Goddard's Children

One Saturday evening not too long ago, we walked to Hopkins Center to see All Goddard's Children in the closing performance of a revival of a musical called Working. We had heard of Working — and also that it had flopped on Broadway — but we had never heard of All Goddard's Children. We later asked Hopkins Center director Peter Smith to tell us about the group.

About a year and a half ago, Smith received three independently written letters from Jeff Bannon, Tyrone Po, and Mark Frawley, members of the class of 1981. The letters had a common question: What could be done by the powers that be at Hopkins Center to encourage regular productions in that area of show business described variously as cabaret, revue, nightclub entertainment, and satirical musical theater? Peter Smith gathered some colleagues, who decided that the best way to respond was to start a new musical theater group. With this blessing, the students organized their first production. But the problem of choosing a name for the group remained.

The students had all heard of Goddard Lieberson, who was associated with Columbia Records for 36 years, most of them as president. President Kemeny mentioned some of Lieberson's achievements when Dartmouth awarded him an honorary degree in 1975: "You pioneered in original cast albums and the recording of great plays. But when you wanted to have CBS underwrite an entire musical, the gamble was considered too great. Fortunately for CBS, you talked them into it; the name of the show was My Fair Lady."

Lieberson, who died of cancer in 1977, also served as chairman of the Hopkins Center Board of Overseers. He had no vested interest in Dartmouth aside from his enthusiasm for the aims of Hopkins Center. Peter Smith said that his nonpartisan support gave the people at the Hop a special kind of confidence in what they were doing. So, to honor the memory of Goddard Lieberson, the new players called themselves All Goddard's Children.

With many of the group's most talented people on campus, the time seemed ripe this summer for the first full-scale musical production, and when approached with the idea, Peter Smith's overriding concern was that "it be really good." He suggested that professional directing help might be desirable, and proposed Paul Lazarus '76. After graduating from Dartmouth, Lazarus had spent seven months with the Royal Shakespeare Company in England in a program for training directors. During his spare time in London, Lazarus organized a group of American expatriates to produce musicals in the American style. More recently, Lazarus had been in New York managing Off-Broadway shows and running a weekly radio program on American musical theater. All Goddard's Children met with Lazarus, who then agreed to direct the summer production at Hopkins Center.

Smith decided to go along with Lazarus's suggestion to stage Working, even though the show had failed on Broadway. "Paul was so sure," said Smith, "that I never had any qualms about it." Working is an adaptation of Studs Terkel's oral history of working people in America — from steelworkers to housewives, from firemen to executives.

"The show's failure on Broadway," said Lazarus, "was the result of 'overproduction' and not of the work's intrinsic theatrical merit. We're going to show that properly staged, Working can be a dynamic and tremendously theatrical production. We're staging it in a simple, intimate style — away from the Broadway glitter. Things will be mimed, danced, and sung, but the main effort is going into telling the story."

With a cast of 18 actors — students, community members, and Professor Bill Cook — Working opened to a half-full house and played to six more that were standing-room-only. The show was revived this fall for five additional performances that were also sold out. Mark Frawley '81 was choreographer, and Bruce Coughlin '75 arranged the score and led the five- piece band. Since graduating from Dartmouth, Coughlin has worked as musical director for several New York shows, written the music for several Off-Off Broadway shows, worked with New York's Big Apple Circus, and has taught at the Lincoln Center Institute in the company of such distinguished musicians as Leonard Bernstein.

At the start of the performance, the actors moved quietly onto the darkened stage, climbing into positions on the simple set, a two-story scaffold. One silhouette began to hammer a loud, slow beat on the scaffold with a pipe. Other silhouettes joined the hammering, creating a disturbing, mechanical rhythm out of the dark and silence. Suddenly, the stage exploded in song and was flooded with light, revealing the 18 energetic performers — all of them Goddard's children.

The cast and set of Working, "a dynamic and tremendously theatrical production."