No. 34. “Days Like This”
FALSETTOS (1992). By William Finn (music, lyrics, and book) and James Lapine (book)
It’s 1992, and you’re watching the musical Falsettos. It’s the Broadway premier of two off-Broadway musicals from the 80’s, now presented as a single piece. William Finn wrote its eccentric score and co-wrote the book with director James Lapine. The simple set is a red platform and a freestanding door, with furniture coming and going as needed. The opening number, “Four Jews in a Room Bitching,” sets the irreverent tone. It’s a contemporary story about idiosyncratic New Yorkers: Marvin, his son Jason, his ex-wife Trina, his boyfriend Whizzer, and his therapist Mendel (who starts dating Trina). The first act covers these shifting relationships and the new type of “tight-knight” family that evolves (even as Marvin and Whizzer’s romance falls apart). The storytelling is impressionistic, told through non-linear songs and sequences, which are themselves full of non-sequitors and surprising turns of phrase. It’s like if ADHD was a musical. (Not that anyone really understands ADHD, because it’s the 90s.) The second act takes place two years later and adds “the lesbians from next door”: Charlotte (a doctor) and Cordelia (a Kosher caterer). As the adults start to plan Jason’s Bar Mitzvah—and Whizzer and Marvin start to reconcile—Dr. Charlotte worries about a mysterious new disease affecting gay men, a disease that soon affects Whizzer. The gang gathers in Whizzer’s hospital room on an “up” day, hopeful that things will improve (“Days Like This”).
In 1979 a wholly original composer-lyricist, William Finn, wrote and directed a one-act musical called In Trousers about a married man, Marvin, who realizes he is gay. While it showcased Finn’s raw talent, it’s loose structure revealed room for improvement as a dramatist. In 1981, Finn collaborated with director and playwright James Lapine on a sequel, March of the Falsettos, launching a decades-long collaboration between the two. Nine years later1, Finn and Lapine completed the “Marvin Trilogy” withFalsettoland, in which the characters confront the AIDS crises. This was the most successful installment yet, getting a commercial off-Broadway run. Hartford Stage was the first to present these latter-two shows as a single evening, directed by Graciela Daniele. The enthusiastic response to Hartford’s production led to a Broadway pairing of the one-acts calledFalsettos, directed by Lapine and featuring most of the original off-Broadway cast. This somewhat jumbled path to Broadway was perhaps fitting for the work of Finn, whose thru-sung shows don’t typically follow narrative conventions. While the “book” of Falsettos doesn’t feature much dialogue, Lapine’s contribution provided an organization and structure that clarified the narrative and heightened its emotional impact while allowing Finn to be Finn.
In the summer of 2006 I was a stage management intern for Barrington Stage Company’s new Musical Theater Lab series, and Bill Finn was the series’ artistic director. He was gruff, opinionated, and unpredictable, but also very kind. And once I got acclimated to his rather chaotic modes of communication, I could appreciate how much of a genius he really was, and how clearly he could see the moments he wanted. Pretty much every conversation started with me thinking “what is happening” and ended with me realizing “oh, yeah, that’s good.” As a longtime teacher at the NYU Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program, Finn championed new voices and urged them to defy convention and put themselves and their craziest ideas on the page, writers like Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop) and Will Aronson (Maybe Happy Ending). I expect Finn’s influence will continue to manifest in the years to come.
Recommended Recording: “Days Like This,” Falsettoland (1990 Original Off-Broadway Cast)
March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland each received cast recordings following their respective off-Broadway openings. When Falsettos opened on Broadway, the powers that be decided not to make a new recording but rather re-issue the previous two recordings as a set, despite the fact that these recordings didn’t reflect rewrites and cast changes made for Broadway. But they’re both classic recordings that perfectly capture the spirited performers expertly navigating the quirky score.
Falsettos has many songs that are more popular than “Days Like This.” But I chose this song because:
It’s my favorite—the opening bars of the accompaniment are so fun and bouncy!
It features people singing different musical lines separately, and then singing them on top of each other, which will ALWAYS work for me.
It features the entire cast, and each character is vividly rendered within a few bars (aside from Dr. Charlotte, who doesn’t get much to do in this song).
It’s a great example of Finn’s rhymes that are as preposterous as they are revealing (ex: “Go ahead be good and pissed. / ‘How can I help?,’ says the wiry psychiatrist,” or “I am up to my ass / in a Kosher morass,” to name a few .)
Alternate Performances
Falsettos had only received 3 cat recordings. Individual songs tend to get recording more often (“What More Can I Say” is a particularly popular choice.)
Justice for Barbara Walsh - Though a Hartford production inspired what became Falsettos, the Broadway bow functioned more as a transfer of the off-Broadway productions. Michael Rupert, Stephen Bogardus, and Chip Zien continued in the roles they created off-Broadway in both shows (Marvin, Whizzer, and Mendel respectively2). Alison Fraser played Trina in both In Trousers and March of the Falsettos, while Faith Prince played the role in Falsettoland. When it came time to cast the role for Broadway, the team decided not to choose between Fraser and Prince and instead went with option C, the Hartford Trina (Barbara Walsh). But Walsh never got to record her performance! You can at least see her perform “I’m Breaking Down” on a talk show. (The song first appeared in In Trousers before being worked into the Broadway Falsettos) The original Broadway cast also added Carolee Carmello as Cordelia, which is another thing we deserve to have on record.
2003 LATW Cast - LA Theaterworks recorded a 10th Anniversary edition of Falsettos, recording its full Broadway version for the first time. Michael Rupert, Stephen Bogardus, and Chip Zien reprised their roles, but the women and Jason were recast. Unlike most (if not all) other LATW productions, this disappeared into the ether after it’s first presentation…at least as much as anything can disappear when the internet exists. It’s an uneven performance and audio capture that mostly highlights the difference between recording a staged reading and a true studio recording. But still, it was the only accurate recording of Falsettos for thirteen years and maybe should have been more available.
2016 Broadway Cast - 24 years after it first opened on Broadway, Falsettos finally got an honest-to-god English-language cast recording of the revised show. Lapine again directed the production, which was filmed and screened in movie theaters, aired as part of Live from Lincoln Center, and now streams on BroadwayHD. It’s honestly still a little jarring for me to hear someone besides Rupert/Bogardus/Zien in these roles, but it’s an excellent, long overdue recording.
Is it Covered by The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?
Audra McDonald introduces the proshot of Falsettos as the host of Live from Lincoln Center.
In the Wings
Happy new year! I can’t believe we are officially more than 1/3 of the way through this project. As you patiently await the release of song No. 35, I recommend checking out the album Infinite Joy: The Songs of William Finn, a retrospective concert of Finn’s work (up to 2001) with an all star cast. Finn himself takes a mic a few times, to give you a sense of his one-of-a-kind personality.
As I mentioned in the previous profile, I’ve started adding voiceover narrations. Now there is a podcast feed for these narrations that can you add to the platform of your choice. You can search “100 Showtunes: The Podcast” on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. An RSS feed link is at the bottom of this email. The newsletter is still the main focus of this project, but the audio edition may fit into your day a little easier!
Catch up with all the songs to date!
Voiceover RSS feed for podcast apps: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/4189121.rss
Lapine collaborated with Stephen Sondheim on Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods in this interim
Chip Zien actually originated the role of Marvin in In Trousers, but became Mendel from March… on ↩︎