Madcap Stratagems of Songful Siblings
Charles IsherwoodFebruary 5, 2015: Sporting a sleek fire-engine red suit, Tommy Tune appears suddenly, like an exotic bird just flown in from the tropics to brighten our frigid winter, in Lady, Be Good!, the George and Ira Gershwin musical that’s the first production of the City Center Encores! season. A musical theater veteran with nine Tony awards to his name, Mr. Tune has been absent from New York theater stages for at least a decade. Amazingly trim and towering at 75, he still has the radiance of a performer who gathers warmth from the spotlight. And spreads it, too. Although he’s no longer the bravura tap dancer of his prime, when those long limbs spring into motion in the jaunty “Fascinating Rhythm,” he remains a wonder to watch. Music ripples through his body as naturally as a breeze stirring leaves on a tree, and you suddenly feel airborne yourself. That magical feeling comes rarely in this likable but only intermittently effervescent revival of the 1924 musical, which was the first big Broadway hit for the Gershwins and added luster to the careers of its stars, Fred and Adele Astaire. It dates from a startlingly fertile period for George Gershwin, who composed and began performing Rhapsody in Blue earlier that year and opened another musical in London, Primrose, just a few months before Lady, Be Good! burst into view.
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