Little Mary Sunshine


Little Mary Sunshine is a musical that parodies old-fashioned operettas and musicals. The book, music, and lyrics are by Rick Besoyan. The original Off-Broadway production premiered November 18, 1959 at the Orpheum Theatre in New York City's East Village. Staying in the neighborhood, it moved to the Player's Theatre on June 21, 1961, then, finally, to the Cherry Lane Theatre on March 21, 1962. Closing was Sept. 2, 1962. Combined run was 1,143 performances. It was seen briefly in a West End production in 1962 and has become a popular show for amateur and semi-professional groups in the United States and elsewhere.

Background

Little Mary Sunshine was conceived and staged as an affectionate sendup of operettas and old-fashioned musicals, the genre of Victor Herbert, Rudolf Friml, and Sigmund Romberg. It also has allusions to Gilbert and Sullivan, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Noël Coward, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and other musical theatre composers and lyricists. Its "Indians" and "forest rangers" allude to Friml's Rose-Marie, as does the song "Colorado Love Call". Numerous other, less obvious details point, in a humorous and lighthearted manner, to other operettas and musicals — sometimes specifically, sometimes in terms of general categories of songs or characters.
The 1954 Marc Blitzstein adaptation of The Threepenny Opera, which ran for six years, showed that musicals could be profitable off-Broadway in a small-scale, small orchestra format. This was confirmed in 1959 when a revival of Jerome Kern and P. G. Wodehouse's Leave It to Jane ran for more than two years. The 1959–1960 Off-Broadway season included a dozen musicals and revues including Little Mary Sunshine, The Fantasticks, which ran for over 40 years, and Ernest in Love, a musicalization of Oscar Wilde's 1895 hit The Importance of Being Earnest.

Productions

The original Off-Broadway production opened on November 18, 1959, at the Orpheum Theatre in New York City's East Village and was directed and choreographed by Ray Harrison and featured Eileen Brennan in the title role, with William Graham as Captain Warington, and John McMartin as Corporal Jester. It closed in September 1962 after a run of 1,143 performances. Two pianos supplied the musical accompaniment. The musical acquired orchestral accompaniment when Capitol Records chose to feature it as that firm's first original cast recording of an off-Broadway show.
London's original West End production of the show — in some respects the first full stage presentation — was directed by Paddy Stone and starred Patricia Routledge, Terence Cooper, Bernard Cribbins and Ed Bishop. It opened on May 17, 1962 at the Comedy Theatre but was compared unfavourably with The Boy Friend and closed after only 42 performances.
Critics of this musical have objected that it stereotypes and demeans Native Americans. However, the show also lampoons Caucasians, men, Mounties, opera stars, generals, the young, and the elderly.

Characters

Time: Early in "this" century i.e., the 20th century
Place: The Colorado Inn, high in the Rocky Mountains
;Act I
Little Mary Sunshine, foster daughter of Chief Brown Bear of the Kadota tribe, is in trouble. The government is threatening to foreclose the mortgage on her Colorado Inn, located on land that is subject to a dispute between Brown Bear and Uncle Sam. On Mary's advice Brown Bear is engaged in peaceful legal proceedings rather than warfare to establish his rights.
Captain Jim and his Forest Rangers arrive. They are searching for the disruptive Indian Yellow Feather. Yellow Feather's "crimes" are actually not murder and pillage but indiscriminate hunting and irresponsible use of fire in the forest, but he is nonetheless a villain of the deepest dye, who has threatened to "have his way" with Mary. Jim woos Mary, after which the two get well-sung advice from Mary's opera star guest Mme. Ernestine Liebedich.
Some young ladies from the Eastchester Finishing School are also Inn guests. While they entertain themselves playing croquet and swinging on swings, the Rangers come upon them. The Rangers' flirting elicits an immediate enthusiastic response, and love blooms once more as they joyfully sing together.
Later, the young ranger Billy and his girlfriend Nancy squabble about Nancy's appetite for other men. Jim and Mary return to the spotlight. Mary reveals her "Little Buttercup" secret: Yellow Feather is really Brown Bear's son, long believed dead. As the first act ends, Jim and his aged Indian guide Fleet Foot set off to capture Yellow Feather.
;Act II
Mary holds a garden party featuring the Eastchester ladies and the Rangers. Retired General Oscar Fairfax shows up, bringing a box of gifts for the ladies. Taking command of the Rangers in Jim's absence, he directs the Rangers to depart, find Jim, and bring him back. Fairfax now has the ladies to himself. But his interest shifts to Mme. Ernestine when he meets her and learns they have something in common: in their youth, both spent happy days in Vienna.
Mary goes to her garden. Yellow Feather sneaks in, finds her there, ties her to a tree, and threatens to debase her. Jim returns just in time and wrests a knife from the villain. The Rangers, who have surrounded the Inn, capture Yellow Feather as he tries to escape.
The rest of the cast then emerges. Fairfax has good news: the courts have upheld Brown Bear's claim to the disputed land, a mere one-fourth of Colorado. The chief gives Mary the Inn's land and dedicates the rest for a national park, a place the Rangers can call home. In the finale, a miraculously reformed Yellow Feather reappears, waving a large American flag. Jim and Mary, Billy and Nancy, Oscar and Ernestine, and several Ranger-Eastchester couples seem headed for the altar.

Music

The musical numbers for Little Mary Sunshine are appropriately tongue-in-cheek: any triteness and corn is fully intended, rather than inadvertent. This is musical parody at a very high level.
Particularly memorable among the songs are the show's most conspicuously parodic song, "Colorado Love Call", which evokes memories of Nelson Eddy's duets with Jeanette MacDonald; the hopelessly optimistic "Look for a Sky of Blue"; the catchy yet schmaltzy tune "In Izzenschnooken on the Lovely Essenzook Zee"; the soft-shoe-styled "Once in a Blue Moon"; the lyrical waltzes "You're the Fairest Flower" and "Do You Ever Dream of Vienna?"; the comedy-lyric-laden "Mata Hari"; and especially the exaggerated triple-counterpoint medley "Playing Croquet", "Swinging", and "How Do You Do?".
Here is a list of the numbers:
;Overture
;Act I
;Act II
The songs in Little Mary Sunshine allude to earlier shows, their songs, and their characters.
The New York Times called the musical "a merry and sprightly spoof of an era when 'justice always triumphed'... Little Mary Sunshine is an affectionate jab at the type of operetta that Rudolf Friml... made popular in the early Nineteen Twenties.... It is expertly performed by a group of young persons with felicitous voices and with good comic sense." Writing for the same paper, Brooks Atkinson wrote : "There are echos of both Gilbert and Sullivan in his dainty caricature of the old-fashioned operetta and musical comedy. But there are also echos of Strauss, Herbert, Kern, Romberg, Youmans, Friml, and anybody else who brought romantic lovers together in a triumphant last scene... it is seldom that a subtle satiric idea is brought off so adroitly in both the writing and the performing."
On the London production, The New York Times London correspondent wrote: "Even Little Mary Sunshine which arrived from Off-Broadway with a big reputation, seemed to us forced and its humors underscored, especially in comparison with The Boyfriend. It is one of those shows that succeed by becoming a cult, and it doesn't look as if that is happening here."