Music from the golden age of American musical theatre (sic): celebrating four centennials The four born in 1898 are two composers: George Gershwin and Vincent Youmans (composer of No, no, Nanette); and two lyricists: Berthold Brecht and possibly E.Y. "Yip" Harburg (who wrote Over the rainbow). The careers of all four have a number of links and parallels. Harburg was at school with Ira Gershwin, who wrote his first "hit" song with Youmans. This was before Ira collaborated with George, and long before he collaborated with Brecht's collaborator Kurt Weill. George Gershwin and Youmans both died tragically young; Harburg and Brecht both wrote social satire in the thirties and got it in the neck from McCarthy in the fifties. Youmans is interesting probably only as an embodiment of the music theatre of the 1920s and 1930s. Harburg wrote at least two killer classics, Brother can you spare a dime and Over the rainbow, and the radical if semi-memorable Finian's rainbow, but is not exactly a household name. Gershwin and Brecht have classic status in their respective countries, and international respect. All of which is a decent justification for a virtuoso recital by two experts in the slightly unlikely setting of the Wigmore Hall. Marshall, of course, is strictly genteel -- he has a plummy English accent, even though his playing tonight suggested Noo Yawk or New Orleans as appropriate. He played the Gershwin settings, and an improvision on Fascinating rhythm, in a style which reminded me of the Gershwin piano roll of Rhapsody in blue, and made a medley of Youmans dance tunes sound interesting just for the music rather than for what Fred and Ginger/Eleanor could do with them. Criswell began with Youmans' Great day and Hallelujah, two exuberant fake-bible-bashing numbers, and introduced the songs and herself as "a bit of trash and vaudeville". Her dress might have stayed on better if she'd put it on the right way round. But, in fact, she's superbly professional, Bernadette Peters (Julia Mackenzie for Brits) going on Ethel Merman, with a strongly individual voice. (The programme surprisingly notes that Brecht wanted Merman to do Mutter Courage.) Criswell does the words first, and can do just about every type of song, showing off tonight by following a naff "mystical" version of the Hoffman Barcarolle -- which would have been ok vocally at the ENO -- with Lydia the tatooed lady, almost as good as Groucho, who of course couldn't bring out the rude bits in the movie. (Both songs have lyrics by Harburg.) Criswell's delivery of the Gershwin standards (A foggy day in London town, Love walked in, Embraceable you, I got rhythm) was superb. There were also a couple of decidedly minor early works by Gershwin and Youmans which she sent up something rotten to show how insubstantial they were, memorably a honeymoon number called Little villages. Criswell has a good voice and music-theatre singing technique as well, with a clear though warbly top, a first-rate relaxed belt in the middle when required and a Dietrich-husky bottom. I found myself thinking of Lorraine Hunt, who is doing a Wiggy lunchtime recital next week and who seems to me to have a surprisingly similar vocal pallette. One essential difference between Criswell and Hunt, though, is that Criswell projects and externalizes everything, while Hunt just is. But Criswell's first encore, Youmans' Without a song, suggested that she can do innerness when appropriate. Criswell's weakest moments were in the Brecht/Weill numbers, Furchte dich nicht and the Angenehmligkeit song, where even she didn't seem to be on top of the critical dialectic. But she did a great job of a medley of Mack the Knife versions, beginning and ending with the "straight" version, which she made as nasty as it is. The high point of the evening, however, was another Brecht/Weill number, Lucy's aria, their equivalent of "Like a skiff on the ocean tost", which was cut out of the original production of the Threepenny opera and brought back for a Broadway rival in the 1980s in which Criswell was Lucy. It's an operatic scena (My gin will do her in/My gin will do her in), and Julius Rudel told Criswell to model herself on, ahem, someone whose initials are RS. Very funny indeed, and Criswell was singing it, not just faking a diva-screech. The second encore was none of the above, but was also very funny: Criswell sang So in love with you, from Kiss me Kate, while Marshall played the Chopin etude it reminds you of but isn't. Harburg in his off moments specialised in the moon/June school of verse parodied memorably by Flanders and Swann in their song for our times: It's a satellite moon It's a plagiarised tune The duck on the lake's a decoy, There's a sodium glare In the purified air... Talking of whether Britten had an individual voice, it's also worth mentioning that Flanders and Swann wrote a number about him. It's partly about his status as the Great British Composer Living Among Us Now, but the music (by Swann, who had an ear mainly for the plonkingly obvious, redeemed by a great sense of humour) is recognisable. I've never heard it performed, but it's in the collected song book (probably out of print, with a Ronald Searle hippopotamus on the cover). The characteristic mannerisms are general atonality, especially via disruptive tritones, glissandos, jerky changes of tempo and rhythm, and occasional resolutions into fragments of folk song. I think one of these is the original occurence of the doggy, doggy few. An odd question: although Harburg's Lydia is a classic, I first met the idea through a similar lyric, sung by school children and squaddies on charabangs, which goes: We paid two bob to see The old tatooed lady She was a sight to see Tatooed from head to knee. All up and down her spine Were the king's own guards in line And right across her hips Was a pair of battle ships. Over her left kidney Was the harbour bridge at Sydney But what I liked best Was upon her chest A little home in Waikiki. Is this an adapation of Harburg or a source? I don't know the date of the Sydney harbour bridge or the little home in Waikiki, but the song is in the oral tradition and might have changed with the times anyway.