'High Button Shoes' (Encores!)

In my recent report on some art shows I’d seen earlier this month (“Two Art Fairs & Joan Miró at MoMA,” 16 May), I recounted a discussion I had with the my graduate schoolmates back in the mid-1970s when I was an MFA student at  Rutgers University’s School of Creative and Performing Arts (now the Mason Gross School of the Arts).  “I argued with my MFA classmates at Rutgers that theater for the sake of entertainment isn’t second rate,” I reported.  “Entertainment is a commendable goal for art.”

A case in point is the largely forgotten Broadway hit of 1947-49, High Button Shoes, a concert presentation of which I saw at New York City Center on Thursday evening, 9 May.  I’d always heard the title of the musical comedy (music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Sammy Cahn, and book by Stephen Longstreet from his 1946 novel The Sisters Liked Them Handsome), but I’d never seen it or, I thought, heard any of the score—at least nothing that I identified with the play.  When my friend Diana called me and asked if I’d be interested in seeing the Encores! Production, I immediately said yes—and was rewarded with a thoroughly delightful, charming, and entertaining experience in old-time musical theater. 

High Button Shoes was considered a throw-back even in its own time—which was already three years after Rogers and Hammerstein’s far deeper musical drama Oklahoma! (1943) and two years after their darker Carousel (1945).  The Rogers-and-Hart musical play Pal Joey was considered so risqué in 1940 that a Broadway ticket broker wouldn’t sell my grandfather tickets to the show if he intended to take my then-17-year-old future mother!  But High Button Shoes was old-fashioned musical comedy, all innocent fun, fancy, and farce.  New York Times theater reviewer Brooks Atkinson remarked in his critique of the première, “Eschewing progress to the arts for the moment, the producers of ‘High Button Shoes’ have put together a very happy musical show in a very cheerful tradition. . . .  Put it down as excellent family entertainment with no pretensions to show-shop aesthesia.”

Written in 1947 after Cahn (1913-93) and Styne (1905-94), who’d been writing pop songs together in Hollywood for several years, wrote their first attempt at a Broadway show.  Glad to See You, about a USO show touring the South Pacific during World War II, flopped out of town in 1944 and never made it to New York City.  The pair returned to Hollywood and, in 1947, Styne turned to the semi-autobiographical novel by Longstreet (1907-2002) as the basis for his and Cahn’s next try for the Great White Way.

The team struck gold.  George Abbott (1887-1995), already a Broadway legend at 60, was hired to direct and Jerome Robbins (1918-98), relatively new to musical theater but a major star in the dance world (including several stints on Broadway with ballet productions), would create the dance numbers.  Comedian Phil Silvers (1911-85), well-known for his portrayals of scheming con men on screen and a longtime friend of Cahn’s, was cast as Harrison Floy; Nanette Fabray (1920-2018) would play Mama Longstreet and Joey Faye (1909/1910-97) portrayed Mr. Pontdue, Floy’s shill in his flim-flam routines. 

Longstreet’s book was shaky, according to the rumors around Times Square, so Abbott, a play doctor among his other theatrical talents, took over the book-writing—and Silvers dipped his pen in as well.  (I quipped to a friend that the character of Floy not only sounded as if it were written for Silvers, but by Silvers—and apparently it was!) 

High Button Shoes opened at the New Century Theatre (Seventh Avenue and West 58th Street; demolished in 1962) on 9 October 1947 and ran 727 performances through 2 July 1949.  (The production moved twice, first to the Shubert Theatre on 22 December 1947 and then to the Broadway on 18 October 1948.)  Robbins won the 1948 Tony Award for Choreographer and actor Mark Dawson took the 1948 Theatre World Award for his performance as Hubert “Oggle” Ogglethorpe.  

A national tour opened in Boston on 20 April 1948, playing 13 cities, with Eddie Foy, Jr. (1905-83), as Harrison Floy, Audrey Meadows (1922-96) as Sara Longstreet, and Jack Whiting (1894-1975) as Papa Longstreet.  The tour played at least 16 cities in the Midwest and Great Plains, including Chicago, Denver, San Fransisco, and Minneapolis; it closed 31 December 1949, in Kansas City.

