The Gershwins’ Hard-Hitting Anti-War Satire, ‘Strike Up the Band,’ To Get Rare Performance at Carnegie Hall Tuesday

“Satire is what closes on Saturday night,” George Kaufman famously said. He should know. Still, as a NYU theater professor and Kaufman scholar, Laurence Maslon, puts it, “There has never been a Saturday night in the last century when one of his satires wasn’t running somewhere in the world.” In Kaufman’s long career in the theater, he wrote all kinds of comedies, and had an insider’s view as to what shows ran and which flopped. He learned the hard way that it wasn’t so much what kind of show could be a success, but chiefly a matter of when.Kaufman would write three major satirical shows with the songwriters George and Ira Gershwin, the first of which, “Strike Up the Band,” is receiving a rare performance, produced by Mastervoices, in concert at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday.You might say that Kaufman actually wrote three-and-a-half shows with the Gershwins since there are essentially two very different versions of “Strike Up the Band” — the first of which was created and produced in 1927 but never made it to Broadway; the second had a healthy, profitable run of six months at the Times Square Theater in 1930. It’s generally believed that the first edition failed because no one wanted to see hard-hitting anti-war satire during a moment when the economy and the general standard of living were peaking in 1927; essentially, the market was booming, everybody was partying, and nobody had anything to complain about. Three years later, though, after the stock market had crashed and the depression was widening, audiences were feeling more cynical and thus receptive to a show that portrayed political and industrial leaders as a bunch of not-always-lovable goofballs. Then too, the biting edge of Kaufman’s sharply satirical libretto of the original had been somewhat softened and toned down when the book was rewritten by Morrie Ryskind for the 1930 production; both authors were credited with the script. Whereas the next two Kaufman-Gershwin shows, “Of Thee I Sing” (1931) and “Let ‘Em Eat Cake” (1933) are specifically about presidential politics and elections, “Strike Up the Band” takes aim at multiple institutions: big business, government, international relations, the military, war, and even pacifism.The plot of “Strike Up the Band” concerns a megalomaniacal mogul — in the 1927 version, he makes cheese, in the 1930, it’s chocolate — who provokes the United States government into declaring an ill-advised war against the nation of Switzerland over an imposed tariff, and then insists they brand said war in his name. There’s a subplot involving a pair of young lovers — the industrialist’s daughter and a newspaper reporter — as well as assorted comical characters. Mr. Maslon is working with conductor and musical director Ted Sperling on the script of a concert edition that combines the best of both versions. “Strike Up the Band” was successful enough to lead to the two additional Gershwin-Kaufman-Ryskind satirical classics as well as to a 1940 Mickey Rooney–Judy Garland MGM musical also titled “Strike Up the Band” but has nothing in common with the show beyond the title.“Of Thee I Sing” is much more barbed in its satire; arriving at the start of the depression, it caught the bitter mood of the moment and was the most successful of the three. The next, “Let ‘Em Eat Cake” — which features a preposterous story about a president who tries to overturn the results of an election and set himself up as a dictator — flopped again. That’s because, it’s said, the show was deeply dark, featuring jokes about fascism and capital punishment, at a moment when, with Franklin D. Roosevelt newly installed in the White House, the nation was starting to feel hopeful again.“Strike Up the Band” features all of its creative crew firing on all cylinders, especially the Gershwins. Not only are there some of George Gershwin’s most exquisitely soaring melodies, such as “I’ve Got a Crush on You” and “The Man I Love” as well as the title song.There are, too, many excellent songs that have barely been heard since, like “Hangin’ Around with You” — and many scenes of highly entertaining sung and rhyming dialog in which Ira put his obsession with Gilbert and Sullivan to good use. Yet the work is too snappy and syncopated to be considered an operetta; you don’t tap your toes during “Yeoman of the Guard.”The satirical elements are highly whimsical — it seems to have been a direct influence on such politically-driven screwball comedy classics as “Duck Soup” with the Marx Brothers and “Million Dollar Legs” with W. C. Fields. The 1930 edition even starred the team of Bobby Clark — whose painted-on glasses paralleled Groucho’s greasepaint mustache — and Paul McCullough, who went on to a career in Hollywood.“Strike Up the Band” is so melodious and funny that it’s possible to miss the more pointed elements of the libretto, which carries a solidly anti-war, humanist message. My advice is to pay close attention to the words — Kaufman’s, Ryskind’s, and Ira Gershwin’s — or you might miss lines these:“We’re in a bigger, better war,For your patriotic pastime.We don’t know what we’re fighting for,But we didn’t know the last time.”

The Gershwins’ Hard-Hitting Anti-War Satire, ‘Strike Up the Band,’ To Get Rare Performance at Carnegie Hall Tuesday

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