My new YouTube series examines the musical legacy of John Kander and Fred Ebb. Watch the video here, or, if you’d prefer, you can read my script for it below.
Over the next few months, I will be listening to the original Broadway cast album for the 15 musicals Kander & Ebb wrote together that have such a recording, one at a time, in chronological order, and ranking them.
So, why Kander & Ebb? I don’t know why the idea occurred to me, actually. I’m not really a Kander & Ebb guy. There are other composers who I rate more highly, and about half of these shows I have never listened to at all, but that’s what makes this an exciting journey of discovery. I’m coming to them fresh. I have a few favorites, but I don’t know already what show is going to wind up on the top of my list. This’ll take us from 1965 to 2023, so we’ll be spanning the eras of the Broadway musical, and, of world history
Unlike say, movies, it’s difficult to rank musicals because the quality varies depending on the production, the cast, even the specific night you see it on. And I only saw the original Broadway production of one of these shows, so for the purposes of this ranking, the Original Broadway Cast Album will be the standard by which I judge a show. Not the quality of the recording, but the songs themselves and the sense you get of the show by listening to the album.
I will also be ignoring revivals and subsequent revisions, insofar as I can, and keeping the focus on the original versions. That’s relevant to today’s subject because Flora the Red Menace was revised by David Thompson for a ‘80s revival off-Broadway, and that’s the version that’s available for licensing, so you may be familiar with that one, but I didn’t listen to that one.
Background
Flora The Red Menace premiered on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre, now the Neil Simon, in the spring of 1965 and it ran for 87 performances and 7 previews. George Abbott, who by this time was a theatrical legend and in his late 70s, was the director and co-author of the book. Although not the first show John Kander & Fred Ebb wrote together, it was their first show to get produced. It starred a 19-year old Liza Minnelli as the titular Red Menace, a role for which she won the sole Tony Award for which the show was nominated.
Based on a novel called Love is Just Around the Corner by Lester Atwell, Flora the Red Menace is the Depression-era story of a recent graduate, Flora, who while pursuing her dream of being a fashion illustrator, falls in love with a guy, who recruits her to join the American Communist Party. By the end of the show, she has ditched both the guy and the party, and the whole episode is chocked up to youthful misadventure.
The cast also includes Bob Dishy as the guy, Harry, Mary Louise Wilson as another one of the communists, and Robert Kaye as Flora’s boss at the department store.
It was not a success either financially or critically. Howard Taubman in the New York Times summed up this way: “[The show] has the appearance of being pasted together with bits and pieces. A promising idea has not been enlivened by a creative spark.”
Tim’s Take
So, we are starting off weird. Aren’t Kander & Ebb shows supposed to be cynical, edgy? This is a banal musical comedy. It bears the stamp of George Abbott much more so than Kander & Ebb, and it fits the formula Abbott has had much success with in the 1950s, with shows like The Pajama Game. But the problem is that the material is calling out for a more serious take. This is about communists, after all. It’s obvious from the song Harry sings while getting Flora to sign her name to the Party, “Sign Here,” that Flora doesn’t want to be a communist and would be better off without him, so we’ve reached the end before the beginning. Mention is made of the issues of the Great Depression, but nothing is seriously delved into. The show’s entire attitude toward the Communist storyline feels really half-hearted. It’s dismissive of, even glib about these people. Remember this is 1965, so 30 years after the show takes place, and pretty soon after the height of McCarthyism. The reviewer for Time Magazine said “The '30s are not close enough for slashing satirical gibes, and not distant enough to be bathed in a glowing forgetfulness of things past. Half the audience is too young to care, and the other half is too old to wish to be reminded of it.”
The songs aren’t bad, but they are formulaic. There are the love songs, the comic novelty songs. Everything fits a mold and not much of it is very distinguished. The novelty songs are particularly jarring to listen to in 2026 because no musical anymore has songs there just to pad the runtime. “Palomino Pal” is cute but what the hell is a cowboy doing in this show about 1930s New Yorkers? And why does he get two numbers? The one about the knock knock jokes is just flat out terrible.
Listening to this show gives you the sense that Kander & Ebb were writing songs to fit George Abbott’s idea of what a musical should be, and that, frankly, it’s not a great match for what they are best at writing. These guys are literally about to revolutionize that entire genre, but you’d be forgiven for not knowing it by listening to Flora. The show ends with a message about being true to yourself, and that’s so boring and trite.
Liza’s numbers are the ones most worth your time. Even at 19, she’s hugely talented, although he’s not quite fully formed Liza with a Z yet. She’s almost kinda doing like a character voice for some of it. All of the contemporaneous reviews I read mentioned her parentage, but the one thing this show undoubtedly nails is proving that she’s a star in her own right. The critics agreed that Liza was the bright spot of a flawed show, the Time Magazine reviewer wrote: “ A tune-drab, dance-starved, lead-witted musical is scarcely the dream debut for a star, but Liza Minnelli puts vocal muscle and wistful appeal into her spindling role.”
The song of the show, and it is not particularly close, is “A Quiet Thing”, a ballad Flora sings after she gets hired as a fashion illustrator. It’s a “quiet” moment, but it’s also the only one where the score soars. A really lovely song, it’s not surprising Liza made it a staple of her act.
The only other song that occasionally gets done these days is called “Sing Happy,” another one for Liza. This is supposed to be the big number of the show, but I don’t particularly care for it. It begins with the lyrics: “Sing me a happy song about robins in spring, sing me a happy song with a happy ending,” and that line really rankled me. I’m not sure why exactly, perhaps because it’s far too cloying for what I expect from Ebb. The overall song is not cloying, it’s actually about how depressed we all are already so, can we not have at the very least some happy music to listen to so we don’t totally succumb to the darkness? It’s a sentiment not dissimilar to “what good is sitting all alone in your room, come here the music play”. And it is Liza Minnelli belting out an anthem of determination, which is perhaps the thing that Kander & Ebb are known for. It feels like a prototype for better things to come.
Ranking
This being the first, I am ranking it as Number One.
Next time: Cabaret!
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