket of lines late in the second act, flipping her script pages back and forth dazedly, and finally blurting out, quite under her breath but for all the world to hear: “Oh, it’s late and I’m tired,” bringing down the house.

I felt like shouting to everybody up there: ‘Just do it again!’