"Jamaica' revived at the Prince

Where have you gone, Harry Belafonte?
Or: The uncertain resurrection of Jamaica

STEVE COHEN

Let’s face it. Even geniuses sometimes produce unworkable ideas, like Einstein’s Unified Field Theory. Such might be the case with Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg’s 1957 musical, Jamaica, which is the subject of careful rediscovery by the Prince Music Theater.

I love Arlen’s music and Harburg’s lyrics for The Wizard of Oz, of course, but especially for their socially conscious musicals, like Bloomer Girl (which they wrote together in 1944), Finian’s Rainbow (Harburg with Burton Lane, 1946) and Flahooley (Harburg with Sammy Fain, 1951).

Their last collaboration, Jamaica, was radically altered by producer David Merrick, who turned it into a showcase for Lena Horne against the creators’ wishes. Merrick changed the play so much that Harburg refused to attend its opening night. So Jamaica is a logical target for a revival that attempts to capture the creators’ original intent.

The show’s original plan was to catch the then-current wave of interest in Jamaican music. Harry Belafonte cut a big-selling calypso album in 1956, and he was to be the show’s central character. Merrick signed Lena Horne and gave her more stage time than Belafonte, who then quit the show. The euphemistic cover story said that Belafonte was ill, but that wasn’t true. Ricardo Montalban was brought in to play Horne’s boyfriend and look nice. Merrick wanted changes in the book, but Harburg and Saidy refused to let the producer doctor their words. Merrick then brought in Joseph Stein (Plain and Fancy, and later Fiddler on the Roof) to re-write the script while Harburg and Saidy were barred from rehearsals.

Lena Horne’s war with the conductor

Problems arose about the music, too. Arlen’s contract gave him approval rights on the conductor, and he wanted his brother, Jerry Arlen. But Merrick wanted Lehman Engel, who had conducted the successful Fanny for Merrick in 1954. So Harold Arlen was forced to take the job away from his brother but, apparently for spite, vetoed Engel, and everyone settled temporarily on veteran conductor Jay Blackton, who led the rehearsals and the Philadelphia tryout. Horne’s flexibility with tempo soon collided with Blackton’s rigid discipline. In the nightclubs whence she came, Horne was accustomed to plenty of freedom. Blackton was fired and Engel rushed in for the Boston tryout and the Broadway opening. Horne gave the easy-going Engel a hard time, too, as he told me a few years later.

The 25-piece orchestra included four of Lena’s personal musicians, whom she told to follow her, instead of the conductor. So Engel left and he was replaced by Sherman Frank, whom Philadelphians know from his later years as music director at the Walnut Street Theatre.

The common wailings of Jews and blacks

Composer Harold Arlen was the son of a cantor who, more than any other Jewish composer, found commonality between the wailings of European Jewry and those of American Negroes. Listen to recordings of Arlen singing his own songs and you’ll hear blue melodies expressed with a black accent. Some of his Jamaica tunes are calypso and many others are catchy conventional Broadway– very good compared to other composers but a letdown to those who hoped to see an expansion of Arlen’s distinctive style.

Arlen’s talent for mixing Jewish, black and Caribbean flavors was ignored when Merrick hired orchestrator Phil Lang, who wrote traditional big Broadway arrangements (Annie Get Your Gun, Hello, Dolly!). No jazz elements remained.

The musical arrangements for this revival (by John Baxindine) are a pleasant mixture of steel drums with saxophones, mixing the flavors of calypso and jazz, just as Belafonte himself did when his musical career started at the Village Vanguard jazz club.

This is black exploitation?

Because of all the controversy, insiders have wondered how the original Jamaica might have turned out if decisions were made by the creative team rather than by Merrick the money man. At the Prince’s new production, I enjoyed the music and the words and admired some of the performances, but I was disappointed. I’m grateful to have seen a part of Broadway history but far from exhilarated.

Arlen, Harburg and Harburg’s collaborator on the book, Fred Saidy, sought to create a calypso musical that contrasts the serenity of a Caribbean island to modern America’s commercialization— a theme also found in Bloomer Girl and Finian’s Rainbow. But Harburg and Saidy attacked racism, industrialization and avarice in Bloomer Girl and Finian’s Rainbow. In this restoration of Jamaica, we’re simply told that New York entrepreneurs want to build a resort hotel on the island. So what? The script doesn’t show white businessmen exploiting the black inhabitants. It’s far less outraged than Oscar Hammerstein when he wrote in Show Boat: "Niggers all work on de Mississippi/ Niggers all work while de white man plays."

The hard-working Prince revival cast includes some impressive singers. Barrett Doss plays Savannah, a woman who runs a small restaurant and dates an easy-going fisherman. She’s beautiful and possesses a nice voice, but she seems too much a big-city professional and not enough a primitive island-dweller. Julian A. Miller is excellent as the fisherman and Darlene B. Young displays a rich voice as a narrating native of the island.

This show would exude more texture if the leading lady were clearly from an isolated tropical island— darker in attitude as well as skin color. Then her desire to leave and go to New York would seem more daring, not just a career move.

Less-than-pressing dramatic conflict

For more than half of Act One the only conflict seems to be: Will Savannah be content to cook for one man alone? Then the plot becomes a quest by the natives to make money from an influx of tourists. But the only tourist who disembarks from a ship is a handsome white New Yorker on a mission to buy up beachfront property to build a hotel. At intermission we are pondering the less-than-pressing question of whether or not he’ll succeed – in his hotel venture and in romancing Savannah.

Neither Harburg, Saidy nor Claudia Perry (who revised the script) put enough emphasis on the interesting dichotomy of one group of exploiters competing against another. In sum, Jamaica lacks a compelling conflict.

Is this island real or mythical?

This production also fails to clear up a confusing element of the original. Harburg’s working title was Pigeon Island. Like Gilbert and Sullivan, Harburg liked to set his shows in mythical places (like the state of Missitucky for Finian’s Rainbow), where satire would work best. This intent clashed with a wish to cash in on the popularity of Belafonte’s Jamaican calypso album. In the Prince Theatre production we’re never sure whether we’re supposed to be looking at the isle of Jamaica or at a mythical paradise.

The question of where we’re supposed to be could have been clarified by Harburg and Saidy during the show’s tryouts, if Merrick hadn't locked them out. And the Prince Theater is attempting more than a historical re-examination here. It’s trying to create a version of Jamaica that can enjoy a continuing life. Witness the insertion of some Arlen songs from his younger years with proven crowd appeal: "It’s Only a Paper Moon," "The Eagle and Me," "When the Sun Comes Out" and "Down With Love." They fill out a relatively short show (two hours, including intermission) but they inadvertently render the rest of the score– the part actually written for Jamaica– less important. In any case, maybe Jamaica’s concept and weak plot were fatally flawed to begin with.

Harburg and Saidy wrote another show (with music by Sammy Fain) that tried out in Philadelphia in 1951 and might make a better candidate for restoration. I speak of Flahooley, a satire of American big business combined with an attack on McCarthyism. The plot includes criticism of Arab oil producers and might be timely today.

I’d still like to spend more time exploring the mythical island of Harburg’s intent and savoring the original songs that he and Arlen wrote in 1957. Maybe in a re-working of this revision – what computer nerds might call Jamaica 2.1?