The first time I saw Channing perform was in February of 1964, about four weeks after Hello, Dolly! premiered on Broadway. I had never before seen such a wonderfully bizarre creature "take stage" so forcefully while telegraphing to the audience (in no uncertain terms) that, by the time intermission rolled around, they were going to love her. When Channing opened her arms wide during "Before The Parade Passes By," I was ready to jump down to the stage from my seat high up in the balcony of the St. James Theatre and join her on a wonderful theatrical adventure.
Over the years, I saw Channing perform the role several times. In 1977 the Houston Grand Opera mounted a revival of the show as the kick-off of a national tour. In 1983, another tour of Hello, Dolly! touched down at San Francisco's Orpheum Theatre. The last time I saw her perform Dolly Levi onstage was in 1995 during her final tour. A friend who accompanied me that night was shocked to encounter an actor of such frightening theatricality, a performer who seemed desperate for affection yet could wrap the audience around her little finger through the sheer force of her ebullience, enthusiasm, and charisma.
In 1983 I had an opportunity to interview Channing for Stallion Magazine. Among the many gems from that interview was her insistence that “some day I’d love to do the story of the Flying Duchess.” The man interviewing Channing before me took a strangely aggressive approach, asking her if she didn’t think audiences would get tired of seeing her in only one role. After he left, Channing confided:
“I must learn not to be hurt when people ask me why I’m not tired of doing this show. You see, there are two kinds of talents: one is strictly for creating, the other is for creating and then re-creating. I get my kicks and jollies out of re-creating. I honestly love it. That’s my talent. That’s what makes me tick. That’s how I get my fun. One show in many years is a smash hit. That’s why Hello, Dolly! is like lightning in a bottle. I’m in love with this cathedral that was built by Jerry Herman, Michael Stewart, and Gower Champion. I’m never going to let go of it.”
"Once you find the right way of doing a role, hold onto it. It’s God given. It’s got to be done the same way. I never change the staging or even what I do with my arms and legs. Oh, mentally, you can understand something you didn’t understand before (like the manure speech), but all you have to do is let your thought waver one little bit and think ‘Gee, I’m hungry, what’ll I have for dinner?’ and you don’t get that laugh. That’s because the audience didn’t hear the line. Whatever it is that goes out of the atmosphere is the most frightening thing in the world. When I’m out there on the runway, I feel like I’m walking in limbo with a brilliant spotlight on me. There’s nothing but blackness all around. The rest of the show is back there somewhere. When I talk to my dead husband, Ephraim, I feel like he’s in eternity and I don’t know where I am. I mean, it puts me right in the mood (which is a good thing if you want to talk to your dead husband).”
Watch the opening number from Hello, Dolly! ("I Put My Hand In") in the following clip and pay close attention to how Channing shapes her first speech to Ephraim Levi.
Channing's comedic timing was legendary. What often seemed spontaneous was meticulously crafted, with particular attention to giving the playwright's words their full weight and musicality. As originally directed by Gower Champion (and later by Lee Roy Reams), the scene at the Harmonia Gardens restaurant is a masterpiece of comedy. Watch Channing milk her dinner for all the laughs she can get in the following clip:
At the time of our interview, Channing was preparing for a foreign tour of Hello, Dolly! which, among many European capitols, included a stop in Monte Carlo. She told me that when she saw Princess Grace at the Night of 100 Stars, she asked if audiences In Monte Carlo could understand English. The Princess responded “If you speak, make a curtain speech in French before you start the show. If you make that speech in their language, they will suddenly understand all the English you want them to.”
Interviewing Channing was a strange experience because she was notoriously near-sighted and looked into a person's eyes from a distance of about six inches. In that unforgettable voice, she told me “I went to a French family and learned phonetically what I wanted to say because Berlitz doesn’t have the right accents. I mean, if you”re in love with the French language, why should you learn what the predicate adjective is? Berlitz teaches it with all these grammatical cases and I don’t want that. I want the wonderful rhythm and sound of the French language. So I’ve learned my speech. Would you like to hear it? I have to rehearse my speech.”
Suddenly, her rumbling basso erupted into a passionate diatribe which could unearth every corpse buried in Flanders Field. “Ma raison d’etre pour tous les insectes et les animaux....” she bellowed, before confiding that “I don’t know what I’m saying, but anyway, they like it. I suspect I’m saying more than just 'We hope to be as welcome as you are in the United States.'”
While some friends were distraught by the news of Channing's death on January 15th, I didn't share their grief. The following night, which marked the 55th anniversary of Carol's greatest triumph -- the opening night of Hello, Dolly! -- Broadway's theatres dimmed their marquees to honor the memory of a true stage animal and Broadway baby.
Carol Channing lived a long life during which she inspired and brought joy to millions of people. She expressed two wishes about how she would like to be memorialized after her death. One was her life-long desire to be buried in the alleyway between San Francisco's Geary and Curran theatres. The other was for her headstone to read "She raised their lives." We are all better people for having had our lives touched by Channing's artistry, her eccentricity, her longevity, and her daring.
