Memories of Melody Top: Remembering Milwaukee’s Summer Stock Theatre

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Golden Oldies Add Luster to ST. LOUIS

By Michael H. Drew, the Milwaukee Journal, Wednesday, August 4, 1971

The late, late show sprang to life at the Melody Top Tuesday night, and so did the 1904 World Fair, as MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS auspiciously opened its two week run.

With nostalgia and sentiment permeating the air, this seldom staged adaptation of a 1944 MGM movie seemed just what the audience ordered.

A near capacity crowd cheered lustily. And one of the tent's biggest advance sales surely will include lots of happy grandpas and grandmas.

Customers under 30 may wonder if people really once lived like this – or even wrote musicals like this one. Indeed, Sally Benson's screenplay-libretto, derivative of LIFE WITH FATHER, is essentially one warm family grouping after another.

For plot development we get such crises as: Will father move the family to New York? Will the boy next door find his tuxedo in time for the big dance? (I won't spoil much by revealing that the answers are, respectively, no and yes.)

When things got mired in molasses, conductor Donald Yap and choreographer James Smock cranked up orchestra and chorus for a repeat of the signature tune, "The Trolley Song."

Indeed, the Hugh Martin-Ralph Blane score is easily the show's most memorable feature. Rarely, if ever, has a film originated so many hits: "The Trolley Song," which topped THE HIT PARADE for weeks; "The Boy Next Door," "Skip to My Lou" and the moody Yuletide classic, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," which got rather short shrift Tuesday.

To deliver the songs, producer Martin Wiviott has employed flesh and blood singers – especially boy next door Ed Evanko, this season's brightest new star. The handsome baritone has it all – range, timbre, presence and power that the tent can't contain.

As his girlfriend we have Hollywood's Jane Powell, whose soprano is equally melodic, if considerably less sizable. I, for one, feared that I wouldn't be able to suspend my disbelief enough to accept the 42-year old matron as Evanko's 17-year old lovebird.

Happily, however, from my third row seat her remarkable face and figure seemed equal to the challenge. But I could have done with some less stylized fluttering.

Though he encourages Joan Carvelle (as her sister) in much of the same overposturing, director Stuart Bishop has staged the show with commendable feeling for the period. In a particularly nice touch, Bishop opens many scenes with a ferrotype picture freeze. The production numbers exhibit his designer's feeling for color.

I also liked Erik Rhodes as the put-upon father and Dorsey Vogt as the vinegarish maid. But grandfather Clyde Miller squashed some good lines by bellowing declamations.

Jane Powell as Esther and Clyde Miller as Grandpa in Melody Top's first production of MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (1971). Using the same script and score, the musical was revived at Melody Top in 1982 with Andrea McArdle as Esther and Travis Hudson as Katie. Photo by Sally Marks.

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Nostalgia Reigns for Musical Run

By Jay Joslyn, the Milwaukee Sentinel, Wednesday, August 4, 1971

The Melody Top Theatre turned the clock back for a veritable binge of nostalgia for the next two weeks when it opened Sally Benson's MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS Tuesday.

The whole company has gotten into the act. From the front office on back, the men, including producer Martin Wiviott, are decked out in turn-of-the-century plus fours – that is, knickers – and wildly patterned stockings.

It's sort of overkill. The show, with its hit songs familiar from the time of the Judy Garland film and its picture of harmonious family life, breathes a different kind of atmosphere scented with wonderful memories of a gentler time.

In the center of the nostalgia bit is the show's star, petite Jane Powell, whose contemporaries looking down from their full decades of living marveled at the miracle of her youth.

However, youth cannot be denied and she is given a hard run for her money by the youngsters director Stuart Bishop has cast in her support.

The handsome and talented Ed Evanko multiplies the fans he made in DAMN YANKEES in his present assignment as her youthful leading man. The flutter of hearts is almost audible every time he sings.

Tiny Santa Tenuta, the youngest member of the cast, carries off almost every scene she is in.

Jo Jean Retrum, Joan Carvelle and Miche Priaulx, all Melody Top regulars, provide the strong central core of the show while old Top friends, Erik Rhodes and Barbara Crouch, turn in the kind of performance that has won them such friends.

The show sticks together well. Miss Powell gives her fans plenty to marvel at while the youngsters recall the promise she displayed when she was their age.

A piece of scenery designed by Stuart Bishop, depicting an iconic trolley in the musical's plot, used for Melody Top's production of MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (1971). Photo by Sally Marks.

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