Back in the 1930s, the Gershwin brothers — George and Ira — were a dynamic American writing team that composed more than two dozen scores for Broadway and Hollywood. But their greatest hits came in the form of political satire musicals. There’s the Pulitzer Prize–winning “Of Thee I Sing,” about a president vowing to marry a beauty pageant winner. “Let ’Em Eat Cake” is about a plot hatched by a sore-loser president after failing in reelection, which kind of eerily relates to today’s current political climate.
Gil Rose, the Grammy-winning, world-renowned conductor, founder and artistic director for both the Odyssey Opera and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, joined GBH’s All Things Considered with host Arun Rath about bringing both of those political musicals back to the stage right here in Boston. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
Arun Rath: I’m super excited about this because I know the songs really well, mainly because they’re all like instant jazz standards, right? But I don’t know the stories at all. Let’s just dive right in.
Gil Rose: Well, yeah, they’re wild stories. And the stories are very colored by the current political environment. Basically, the Gershwins’ second political satire — “Of Thee I Sing” — was about a presidential election. President John Wintergreen runs for election with the support of his girlfriend Mary Turner, and their efforts are almost scuttled by a woman claiming she should have been the wife named Diana Devereaux. And all insanity leads from there, all the way to a Senate impeachment.
Rath: There’s so much to dig into there — but I want to have you quickly give us the more detailed synopsis of “Let ’Em Eat Cake,” because I kind of teased it there, but this is really wild.
Rose: Well, yeah. “Of Thee I Sing” was a big hit for them. It ran multiple years on Broadway, and as it was winding down I think they got the idea to keep priming the pump and they wrote a sequel, which is kind of unusual in the history of Broadway. It’s not that there aren’t any sequels in Broadway history, but very few.
But they took it on and they wrote “Let ’Em Eat Cake,” which takes political satire to an even higher level. And it’s the story of the same characters, but after he has lost reelection and doesn’t really accept the results of the election. He tries to mount a new campaign on the finances of a merchandised clothing company and takes on the government and leads a revolution — and basically storms the Capitol to try to execute the vice president.
When I tell people that they look at me like I’m making something up, but that is the plot of the Gershwin brothers’ sequel “Let ’Em Eat Cake.”
“I think if people come out and see it, they’ll spend the first half of the evening tapping their toe, and then the second half they’ll be picking their jaws up off the floor.”Gil Rose, artistic director of Odyssey Opera
Rath: I mean, I had read about this before we talked, but just hearing you say it out all over again — well, clearly, I’m kind of speechless.
Rose: Yeah. I think they couldn’t have known what they were up to. It was all done with a lot of tongue in cheek. But they all put their finger on a lot of issues — not just even the election issues, but social issues and political identity issues. All these things appear in these musicals from 90 years ago, almost, and they seem to have been prescient.
And I think they were very influenced by the Marx Brothers, who were big Broadway stars at the time before their film careers took off. And the insanity of a movie like the Marx Brothers’ “Duck Soup” is really very prevalent in “Let ’Em Eat Cake.”
Rath: So “Of Thee I Sing” was a huge success — and “Let ’Em Eat Cake,” not so much.
Rose: Yeah, it was a flop, just to put it directly. The music is spectacular. With the story, they really went for something quite different. You know, a lot of their prior musicals had been boy-meets-girl, like the Broadway musicals of the ’20s were. A lot of standard stock characters and situations and mistaken identities.
But with “Let ’Em Eat Cake” — with the flavor of the insanity of the Marx Brothers — they basically tried to take on the rise of fascism in Europe, and with a very, very clear commentary on the rise of Mussolini. So I think they may have just given the audience of 1933 a little bit more than they bargained for. But they were definitely trying to up the ante in the political satire world.
Rath: Well, it’s wild to think about as well, because it’s not like there were not also fascist stirrings in America at that time as well.
Rose: Well, I think they made that kind of commentary: Is it prevalent in this, also? I think they’re using an American president in a presidential election to show. The hero of the first musical goes down a very dark path in his bid for reelection.
I think if people come out and see it, they’ll spend the first half of the evening tapping their toe, and then the second half they’ll be picking their jaws up off the floor.
Rath: Are there any songs in “Let ’Em Eat Cake” that we would recognize as standards?
Rose: The title song “Let ’Em Eat Cake” is a kind of a manifesto from a political rally.
“Let ’Em Eat Cake” excerpt, pre-recorded: Congress, you deserve your daily bread. That’s what I have always said. But I’ll go further: You shall have a break. From now on, you’ll be eating cake.
Rath: Gil, before you go, talking of manifestos: I wanted to ask you, as a founder of the Odyssey Opera, tell us a bit about the history there and the ethos of the opera.
Rose: Odyssey Opera was formed, I think, 12 or 13 years ago with the goal of performing opera that people wouldn’t otherwise get a chance to hear. The Gershwins’ thing is a great example — though it’s musicals, in this case, they dipped very little into that style.
But, again, people know “Rhapsody in Blue” and people know “American in Paris” — but they don’t know the bulk of the Gershwins’ work, which was, as you mentioned in your introduction, on the Broadway stage. And these musicals have tune after tune after tune. A couple of them are recognizable, but a lot of them will be new to people, but they won’t forget them because they’ll stick in their head. They’re that kind of Gershwin tune.
And the words, of course, of Ira are just as spectacular as the music.