A London production opened at the Hippodrome 22 December 1948 and closed on 6 November 1949, completing 291 performance; Audrey Hepburn (1929-93) was a chorus girl.  A television adaptation was broadcast live on 24 November 1956 on NBC with Nanette Fabray and Joey Faye repeating their original roles, Hal March (1920-70) as Harrison Floy, and Don Ameche (1908-93) as Papa Longstreet.  High Button Shoes has never been revived on Broadway, but the play’s had some minor fame with community and regional groups around the U.S., including two in nearby Connecticut. 

The Broadway revue Jerome Robbins’ Broadway (26 Feb. 1989-1 Sep. 1990: 1989 TONY, Best Musical; 1989 Drama Desk, Outstanding Musical) recreated Robbins’s choreography for three of his dances in High Button Shoes: “I Still Get Jealous,” “On a Sunday by the Sea,” and “Papa, Won’t You Dance With Me?”  Goodspeed Musicals revived the musical at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Connecticut, from 16 June to 11 September 1982 and again from 13 July to 22 September 2007. 

The Encores! two-hour-and-twenty-minute concert presentation (with one intermission) at City Center (West 55th Street, east of Broadway) ran from 8 to 12 May 2019; Diana and I caught the 7:30 p.m. performance on the 9th.  High Button Shoes was the last in Encores! 2019 series (Encores! Off-Center, the 2019 summer season of Off-Broadway musical concerts, will run in June and July, with Studs Terkel’s Working, Promenade by María Irene Fornés and Al Carmines, and Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Road Show); the season was a commemoration of City Center’s 75th anniversary and a tribute to Jerome Robbins, marking (belatedly) the 100th anniversary of his birth.  (The two previous Robbins-choreographed shows in the season were Call Me Madam, 1950, with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin and book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s I Married an Angel, 1938.)

High Button Shoes was staged at City Center by John Rando and choreographed by Sarah O’Gleby, with musical direction by Rob Berman; the Encores! orchestrations were from Philip Lang.  The scenic designer for the concert was Allen Moyer, the costumes were designed by Ann Hould-Ward, the light design was by Ken Billington, and Scott Lehrer designed the sound.   

For ROTters who aren’t familiar with the Encores! productions, they are stripped-down versions of “rarely produced” musicals, considered neglected or forgotten, with the focus on the score, performed in full, rather than the dialogue, which is pared down to a minimum.  (Encores! artistic director Jack Viertel does the book adaptations.)  The actors carry scripts and the scenery. lighting, sound, and costumes are simplified, as is the staging.  

The orchestra, usually a full ensemble (High Button Shoes had 27 instruments), is given prominence on stage, not in a pit, often above the actors’ playing area.  This leaves a relatively narrow strip for action and especially, dancing—though the choreography is always conceived to reflect the standards of Broadway, just in a confined area.  The current Encores! season is February through May every year and each show runs five performances from Wednesday through Sunday; Encores! presents three concerts a season.  In 2000, Encores! won a Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre.

First-tier actors and singers, as well as directors and designers, are hired for the productions—some of which have been transferred to commercial runs on Broadway (the current production of Chicago, which was presented in concert in May 1996 and then opened at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in November and is still running after 9347 performances as of 12 May, is the most prominent example).  

The concerts have proved an excellent way to see—and hear—some of Broadway’s less-well known musicals, some going back to the earliest decades of the American musical (No, No, Nanette, 1925, the oldest produced, and Strike up the Band, 1927, for example).  Encores! has been a feature of City Center since 1994, and Jack Viertel, the Encores! artistic director, has led the program since 2000, and Rob Berman (who also conducted the Encores! Orchestra for High Button Shoes) has been musical director since 2008.

It’s 1913 and con man Harrison Floy (Michael Urie) and his shill Pierre Pontdue (Kevin Chamberlin) have made a living hustling “genuine Pantagonian diamonds,” knock-off watches, and other frauds in cities like Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—real snake-oil salesmen.  They hang around just long enough to be chased out of town by the cops (“He Tried Make a Dollar”). 

They skip to the next town until they literally run out of safe places to go—until Floy remembers time spent in New Brunswick, New Jersey, years ago . . . and off they go to the town on the banks of the Raritan (where yours truly went to grad school!).  Floy sets up a real-estate scam, selling lots for future McMansions on New Brunswick’s undeveloped outskirts in  a development called Longstreetville.  (He also sells a couple of Model T’s at a promotional discount as the personal representative of Henry—that’s Ford, of course.  The cast all sing the delightful “There’s Nothing Like a Model T” while driving about the stage in a model . . . ummm Model T!  It’s a hoot.)  

