Welcome to a new Musical Theatre Monday! This month, I’m bumping up the festivities a week to celebrate the 135th anniversary of Cole Porter’s birth. As one of my favorite composers — the one who really alighted my interest in Golden Age (and adjacent) Broadway — I consider him among this blog’s patron saints. And I enjoy paying annual homage to him here, offering accordant rarities to those who appreciate his work as much as I do. So, this year, I’m turning to a show that I’ve never actually spotlighted before: Out Of This World (1950).
An adaptation of Plautus’ Amphitryon, this is one of Porter’s most dramatically integrated book musicals, with a score better tethered than usual to the specifics of character and plot. However, unlike the great Kiss Me, Kate (1948) — his best-remembered effort adhering to the post-Oklahoma! (1943) standard — Out Of This World was not a hit and is seldom performed today. This is a shame, for the music is terrific. Every song has an enchanting tune (“Use Your Imagination” and “From This Moment On”) or offers some of Porter’s cleverest lyrics (“They Couldn’t Compare To You” and “Nobody’s Chasing Me”). Of course, his work never was the problem. The problem has always been the book (credited to Dwight Taylor and Reginald Lawrence, though many hands touched it), which just isn’t as funny as it should be.
The plot is fundamentally a bedroom farce — with Mercury conspiring to help his father Jupiter bed an American bride vacationing in Greece by taking the form of her absent husband, all behind the back of said hubby and Jupiter’s jealous wife Juno. This is prime fodder for a Cole Porter show, juxtaposing the grandness of Olympian mythology with the base interests of musical comedy, or sex, which also undergirds so many of these Greek legends in the first place. However, the text I’ve read is rather dull, lacking the cleverness of Porter’s songs and the naughtiness of the legend. And while terrific performers like Charlotte Greenwood and William Redfield and David Burns were, I’m sure, reliable laugh-getters, the material itself disappoints.
As for revivability — that is, beyond how the show played in 1950 — I think it’s fundamentally a difficult piece to stage today because the old “bed trick” trope is predicated on potentially non-consensual sex. And even with epic contexts and a depiction of larger-than-life gods as musical comedy caricatures, this would probably challenge modern audiences’ tastes, creating an extra emotional barrier not present in 1950. That’s why Out Of This World has always been, to me, a vase with cracks, especially as time has progressed. And with Porter’s own Kiss Me, Kate an inevitable benchmark, the distinction between pristine and cracked is stark.
And yet, this score deserves celebration. That’s why, here, I just want to honor Porter’s work. In fact, I’ll reiterate that I think he offered some career-best material. One of my favorite songs he ever wrote is Mercury’s reference-rich “They Couldn’t Compare To You.” Here it is — from the original cast album (which, like the above Encores! recording, is terrific).
Also, for subscribers who comment below to alert me of their private, non-commercial interest, I’m offering a tracked audio of a 2004 production at the Chichester Festival Theatre. This production heavily tweaked the book but kept the score mostly intact. From that audio, here’s Juno’s “Nobody’s Chasing Me” (performed by Anne Reid). This song is a testament to Porter’s excellence — there’s too much here that’s sublime to ever write off Out Of This World fully!
Come back next month for another musical treat! And keep it here for more Modern Family!