CALL ME MADAM: POLITICAL SATIRE 70 YEARS LATER, WITHOUT ETHEL MERMAN
Imagine a political atmosphere in which big-spending dilettantes are so valued that the president of the United States actually rewards them with ambassadorships to countries across the sea. Hard to believe such happenings could ever occur, not in our great nation. But that is the premise for the 1950 musical comedy blockbuster Call Me Madam, now on stage as the opening entry in Encores’ 2019 season celebrating the 75th anniversary of City Center.
Call Me Madam, for those of you rooted in the 21st century, was a star vehicle for Ethel Merman at the absolute peak of her career. Her skills carried the show, which has a sturdy but mostly unimaginative score by Irving Berlin; this, four years after Merman and Berlin triumphed with the infinitely better Annie Get Your Gun. The folks at Encores rather surprisingly demonstrated, in their sophomore season of 1995, that Call Me Madam could indeed work without Merman. Tyne Daly was not a seasoned musical comedy star like the role’s originator, but she had a similarly outsized personality which made the production pure joy, at the same time more or less cementing the bond between the fledgling Encores and its core audience.