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Platinum, an old musical about the recording biz, has been “reissued” after fizzling quickly as a big Broadway show in 1978, and, definitely UN-“super-sized,” it’s part of the New York International Fringe Festival, there with the much newer little bite-sized musicals and plays. I go into each Fringe show with high hopes, but also a lot of worry on top of that. What, me worry? Yes, there are always diamonds in the rough and other shows that are just rough going.
Those of us who love the world of Broadway musicals, have at least heard of and read mentions of Platinum in books about Broadway. It had 33 performances in 1978, starring Alexis Smith, who’d made a splash as Phyllis in the original production of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies earlier in the decade. It’s also been seen briefly under its original title, Sunset, before and after, with a recording of the score. But it remains a mystery. Ben West is at the helm.
He’s a 27-year-old producer/director who digs musicals and dug up How Now, Dow Jones, another non-smash, for last year’s Fringe. Once again, he’s taken a big musical and shrunk it down being of the economical and Reader’s Digest mindset. He’s jettisoned some songs and added two. Well, rather, he’s put one back in that had been cut and added one written after the Broadway beginnings. The original had a cast of 13; now there are five in the company, and he’s also cut the book. Not knowing the original, I don’t know if he also cut out the heart and threw out the Broadway baby with the old bathwater. However, I can say that problems remain and the truncation situation makes us feel that there sure ain’t much character development, and we don’t get much reason or time to care about these solipsistic, career-obsessed characters who can seem rather mean-spirited and empty-headed. Who will be/was romantically involved with whom, you may wonder. You might also wonder why. Why would they bother when they seem to be so in love with themselves or their careers?
We’d feel more sympathy for the male rock star at a standstill if he seemed to be trying or knew more about why he’s “stuck.” The head honcho at the label seems to enjoy being heartless and powerful and manipulative and watching the musicians drown in their own messes. “It’s not gonna happen!!” he’s fond of saying when someone presents him with a polite request of personal importance. The engineer who wants to be a songwriter might be a candidate for interest if we had a better sense of who he is beyond that. The young female singer on the rise made me want to rise from my seat and slap her; the character was so obnoxious in her snippy, snappy, snarky smugness and foul-mouthed insensitivity, that I hoped she’d fall off the stage or her record would fall off the charts – whichever came first. As for the star of the show, Donna Bullock had big shoes to fill. Not only was she playing an ex-movie star in a role created by an ex-movie star, Alexis Smith, but came into preparations late as a replacement for the originally announced star. Trying for a comeback as a recording artist in a music world that has changed --- it’s set in the 1970s--- she is at first presented as defensive, bored, petulant, closed. We learn more and start to like her more as things go on. Meanwhile, we hear complaints from this lady of her rough life in a mansion on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Poor thing. She hasn’t worked in over a decade – we’re not told why for a while, but shouldn’t she seem thrilled to be back in the saddle? No, instead she’s on her high horse.
In songs by lyricist Will Holt, who wrote the original book with Bruce Vilanch, and composer Gary William Friedman (The Me Nobody Knows), she laments how things can change after success: “One day you’re high on the charts …” Well, somebody’s high on something to think what we see here can have been a good follow-up to the showgirls and guys recalling their past glories in Follies. To go on, “Don’t you know what you get on Sunset when the sun sets?...Getting bought, getting sold/Getting told that 23 is getting old….with your platinum dreams.” Not bad, it just is delivered stridently and with self-pity mixed with mush. It must be noted that some of the songs are not character pieces but, logically, meant to be the songs these characters sing on records, so they are pop songs meant to be hit-hungry fodder in the music industry of the time. So, don’t judge them by the standards of theatre songs written for character. And let’s not judge Platinum too harshly – yet. Or should I say “again”? It is, after all these years, still having growing pains. Or should I say shrinking pains?
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