The upstanding Longstreet family (yes, they’re named for the novel’s author; 11-year-old Stevie Longstreet, played here by peppy young Aidan Alberto, is Stephen Longstreet as a child), consisting of Mama (Betsy Wolfe), Papa (Chester Gregory), Mama’s younger sister, Fran (Carla Duren), and her college boyfriend Oggle (Marc Koeck), are the central targets of Floy’s land con.  

After the scam is revealed, Floy and Pontdue try to escape to Atlantic City with their ill-gotten booty (or, as Hawkeye Pierce says in a 1972 episode of M*A*S*H, “his ill-booten gotty”) and also take Fran—who’s become romantically attracted to Floy—with them.  As the con men flee to the Atlantic City beach while carrying a satchel full of stolen money, the beach-goers dance around them in “The Bathing Beauty Ballet,” staged before a row of cabañas.  Among the crowd are bathing beauties, lifeguards, other criminals, identical twins—and a gorilla.  

When the folks from New Brunswick arrive in AC (little Stevie overheard Floy and Pontdue’s plans and ratted them out), they get the police to go after the flam-flam team and there’s a wonderful chase à la the Keystone Cops right out of a Mack Sennett silent comedy!  (This is “Bathing Beauty Ballet,” one of two dances for which choreographer O’Gleby has recreated Robbins’s original choreography.  The other is “I Still Get Jealous,” a soft-shoe with Mama and Papa Longstreet.)

Meanwhile, Floy has entrusted the bag of loot to Pontdue and instructed him to put it all on Princeton in the big football game against Rutgers—which hasn’t won the annual rivalry in years.  Oggle is, of course, the star player on the Rutgers team and Floy tries to distract him and his Scarlet Knights teammates by advising them that “Nobody Ever Died for Dear Old Rutgers.”  Nonetheless, Big Red wins and Floy has lost everything.  

Until, that is, after he’s captured by the police and learns that Pontdue had bet not on the Princeton football team . . . but a filly named Princeton.  Floy gives the swindled citizens their money back, but before he leaves, he tries to sell the audience one more item of “great worth.”

In Rando’s staging for Encores!, the whole thing was a terrific time in the theater.  I can’t for the life of me see why the play’s never been remounted in New York City in the 70 years since it closed.  It’s not like the only plays revived successfully in New York have been meaningful, significant dramas—a lot of nonsense has been brought back and done well.  High Button Shoes is such fun, I can’t but believe it could be made into a hit—especially with some  really good choreography (there are lots of dance numbers).  The Times’ Ben Brantley said the songs aren’t memorable—and maybe they’re not, but they’re delightful and up-beat and can easily be performed and staged to great entertainment effect!

(There’s one possible dramaturgical fault, but it shouldn’t be a problem with a bit of fluff like this.  There’s no real romance involving the central character, Harrison Floy, and any of the women.  Mama Longstreet obviously has a little thing for the con artist, but it doesn’t lead to anything—the play’s too innocent for an extramarital affair.  Fran is attracted to Floy—and he strings her along for the sake of his land scheme, making her treasurer because the townspeople he’s fleecing trust her—but it’s hardly a real musical comedy romance.  The love match in High Button Shoes is between Fran and Oggle—and they do pair up in the end—but he’s a secondary character in the plot.  The best love song in the score, incidentally, is “I Still Get Jealous,” a duet between Mama and Papa Longstreet.

(The reason for this apparent oversight, by the way, is that in the original book for the musical, Floy isn’t the central figure.  When Phil Silvers got the role, his part was enlarged and the play’s perspective was shifted so that Floy became the main character.  That’s what Abbott was rewriting for—and Silvers had a hand in the revision as well.  But in the end, this deficiency doesn’t really have an effect on the farcical fun High Button Shoes provides.)

The acting in the City Center production of High Button Shoes was perfect for what the play is.  I swear Michael Urie (whom I saw do a wonderful physical comedy turn in the Red Bull Theater’s 2017 mounting of Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector—see my report for Rick On Theater on 12 June 2017) was channeling Silvers (whom Urie’s really too young to know); he even found Silvers’s black-framed eyeglasses somewhere.  

