Show-stopping dance spectacles back at Goodspeed with ‘42nd Street’

With boisterous, brassy, dance-happy tunes like “We’re in the Money,” “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” and “You’re Getting to Be a Habit With Me,” the musical “42nd Street” is in a grand tradition of big splashy song-and-dance spectacles at the Goodspeed Opera House.

It is a tradition stalled by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Goodspeed’s entire 2020 season was canceled. The 2021 season mostly consisted of concerts and scaled-down musicals performed in a tent on the Goodspeed lawn.

When indoor performances started again at the Opera House in September 2021, the first show back — ”A Grand Night for Singing” — had only five people in it. This year, “Cabaret” and “Anne of Green Gables” had fairly robust casts of 16 performers each, but neither had spectacular dance numbers on a scale with Goodspeed shows like 2019′s “The Will Rogers Follies” 2017′s “Oklahoma” or 2016′s “Anything Goes,” which had casts of 20 or more and full-cast dance numbers.

“42 Street” brings back the big ensemble through Nov. 6 and features at least one full-blown, full-cast song-and-dance routine with the showstopper, “Lullabye of Broadway.”

To helm this welcome return to stage-filling, tap-dancing pizzazz, the Goodspeed hired Randy Skinner to both direct and choreograph. Skinner was involved in the first Broadway production of “42nd Street,” as the dance assistant to the legendary director/choreographer Gower Champion. He was among the first to learn Champion died hours before the opening-night performance on Broadway.

“42nd Street” began as a larger-than-life Hollywood movie musical, directed by Busby Berkeley in 1933. It took 47 years to become a stage show. The original Broadway production ran for over eight years with nearly 3,500 performances. A 2001 Broadway revival, directed by Mark Bramble with Skinner now credited with musical staging and new choreography, ran for four years. Skinner has also been involved in productions for “42nd Street” in other countries, regional theaters and on tour. Too many to count, he says.

An intimate approach

Given that “42nd Street” is a step up for the Goodspeed right now size-wise, it is interesting that Skinner sees it as a smaller production than he’s used to. In fact, the Goodspeed is the smallest theater Skinner has ever staged the show.

“You can’t do 50 dancers at the Goodspeed,” he says. “This is scaled back.”

Besides a smaller dance ensemble, Skinner has combined two characters — the composer character Bert Barry and an onstage rehearsal pianist. Broadway veteran E. Clayton Cornelious (”Ain’t Too Proud”) plays the part. The music in “42nd Street” consists of tunes by Harry Warren with lyrics by Al Dubin. Many of the songs come from the movie version, with hits from other Warren/Dubin movie musicals from the ‘30s, such as “We’re in the Money” from “Gold Diggers of 1933.”

Skinner has even reconceived some classic scenes from the show. “Shuffle Off to Broadway,” he teases, isn’t the split-in-half train car from the movie and most stage versions. Along with the changes, he’s added back some moments from the original movie, which he adores. The director/choreographer says there are also new technical elements that never existed in the show before, including projections.

“We need to bring what we do into modern times. As time moves forward, we have to keep things alive,” he says.

The result, Skinner asserts, is a more close-up, more human “42nd Street.”

“The audience is going to get to know everybody for the first time,” he says.

The concept, he says, came from Broadway producer Richard Winkler. “He said that after COVID, this would be needed, and could we try out a smaller, intimate version?”

The Great Depression era setting of the show will also resonate with those getting back on their feet after COVID.

“It’s a period show set in a troubled time,” Skinner says. “The kids [in the cast] are feeling that. Some of the people who had a hard time [during the COVID shutdown] were dancers. For them, this is a joy, a release of energy.”

“We’d had to rethink a lot of things,” Skinner says, “but this is still the beloved classic show that everyone will expect.”

A kinder, gentler Julian Marsh

Max von Essen plays Julian Marsh in “42nd Street” and is a beneficiary of Skinner’s fresh analysis of the main characters. Marsh is the has-been director desperate for a comeback, the guy who gets to say to the spunky chorus girl Peggy Sawyer (played at Goodspeed by Carina-Kay Louchiey) that “you’re going out a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star!,” after Sawyer must take over, at no notice, for the show’s injured diva Dorothy Brock (played by Kate Baldwin).

Von Essen defers a lot of questions about the legacy of “42nd Street” to Skinner.

“Randy is the show,” von Essen says. “He’s the only one who has permission to make changes to it.”

In terms of his portrayal of Julian Marsh, von Essen says Skinner “doesn’t want a coarse or rough Julian. He wants to bring back a sensitivity and remind us of how Julian fell in love with the industry in the first place.”

When he auditioned for the role, von Essen — known for young romantic roles like Henri in “An American in Paris” — says “I may have surprised Randy a little. He still had an image of me as a juvenile lead. I came in and said ‘I can’t transform myself. This is a more dashing Julian Marsh, one who shares my own passion for theater.’ They bought it. The real love story in this show is about theater, why we all do this as a career.”

Skinner says he and von Essen have shaped a Julian Marsh who isn’t defined by substance abuse or nervous breakdowns, “just the stress of needing to be back on top.”

His shift to more adult roles has been going well, von Essen says.

“All of a sudden, in the last couple of years, things shifted. One turning point was being able to play Marvin in [the national tour of the Broadway revival of] ‘Falsettos.’ He’s a divorced dad. I’m more solidly into the more mature adult world now. I just did ‘The Secret Garden’ in Sacramento,” as the somber Dr. Neville Craven.

Von Essen has a few previous Connecticut credits. He played the title role in “Jesus Christ Superstar” at Connecticut Repertory Theatre’s summer series in 1999, an experience he says helped him land the opportunity to understudy Jesus in the 2000 Broadway revival of the rock opera. In 2001, he co-starred as one of the twin brothers in “Blood Brothers” at Downtown Cabaret Theatre in Bridgeport. He was also in a show that means a lot in Connecticut: When he took over as Gleb in the Broadway production of “Anastasia,” most of that show’s cast was still the same as it had been for its pre-Broadway shakedown at Hartford Stage.

Von Essen says that unlike most of the rest of the “42nd Street” cast, he barely has to dance in the show and also has hardly any costume changes.

“I barely have any time between my scenes,” he says. “I wear a snappy three-piece Navy suit with stripes. There’s a lot of taking off my jacket or loosening [my] tie.”

Overall, he’s appreciating being able to mold a brighter, less brittle, more energetic Julian Marsh.

“I’ve been in depressing shows. I really love doing something full of joy.”

“42nd Street, with a book by Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble and music and lyrics by Harren Warren and Al Dubin, directed and choreographed by Randy Skinner, runs through Nov. 6 at the Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main St., East Haddam. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 and 6:30 p.m. $36-$85. goodspeed.org/shows/42nd-street.

Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.