 . . . Summer 1999
THAT OLD BLUE-EYED MAGIC By John Woodford It's highly unusual for a PhD dissertation to fill most of the 1,700 seats in the Michigan Theater. But it happened in April when Andy Kirshner packed them in for the debut of his roundly applauded experimental musical-theater piece Relive the Magic: An Evening With Tony Amore.
"The closest thing we have to mythological figures today is pop culture," Kirshner says in an interview after his stage triumph. "I realized that when I watched and listened to Sinatra, I felt a complex of emotions. Take 'My Way.' I'd think, these lyrics are really stupid. The M.C. would tell the audience, please rise for the national anthem, and then comes a song of unfettered egoism with an overblown orchestration. Yet, I'd find myself genuinely moved and thinking, this is really good. I don't think anyone can explain how some things in the popular culture–say a Spielberg movie like E.T.–can sweep us away."
In his interpretation of these and other facets of pop-icon culture, Kirshner wrote and orchestrated seven songs–all recognizable counterparts of Sinatra hits but which offer their own authentic pleasures. The songs span the generations and musical styles of Amore/Sinatra's seven-decade career from the 1930s into the '90s.
The music is set within a minimalist flashback drama through which, especially in the later numbers, Amore and Tony Jr., his feckless son, manservant and wanna-be singer, try to cope with the star's decline in old age.
The song "Back in the Saddle Again" is "an anthem to bachelorhood and being a swinger," Kirshner says. Chock full of cowboy lingo, the corny lyrics ("Well, I'm back in the saddle again. Gonna take my favorite mare out for a spin. Where the jimson blooms, and I'm far from home, where the coyote croons and a man is his own") evoke hits of the past like "Don't Fence Me In."
The saloon song "At the End of the Day," tips its hat to "Make It One for My Baby": "I know it's closin' time, but I gotta say what's on my mind, and I hope you understand me all right, 'cause it's the end of the day and I'm drinkin' alone."
No piece better expresses the complex Sinatra phenomenon than "I Could Always Count on Me." Paul Anka adapted a French song, turned it into "My Way" and gave it to "the Chairman of the Board," Kirshner said. "Sinatra didn't like it at first, and came to detest it. But with his power and voice fading, he had to keep singing it because the audience clamored for it. He often expressed contempt for its popularity before singing it."
Kirshner's version, "I Could Always Count on Me" is as mawkish and moving a pop anthem as the original. He finds such songs are "sonic metaphors for the American sensibility that Walt Whitman expresses in the observation 'I am multitudes.'" The lyrics without music are exquisitely bathetic:
I've had my share of losin' The word is spreading about Kirshner's captivating compositions and performance. Whether anyone else can perform the role remains to be seen. Meanwhile summer festivals and concert houses as far away as Budapest are discussing staging the work.
"I want to make works that challenge people, but that they like, too," Kirshner says, "not works that they respect but don't like. Musical theater is stuck in this country. Around the world–from Japan to Indonesia to Africa to India–people combine music, theater and dance. I think Americans can enjoy that, too."
Kirshner was assisted in his completion of Relive the Magic by a fellowship from U-M's Institute for the Humanities.
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Relive the Magic is based quite obviously on the life of Frank Sinatra. The dialogue, lyrics, tunes and arrangements Kirshner wrote and composed fuse into a work that is both homage and parody, a refined evocation of Tin Pan Alley and a satire of American celebrity.
An adroit singer, backed by a 35 piece orchestra that gave his Nelson Riddle-style arrangements the precise and driving sound of a big band, Kirshner danced, quipped and gestured his way through bobby sox, bebop, swing and ballad styles.