Urie sings more than passably and can hoof enough to get by, but when it comes to verbal and physical humor, he’s no second banana.  He had less physical comedy here than in the Gogol, but when he and Chamberlin got going in their flam-flam routines and other two-hand scenes, you’d think they were old hands at playing off one another.  (The Encores! concerts have very little rehearsal time, so this kind of work must have come naturally to both actors.  Kudos to them both!) 

The rest of the company was fine, but the real stars of Encores! High Button Shoes were Sarah O’Gleby’s charming and spritely dances and the cast’s rendering of Hugh Martin’s vocal arrangements.  I also have to compliment Allen Moyer on his designs for the Atlantic City beach scenes in act two; the surf and the cabañas were wonderfully depicted—and the cut-out Model T, which came early in act one so that it set a marvelous tone for the rest of the show, was a terrific sight gag.

The press coverage of the concert was small.  Show-Score tallied just 15 published reviews as of 17 May, and the average score was only 56.  The highest score was 75 for Theater Reviews From My Seat, followed by two 70’s (Broadway World and New York Stage Review); the lowest-rated reviews were five 45’s, including amNew York, TheaterMania, Talkin’ Broadway, and New York Theatre Guide.  Twenty percent of the notices were positive, 47% were mixed, and 33% were negative.  My survey will include 10 reviews.

In a review entitled “Skip this clunky musical revival” in amNew York, Matt Windman characterized the Encores! production as “lumbering and tiring,” proving why, he asserted, High Button Shoes “is hardly ever performed nowadays.”  Windman does add that High Button Shoes does have “a madcap vaudeville spirit running through it” (and “may be the only musical ever set in New Brunswick, New Jersey”), but he argued, “Much of the plotting is clunky and outright baffling, and the so-so score lacks any songs that are well-remembered today.” 

The amNY reviewer, whose notice received one of Show-Score’s low-score 45’s, determined that the Encores! revival “suggests that without an ace comedian like Silvers, ‘High Button Shoes’ lacks the substance to justify a professional revival . . . .  Then again, with more inspiration and better comic ingenuity, ‘High Button Shoes’ might have at least been more fun.”  He reported that Urie “appears to be impersonating Silvers’ antic disposition the entire time” and the “actors playing the local community’s straight-laced characters . . . seem ill at ease and unsure whether to approach the material from a standpoint of sincerity or satire.” 

Obviously, from what I’ve already said, I don’t agree with Windman’s conclusions, but Ben Brantley was cool on the show as well, his New York Times review scoring only 55 on the survey website.  He suggested that theatergoers looking for “a revival that lets a cheerful old American musical remain its cheerful old self, with any inner darkness undisclosed” might be happy with High Button Shoes, which he labeled “a nearly forgotten frolic” with “the approximate fizz and flavor of a vanilla egg cream.”  Brantley condensed the theatrical experience as summoning “the high jinks of vaudeville, burlesque and peppy college-themed fare of yore.”  “That’s not an assessment to make the heart beat faster,” wrote the Timesman, and “the charms of this ‘Shoes’ are of a hazy strain.” 

Brantley summed the “entire production” up as seeming “to take place under a double glaze of nostalgia—of remembering a more innocent time’s remembrance of a more innocent time.”  The review-writer added that “the production creates a bright, daytime world in which sunshine comes in shades of ice-cream parlor pastels,” praising the work of set designer Moyer, costumer Hould-Ward, and lighting designer Billington.  

Though saying that Urie “offers a bright, tooth-flashing facsimile of the Silvers grin here” and “has the rim-shot-inspiring vaudeville delivery down cold [while] he remains as Gumby-like as ever,” Brantley continued, “It must be said that he has only a touch-and-go relationship with a melody line” and “he lacks the streak of shiny malice that gave an edge to Silvers’s clowning.”  The reviewer’s final assessment was, “Mr. Urie gives a characteristically skillful performance, but it feels pasted on.” 

Aside from “Bathing Beauty Ballet,” Bratley asserted, “none of the musical numbers land with the impact that makes audiences clap their hands raw.”  He went on to adjudge that the “music is genially, forgettably melodic” and that “score for ‘Shoes’ is rendered here with a swoony lushness by the wonderful Encores! orchestra.”  Brantley concluded, however, that “it seems to evaporate even as you listen.  Like the production as a whole, it somehow reminds you of a generic host of golden-age musicals without ever staking a claim to its own unassailable identity.”

