Klea Blackhurst
‘The Box Set’
Chelsea Table & Stage
Through November 

A mere five minutes into Klea Blackhurst’s show — immediately following her opening number, “Just Leave Everything To Me,” from the 1969 movie version of “Hello, Dolly” — she put the following inquiry to the crowd at Chelsea Table & Stage: 

“There was a game that involved Jerry Herman that we played when I was in college at the University of Utah, and it got very contentious at certain points. It went like this: If you had to spend eternity on a desert island with everything ever written by either Jerry Herman or Stephen Sondheim, which would you choose? You know everybody chose Sondheim, because we were in college. But the older I get, the longer I live — I mean, it’s eternity we’re talking about — the more I stand up for Jerry Herman.”

Ms. Blackhurst’s performance on Sunday evening was the second in an ongoing series titled “The Box Set” that continues through November. In it, she is reviving five of her major one-woman shows. The works of Jerry Herman (1931-2019) are especially close to her heart, she explains, not least because one of her early roles was a high school production of “Mame.”  

This section of her program, in fact, could have been titled, “I Was a Teenage Auntie Mame.” Later, she landed the lead in an important regional production of “Hello, Dolly,” at which point she got to spend quality time with the venerable half-a-billionaire himself. Herman even resurrected a long-forgotten air from one of his early revues, “My Type,” for her, though he had long since lost the music and the two of them had to reconstruct it from his memory.

Yet her point is well-taken; in the British theater, knighthoods and other accolades came comparatively early to master tragedians like Laurence Olivier, but Noel Coward and Rex Harrison had to wait until the very ends of their careers before they received any formal, institutional recognition. This was for the simple reason that they were so good at their jobs of entertaining people that no one took them seriously.  

Likewise, Herman’s legacy seems like a pittance compared to Sondheim’s, simply because Sondheim wrote dark, brooding dramas and Herman only asked that his audience members enjoyed themselves.

Mel Brooks and Tommy Meehan expertly parodied those attitudes in “The Producers,” when director Roger De Bris is offered the chance to direct a historical drama instead of the typical musical comedy fare he is usually associated with: “Dopey show-girls in gooey gowns. Two-three-kick-turn!  Turn-turn-kick-turn! It’s enough to make you throw up! At last a chance to do straight drama! To deal with conflict, with inner truth. Roger De Bris presents history!”

But as Ms. Blackhurst knowingly demonstrates, the craft that goes into Herman’s songs and shows, and the emotions that they elicit, are no less profound. Ms. Blackhurst’s second song is “Put On Your Sunday Clothes,” also from “Dolly,” and though it’s supposed to be merely frivolous fun — an excuse for a chorus to parade around in turn-of-the-century drag — there’s something about it that’s deeply moving. 

As Ms. Blackhurst performs it, it’s sung from the point of view of someone who has experienced the worst loss one could endure — Dolly Gallagher Levi is a young widow — and has been seduced by the darkness, but now chooses life instead. To me, it’s no less powerful, say, than anything in Sondheim’s “Passion.”  

If there’s one good reason to choose Sondheim over Herman for that mythical deserted island, it might be because his canon is so much more capacious. Despite living an enviable 88 years, Herman left us with only seven major works: three hits in a row — “Milk and Honey” (1961), “Hello, Dolly!” (1964), and “Mame” (1966) — followed by three respectable flops, “Dear World” (1969), “Mack & Mabel” (1974), and “The Grand Tour” (1979) and then climaxed by one final blockbuster, “La Cage aux Folles” (1983). Sondheim’s oeuvre is literally three times that, though both men produced lots of extras, songs from revues and the like.

Backed by pianist and musical director Michael Rice, bassist Tom Hubbard, and drummer Aaron Russell, Ms. Blackhurst reminded us that between “Dear World” and “Cage Aux Folles,” Herman has given us some of the best Franglais songs of the American musical theater; indeed, “I Don’t Want to Know” could pass for Jacques Brel on a blindfold test.   

She also illustrates how Herman radically redefined the nature of the “I Want” song, as in “I Put My Hand in It” and “Just Leave Everything To Me” in “Dolly,” “It’s Today” in “Mame,” and “I’ll Be Here Tomorrow” in “Grand Tour,” which, especially, is equal parts devastating and uplifting. 

There was also a concoction called “Jerry’s Girls,” which is a third set of lyrics for a Herman melody that’s already known both as “Show Tune” in the 1960 revue “Parade,” and “It’s Today” in “Mame”; this new, original text is a catalog of larger-than-life divas who have had their careers enhanced and even supercharged by appearing in Herman’s works.  

That list surely includes Ms. Blackhurst herself, who makes an eloquent case for taking this master of fun seriously. As she puts it, “Jerry is the most positive, optimistic, inspiring writer I’ve ever come across, there’s always a little radar ping of hope.” Take a stand for Jerry Herman? Nothing could make me happier.