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Four Broadway theatres are named in honor of American playwrights (David Belasco, Eugene O’Neill, Neil Simon, and August Wilson). While many playgoers are familiar with the comedies and dramas written by these men, few people have any sense of what it might be like to visit with them and hear them reflect on their lives.In a co-production between Marin Theatre Company, San Francisco's Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, and the Ubuntu Theatre Project in the East Bay, veteran actor Steven Anthony Jones is starring in Wilson's How I Learned What I Learned. The world premiere of this charming (and often hilarious) one-man show was presented by the Seattle Repertory Theatre in 2003, where it was performed by the playwright. A subsequent production was staged at the Signature Theatre Company in New York City. As Darryl V. Jones (the current artistic director of the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre) explains:
"Former Artistic Director Steven Anthony Jones started our ‘Bringing Art to the Audience’ staged reading program in order to make theatre accessible to under-represented communities. Thanks to the initiative of Marin Theatre Company, this partnership furthers Steven’s vision, bringing a full production to several neighborhoods in the Bay area. Appropriately, it features Steven in the iconic role of Wilson, as directed by LHT veteran Margo Hall (both of whom previously collaborated on the LHT production of Thurgood and have also embodied many of the characters in Wilson’s plays to critical acclaim). The idea of bringing art to audiences to enlighten and entertain was a primary concern for Wilson as well.”
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| Steven Anthony Jones portrays playwright August Wilson in a scene from How I Learned What I Learned (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
"Following the tradition of the griots (African storytellers who kept the oral histories of their tribes), Wilson chronicled the 20th century African-American experience in the oral histories of his plays. Like the griots, he combined elements of storytelling with spirituality and music. His plays reveal history and personal narratives through African-American vernacular, music and stylistic movement that portray the African-American experience and raise it to heights of poetic lyricism. Seeing any one of Wilson’s ten plays from the Century Cycle is an interactive cultural experience. His characters reveal how African Americans used folk tales, music, dance, and oral histories to emancipate and redefine themselves in this new world that fell short of its promise of freedom for all. Through continuing productions of his plays, people of all races have been intimately connected to the lives of African Americans and shared in their struggle for true emancipation from the institution of slavery and civil oppression.”
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| Steven Anthony Jones portrays playwright August Wilson in a scene from How I Learned What I Learned (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Ironically, I found myself enjoying How I Learned What I Learned more than I've enjoyed some of Wilson's plays. I think that is largely due to its format (in which a cantankerous, sadder-but-wiser grandfather holds the stage while explaining how racism, naivete, and luck impacted some of Wilson's youthful experiences growing up in Pittsburgh's Hill District).
The key to the show's success lies as much in the playwright's life story (especially the street smarts he acquired from his mother and some of the older men in the neighborhood) as his ability to transform those experiences into a stageworthy monologue. As director Margo Hill (one of the Bay area's most gifted theatrical talents) explains:
“We all know the plays of August Wilson but many of us (especially the younger generation) don’t know much about the man himself. This play allows us to be in a room with him. His gift of storytelling, sense of humor and his love of history are expressed in an intimate night at the theater. I think what August really wanted people to understand is how white society misunderstands black people because they can’t understand why black people don’t want to be like them. I think what he says in his plays is that we are a powerful people, and we are our own people. He was very clear that he was not interested in assimilation to the point of trying to be white. August wrote ‘We are not black by accident of our birth. Our births are moments of profound creativity engineered by our genetic muscles as it aspires toward perfection.’”
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| Steven Anthony Jones portrays playwright August Wilson in a scene from How I Learned What I Learned (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
“I can’t speak for August, but what I get from his work is that society needs to embrace us as we are because we’re amazing, and I’m interested in telling you that. I’m interested in telling you how amazing we are, how much we love each other, and how much our culture has influenced everything you do. So stop trying to make us like you because [you think] that would make us better and perfect. We are perfect as we are. The idea of presenting the play at three vastly different theaters with different types of audiences is the way theater should be done. Our job as Artists is to take the work to the people, especially the community for whom it was written. I’m proud that that is part of our mission.”
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| Steven Anthony Jones portrays playwright August Wilson in a scene from How I Learned What I Learned (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Like any 100-minute monologue, How I Learned What I Learned requires a fierce amount of memorization for the actor portraying August Wilson. Thankfully, the actor onstage is not switching back and forth between several roles (like some monologists) and can take his time with the material. Whether discussing the importance of being in the right place at the right time (as opposed to a very wrong time and place), learning how to walk away from an employer who refuses to pay him what he's worth, understanding why a person should keep his mouth shut after witnessing someone die under questionable circumstances, or struggling to get up the courage to kiss a girl in school, Wilson's vignettes disarm the audience with their charm and how slyly the playwright has shaped each story.
Working on a handsome unit set designed by Edward E. Haynes, Jr. and lit by Stephanie Johnson (with projections by Mike Post), Steven Anthony Jones does an exquisite job of portraying Wilson with the kind of energy one might expect from an old man puttering around in his basement or garage. It's an endearing performance which tickles the funny one as easily as it tugs at one's heartstrings.
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| Steven Anthony Jones portrays playwright August Wilson in a scene from How I Learned What I Learned (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
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