In the New York Observer, Robert Gottlieb dubbed Encores! High Button Shoes “pretty terrible” and a “mess” except for a few highlights.  Gottlieb said the first act was “endless” and had “no coherence, no charm, and lots of puerile jokes.”  The Observer reviewer continued: “The Jule Styne-Sammy Cahn score is derivative and second-rate.  The Encores! performances were efficiently shticky,” with the exception of Kevin Chamberlin, who alone was “three dimensional.”  “As for the Bathing Beauty Ballet itself,” the one dance number Gottlieb liked, “it lived up to its huge reputation, even though the stage of the City Center was too small for it: it looked reduced.”

TheaterMania’s David Gordon, in another notice that scored only 45, pronounced, “The only reason to see” the Encores! High Button Shoes was the “Bathing Beauty Ballet,” which the review-writer labeled “10 or so fleeting minutes of heaven.”  “Until that moment,” observed Gordon, “John Rando's production of this 1947 tuner lurches from tepid to tiresome: an assortment of enthusiastic actors lost in a sea of passé jokes and just-OK songs.”  The TM reviewer declared, “I'd . . . encourage Encores! to just present this sequence and cut the rest of the show.” 

Despite praise for Moyer’s sets, Hould-Ward’s costumes, Billington’s lighting, Berman’s musical direction, and Lang’s orchestrations as “traditionally superb,” Gordon reported that “Rando’s staging is, in a word, rudderless.”  The reviewer asserted, “The production just isn’t ready for prime time, and that extends to the actors.”  He explained, “The jokes land with a thud, the pacing is lugubrious, and the whole thing has a very strange aura of melancholy about it.” 

On Theater Reviews From My Seat, the lone 75 in Show-Score’s round-up, Joe Lombardi described High Button Shoes as “Broadway musical comedy filtered through a vaudeville lens.  Slapstick humor given a burlesque styling.”  He continued, “Some of the comedy is silly and dated but I still chuckled” and added, “The humor verges on titillatingly naughty.”  Lombardi reminded us, “The big reason to revisit High Button Shoes, however, is for the choreography of the ‘Bathing Beauty Ballet.’” 

The Theater Reviews writer pointed out, “There are some very good songs including the forgotten hit, ‘Papa, Won’t You Dance With Me?’” (a pop hit for the late Doris Day), but demurred that “I find it hard to make an argument for High Button Shoes as a great musical.”  The review-writer concluded, “If you care to take a swim in musical theater history where football and vaudeville could amusingly coexist on stage, High Button Shoes is worth the plunge.”

Michael Dale of Broadway World (a 70 on Show-Score) acknowledged that High Button Shoes “is not exactly a forgotten gem,” but it’s still “a worthy selection for Encores! to explore” as “a great example of the type of star vehicle shows that remained popular on post-OKLAHOMA! Broadway.”  Then Dale asserted that “the main reason for Encores! to bring back the smash hit 1947 musical comedy” was the “Bathing Beauty Ballet,” that “madcap mayhem of the Mack Sennett-inspired” display of “crazy cacophony of choreographic chaos.”  The reviewer reported that “the talented company of dancing comedians brings down the house.” 

Except for “I Still Get Jealous” and “Papa, Won’t You Dance with Me,” Dale noted, the “rest is a pleasant, though not especially distinguished collection of generic ballads and novelty numbers.”  Dale also found that Urie’s channeling of Silvers “didn't seem a comfortable fit,” but acknowledged that with Encores! short rehearsal schedule, the opening-night performance might not have been quite fully baked.

On Theater Pizzazz, Brian Scott Lipton (in another 55-rated review) pointed out that “our tastes in musicals have evolved so much over the past 70 years, it can be a little hard to understand why this 1947 romp ran for nearly two years.  Still,” he continued, “that’s not to say there aren’t enough enjoyable moments in John Rando’s production to merit a visit if you keep your expectations in check.”  The songs, with the exceptions of the two numbers mentioned already, is “less-than stellar . . . made to sound a bit better than they are by Rob Berman and the Encores! orchestra.”  Lipton concluded, “In the long run, ‘High Button Shoes’ won’t go down as a high mark in the history of musical theater—or even Encores! presentations–-but I was happy to have a chance to see it.”

