Fiorello! Shows Why We Need a Mayor Like This Again
On October 7, for just one night as a fundraiser, Classic Stage Company (CSC) produced a concert version of Fiorello!—the Tony- and Pulitzer-winning musical from 1959 that has Sheldon Harnick’s lyrics set to Jerry Bock’s music. It isn’t often revived; and although Encores did concert productions in 1994 and 2013, the show and its subject—New York Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia—may not be familiar to New Yorkers today.
I was a teenager when my parents took me to see Fiorello! soon after it opened. I bought and quickly memorized the cast album, and still have my 1960 paperback edition of the script. So I’d like to tell you why I think it’s a great musical, and why La Guardia is the kind of mayor we ought to have now.
The book, by Jerome Weidman and George Abbott (who directed the original production), hits the highlights of La Guardia’s life: his early career as a lawyer; his surprise victory over the Tammany Hall machine to become a U.S. Congressman; his 1928 defeat in a landslide by the incumbent Mayor, “Gentleman” Jimmy Walker. And it ends in 1933 when a graft-and-corruption scandal undermined Walker’s administration, helping La Guardia to be elected Mayor.
As an attorney, La Guardia often worked pro bono for poor clients; his associates Neil and Morris sing about being “On the Side of the Angels.” With a lively Congressional campaign song—“The Name’s La Guardia,” spelled out in three languages—the show celebrates his melting-pot heritage: born to an Italian Catholic father and a Sephardic Jewish mother, he was a practicing Episcopalian. Staunchly pro-labor, he leads a half-sung/half-shouted number, “Unfair!”, to goad a ladies’ garment workers’ union into striking harder for a living wage.
As a Congressman, he lost some support in his working-class base by advocating a draft for World War I. But—no hypocrite—he enlisted and served with honor.
Christopher Fitzgerald as Fiorello – photo by Allison Stock
A registered Republican, La Guardia found allies among good-government and anti-machine reformers in both parties. But first he had to get district leader Ben Marino and his clubhouse hacks to support his bid for Congress. In the song “Politics and Poker,” they’d rather play cards than try again to beat Tammany Hall for the seat. When La Guardia does just that, they gasp and sing “The Bum Won!”
Later, the Tammany grifters get their comeuppance in a parody of the real investigation that brought them down. Insisting that they never took graft, they swear they bought that yacht and that Rolls Royce with nickels and pennies they saved up in a “Little Tin Box.”
(It’s ironic that CSC put on this show just as we New Yorkers find ourselves drenched in a new municipal scandal. Will any of those currently under indictment make comparably lame excuses?)
But Fiorello! isn’t all politics. No musical succeeds without romance.
Dora, a ditsy garment worker, finds unexpected passion when she’s arrested on the picket line. In “I Love a Cop” she laments, “If he’d get an honest job, I would marry him.”
La Guardia marries Thea, a glamorous union activist who mainly respects him. Only later does she ponder “When Did I Fall in Love?” It’s an achingly beautiful ballad: “How could the moment pass unfelt, ignored? Where was the blinding flash? Where was the crashing chord?” But Thea dies young, when (in the script) La Guardia is downcast from losing his first mayoral race.
His secretary Marie, however, has loved him unrequitedly all along; and her songs reflect the way many single women felt at the time. In Act 1 she wants “Marie’s Law” enacted: “When a lady loves a gentleman, he must love her in return.” Still frustrated in Act 2, she sings that she’ll marry “The Very Next Man” who proposes: “If he adores me, what does it matter if he bores me?”
But at the very end La Guardia admits he loves her, adding “We have so many things to share, so much in common.” His actual proposal, though, is true to his native honesty and upright moral character: “You’re fired [because] I can’t court a girl who’s working for me.”
Fiorello! isn’t history. The book takes liberties with chronology, condenses characters, and simplifies their motivations. But so do all Broadway hagiographies, like Gypsy, Evita, and The Sound of Music. Fiorello! doesn’t cover any of his formative years (b. 1882), nor his years as mayor (1934-46), through which many theater-goers in 1959, including my parents, had lived; and for which he’s best remembered.
Opposed to Prohibition all along, La Guardia immediately cracked down on the organized criminals it had spawned, starting with the biggest: “Lucky” Luciano and his gang. He also busted mobs who were fixing the price of fresh produce—most famously artichokes. He personally took a sledgehammer to pinball and slot machines; and (likely to less acclaim) closed the burlesque theaters. He turned the three subway lines into a unified transit network; and cut the ribbons to open all the new bridges, tunnels, parks and swimming pools that Robert Moses built. The brief opening of the musical echoes perhaps the most famous single act of his mayoralty: he went on the radio during a newspaper strike to read the comic strips aloud to the city’s kids. He died in 1947, extraordinarily well-loved by his citizens.
In concert performance, the leads in the front row are [l-r]: Robert Creighton (Floyd), Sarah Stiles (Dora), Kerry Butler (Marie), Christopher Fitzgerald (Fiorello), Nik Walker (Ben), Billy Cohen (Neil) and Andy Grotelueschen (Morris). The supporting cast, in the back row, are [in alphabetical order]: Major Attaway, Todd Buonopane, Rick Crom, Alex Finke, Alan H. Green, Shawna Hamic, Leah Horowitz, L Morgan Lee, Claire Saunders, Aurielia Williams, and Branch Woodman. Photo by Allison Stock
As Fiorello in CSC’s concert production, Christopher Fitzgerald caught the man’s feisty spirit superbly. Krysta Rodriguez was compelling as Thea, and Kerry Butler gave us a deeply sympathetic Marie. Shoutouts to Nik Walker, appropriately gruff as Ben; to the soubrette Sara Stiles as Dora; to Robert Creighton as Floyd (the cop she loves); to Billy Cohen as Neil and to Andy Grotelueschen as Morris. And hearty applause, well deserved, to the supporting cast, especially those playing the political “Hacks.”
This ensemble worked hard and did this musical proud. Under Kathleen Marshall’s direction and Joey Chancy’s musical direction, they gave us a fine one-night stand of Fiorello!. It’s important not only for its entertainment value but because it’s message is still timely: This is what it takes to be a great mayor of New York City.
