George Whitefield Chadwick / Little Me

On this day in classical music: George Whitefield Chadwick’s “Symphonic Sketches” was given its premiere by Karl Muck and the Boston Symphony in 1908. Chadwick and his colleagues Horatio Parker, Amy Beach, Arthur Foote and Edward MacDowell became known as representatives of the New England School of American composers during the late 19th century. In 1897, Chadwick was appointed Director of New England Conservatory. His works, many of which reflect a distinctively American style, include several operas, three symphonies, five string quartets, tone poems, incidental music, songs and choral anthems. Composed between 1895 and 1904, the “Symphonic Sketches” are cast in four movements (“Jubilee,” “Noel,” “Hobgoblin” and “A Vagrom Ballad”), each of which was inspired by a work of poetry. Listen to David Sawtelle and the Texas State Symphony Orchestra perform “Jubilee” from Chadwick’s “Symphonic Sketches.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igeCvQODJJY

On this day in the musical theatre: A 1998 revival of “Little Me” closed on Broadway in 1999 after 101 performances. Written by Neil Simon, with music by Cy Coleman and lyrics by Carolyn Leigh, “Little Me” was based on the novel by Patrick Dennis. The novel’s subtitle was “The Intimate Memoirs of that Great Star of Stage, Screen and Television/Belle Poitrine, An Illustrated Autobiography of an Imaginary Diva.” Sid Caesar starred in the original 1962 production. Martin Short and Faith Prince headed the cast of the 1998 revival. Watch Short and company perform “Boom, Boom” at the 1999 Tony Awards. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWwclRVIS8

Musical musings: “Little Me,” the 1962 musical with a book by Neil Simon and songs by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh, was originally written for the great television comic Sid Caesar. Its chain of burlesque-style vignettes, designed as a showcase for its versatile leading man, might have come from vintage episodes of “Your Show of Shows,” a television series for which the young Mr. Simon, incidentally, was a writer. On the page, these scenes read as hokey, crass and seriously funny reworkings of classic Borscht Belt shtick. What Mr. Short does with them, in the gravely imbalanced production that opened last night under Rob Marshall’s direction, becomes a testament to the forces of will, instinct and incandescence that make a star. And not just any old kind of star, but a star of the stage. Though Mr. Short is best known for his work on television and in films, the stage loves him the way the camera loved Garbo. There is one little problem about “Little Me,” however, and that is that Mr. Short is essentially the only thing in it, a life force surrounded by dead air. You get the feeling that you’re watching a virtuoso high-wire act performed above a soggy field of a show. And even Mr. Short can’t totally distract your attention from the bog beneath him. Whether playing a Maurice Chevalier-like music hall star or a Teutonic tyrant of a movie director, Mr. Short’s zestful performer’s glee, equal parts ego and generosity, turns cutout cartoons into portraits of Dickensian robustness. This single blaze of light in a disappointingly dreary production is enough to justify the ticket price for “Little Me.” By the way, the evening’s most ingenious sight gags involve making it seem as if Mr. Short were in two places at the same time. The current of this actor’s show-biz electricity runs so strong, I wasn’t at all sure that these moments were merely illusions. – Ben Brantley in The New York Times

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