Talkin’ Broadway’s Howard Miller proclaimed, “High Button Shoes . . . has not withstood the test of time in the seven decades since its initial run, at least not by the evidence of the deflated Encores! production.”   Like other reviewers, Miller found that “Urie does his best here to sell us in the same manner, but despite all the charm he can muster, Silvers’ checkered suit simply does not fit his shoulders.”  The plot, said the TB reviewer, “makes little sense” and “[u]nder John Rando’s direction, almost every flaw is emphasized, while the show’s strengths (and there definitely are some) are downplayed.” 

Except for “Bathing Beauty Ballet,” asserted Miller, whose notice also scored the low 45, “the dancing . . . is a mishmash of styles.”  The reviewer felt, “There are some very good songs scattered here and there, including ‘Can’t You Just See Yourself in Love with Me?’ and ‘You’re My Girl’ . . . .  But neither the toe-tapping ‘Papa, Won't You Dance With Me?’ nor the appealing soft shoe tune ‘I Still Get Jealous’ . . . manage to soar.”  With the exception of Marc Koeck (Oggle) and Carla Duren (Fran) and Betsy Wolfe (Mama) and Chester Gregory (Papa), the “rest of the cast try to rev things up with lots of frenzied mugging, but snake oil is still snake oil, no matter how you package it.”

Austin Yang of New York Theatre Guide, who rated yet another low of 45, explained the Encores! “formula”: “ A gossamer-thin plot, a charming but forgettable score, and dialogue that may fail to land even with New York City Center’s chief demographic of the affluent, elderly, and Caucasian.”  (Yang must not have seen some of the concerts I have.  Several have been quite substantial.)  “High Button Shoes is this formula at its most underwhelming,” he affirmed.  The NYTG reviewer found that “with no timeless standards, the score falls flat, and even at its best with the upbeat ‘Papa, Won’t You Dance With Me[,]’ . . . it comes off as silly and dated.”  Yang asserted, “The lifeline of the show, in classic Encores! tradition, is its dance.” 

On New York Stage Review, one of the 70’s on Show-Score, Steven Suskin declared that “until the start of act two,” High Button Shoes “is revealed to be what we’ve always been told: not much of a musical.”  The moment of the turn-around is, of course, the “Bathing Beauty Ballet” when “the audience is whipped into a frenzy of musical-comedy delight.”  It was Suskin’s opinion that “[m]any in the audience at City Center, in fact, would probably have preferred that they run the ‘Bathing Beauty Ballet’ three times . . . .”  His description of the play was a “ragtag, pasted-together, decidedly non-ambitious, old-fashioned affair.” 

On top of deficiencies in the book, the dances, the songs, and the supporting cast, Suskin found that “the current staging . . . falls flattest . . . in the star performance. . . .  Michael Urie . . .  is an impressive comic actor, and does adequately in the role; but he is not a low-comedy clown, and the Silvers gibes . . . don’t land.”  The NYSR writer went on:  “Without a strong star performance, all that’s left in this High Button Shoes is the ‘Bathing Beauty Ballet.’  And that’s not enough to support the evening.”  The reviewer did have one superior compliment to express as a final comment: “The music, at least, is impeccably handled.  Rob Berman leads the Encores orchestra with such flair that during the rambunctious overture the show sounds like a hit. But not for long.”

[Steven Suskin’s remark about the overture reminds me of a comment I made to Diana as we were leaving the theater after the show: I miss the traditional overture before the performance—and even after the intermission.  I’m sure there’s a reason it’s mostly disappeared from musical theater, that composition of snippets from the show’s score, but I’d forgotten how it sets us up for the musical play we’re about to see.  It puts me in the mood for what’s coming, it draws me into the world of the play before the actors, singers, and dancers make their entrances.  At the start of the second half, the second overture reacclimates us to the musical environment from which we’ve taken a real-world break. 

[The overture sets the tone (if you’ll pardon the pun) for the performance by giving us a preview of the style of music we’ll be hearing—and, after all, that’s the foundation of the classic musical.  The dialogue from the book carries the plot line, the story, but the music carries the emotional line, the feelings the play’s meant to generate.  The overture gives us a little taste of that and puts our psyches in the right mode for receptivity.  It primes the pump, if you will.  I miss that, and I’d forgotten how much until Rob Berman and his Encores! Orchestra struck up those first notes at the top of High Button Shoes.  What a little joy that was!]