This is not a full review, but I felt that I owed you all a post. I’m currently in the midst of a small obsession with the 1965 musical, Flora the Red Menace, a romantic comedy about communism and the Depression…yeah.
It was the first show written by the now-famous team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, who went on to write Cabaret, Chicago, and Kiss of the Spider Woman among many others. It also marked the debut of a nineteen-year-old Liza Minelli. Back then, her “nepo baby” origins were more a hindrance than a selling point. Who wants to start a career in the shadow of Judy Garland and Vincente Minelli? (No one.) Consequently, the show was a classic underdog (unknown composers, unknown star with a lot to prove, comedy about Depression-era communism put on in the sixties…) and likely wouldn’t have made it to Broadway in today’s climate. That’s also the show’s theme, though: it’s one for the underdogs.
The show had a very short run, but it got good press, and Liza took home her first Tony Award for playing Flora, a peppy graduate who signs up with the communist party to please her boyfriend and then loses her job and relationship because of it. The reviews are really interesting reading, looking back from a world in which Kander, Ebb, and Minelli are all American musical theatre legends. Critics were more or less like, “OK…yeah, I liked that well enough. But, let me tell you about Liza Minelli!”
Right away, Minelli was recognized as patently not Judy Jr. One of my new favorite quotes explains this by proclaiming “Liza is this year’s Liza.” How’s that for a debut notice?
The music is mostly in the good range, and the story is clearly simple and silly (although a more serious, political-minded version now exists). But, for me, it’s all about a strange little song that I first heard during Minelli’s smash hit television special, “Liza with a Z”, called “A Quiet Thing”. It’s an odd duck with a soaring melody that never really gets to soar and a number of sudden style changes during its short timespan. But I love it. And I have listened to it on repeat and sung it to myself in the car (with full Liza gusto) over and over this week.
I’m touched by the bizarre little story of this bizarre little musical. It wasn’t long before Liza was known as Kander & Ebb’s top leading lady, and the incredible film version of Cabaret almost swept the Oscars (but had Best Picture stolen by, ugh, The Godfather). Liza also got an Emmy for “Liza with a Z”, which was written by Kander & Ebb and directed by Bob Fosse, by the way. And while Flora the Red Menace may have snuck up on Broadway, she would never again be called a quiet thing.