By Dale King
For a fleeting couple of years in the early 1960s, Allan Sherman was at the top of his game in the field of creating song parodies. His 1962 album, My Son the Folk Singer, became the fastest-selling LP recording up to that time, and put Sherman on the fast track to fame.
He would record seven more albums, each falling a little or a lot short of the previous. Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah, his biggest hit single, tells the story of a disgruntled kid at summer camp who writes a letter of complaints to his parents, only to switch gears at the end when he sees other youngsters having fun.
Nearly 20 years after Sherman’s death in 1973, Douglas Bernstein and Rob Krausz created a musical production – also titled Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah – featuring many of the parodist’s tunes. It opened in the early 1990s and has been revived at various venues ever since. It is now playing at the Broward Stage Door Theater in Coral Springs.
The show is packed with many good performances. The songs are all pretty funny, and while some are dated, they still have comic punch. The five cast members — Ryan Halsaver, Eva Marie Mastrangelo, James Parks, Sarah Sirota and Shane R. Tanner — are excellent vocalists who combine for some striking harmony. They slip easily into the silliness that was Sherman’s strong suit. During the show, those five performers morph into 40 characters and make 60 costume changes — a daunting task in itself.
For that reason, it’s hard to understand why the audience at Broward Stage reacted with only tepid applause and few laughs when this reviewer attended — particularly since the theater was nearly sold out.
True, some of Sherman’s songs had to be reworked to fit the show’s structure, that of a birth-to-old-age tale of Barry Bockman and the love of his life, Sarah Jackman (pronounced “Jockman”). Both showed up in the parodist’s 1962 tune, Sarah Jackman (set to the tune of Frère Jacques). The title pair from another Sherman tune, Harvey and Sheila (sung to Hava Nagila) end up in the play as Sarah’s parents. Harvey and Sheila is one of Sherman’s best parodies, built on a lyric that repeats acronyms (“Harvey’s a CPA, he works at IBM…”).
Some songs work very well in their new chronological locations. In a scene about Barry and Sarah’s fifth-grade history class, the actors present You Went the Wrong Way, Old King Louis (to the tune of You Went the Wrong Way to St. Louis) and Won’t You Come Home, Disraeli? (set to Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey?).
The Barry and Sarah story continues through summer camp, courtship, marriage, parenthood and the elder years. As the finale approaches, Barry (Parks) sings perhaps the only touching song in the play, the mellow Did I Ever Live? The tune is by Albert Hague, who also wrote Like Yours and Down the Drain, a pair of comic numbers placed near the play’s end.
Every cast member gives his or her all for this show. Their range of talent is about as vast as their singing abilities.
A big guy with a big talent, Tanner sings, acts and hustles, taking on 10 roles. He is particularly stunning as Uncle Phil, whose crazed stand-up comedy shtick is hilarious and as Mr. Bloom with an ode to his astronaut son who has landed on the moon. The tune, Shine On, Harvey Bloom, is sung to the tune of Shine On, Harvest Moon.
Halsaver visits the stage as seven different people, one a girl. Another is Harvey, Sheila’s wacky dad, with a terrible wig and big glasses. As Mr. Goldfarb, he sings a tune to his wife’s insatiable appetite, Grow, Mrs. Goldfarb (to the tune of Glow Worm).
Brooklyn-born Sirota isn’t far behind, portraying six characters with rapid-fire aplomb. She is particularly over-the-top as Sarah’s mother, Sheila, and takes center stage for Mexican Hat Dance, featuring the full company.
Parks has his hands full portraying Barry, so he shows up in only two other roles. He and Mastrangelo as Sarah (also as a nurse) shoulder a good deal of the songs, many with help from the other performers. Parks gets the distinction of singing the title song, set to the “Dance of the Hours” from Ponchielli’s opera La Giaconda. The pair also combines tunefully for One Hippopotami and Here’s to the Crabgrass, a paean to suburbia.
Piano virtuoso and musical director David Nagy leads a three-person band that provides the live music from a perch above the stage. Brian Sayre plays drums and Martha Spangler adds the bass track.
Dan Kelley does double duty as director and choreographer, keeping the on-stage chaos to a minimum. He works beside Colleen O’Connell who has come up with a raft of colorful, often off-beat costumes.
Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah plays through July 6 at the Broward Stage Door Theater, 8036 W. Sample Road, Coral Springs. For tickets, call 954-344-7765 or visit www.stagedoorfl.org.