February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The show will continue at the theater on West 22nd Street through a closing date of Sept. 12, just 11 days before Mickey Rooney’s 85th birthday.
Actually, O’Reilly, the Irish Rep’s co-founder and producing director, was combing the Internet in a search for a celebrity who might be interested in hosting the organization’s annual benefit evening, which took place, in the end, without benefit of a celebrity “name,” this past June 10.
“I noticed that the Rooneys were doing their show around California and I thought it would be terrific to find out if they might be interested in playing New York,” O’Reilly said last week. So, O’Reilly e-mailed Rooney’s Web site.
Interested they were, and East they came, bringing along their three-man musical group, made up of piano, drums and bass. The pianist, Sam Kriger, also functions as the show’s musical director.
“Let’s Put On A Show” will feature a variety of musical numbers and a selection of film clips culled from the diminutive comic’s long and brilliant movie career, which began in 1927 with something called “Orchids and Ermine.” At the time he was 7 years old.
“I know he’ll tell a lot of stories about his experiences in the movies,” O’Reilly said, “and I’m sure the chat will change a lot from evening to evening and performance to performance, depending on the response he gets from the audience.”
Rooney and his wife will perform together and separately, with the comic doing tributes to Judy Garland and to Jimmy Durante, while his partner has a section devoted to the music of the late country singer Patsy Cline.
As for the film clips, they will comprise a brief overview of memorable scenes from such Rooney classics as “National Velvet,” the movie that made a star of Elizabeth Taylor, and certainly from at least one of the musicals in which the comic shared the screen with Judy Garland, perhaps “Babes in Arms,” “Babes on Broadway” or “Girl Crazy.”
Certainly the Andy Hardy films, in which the actor created a kind of idealized American teenager in the years immediately preceding World War II, will be represented. With a little luck, one of the “Boystown” films, in which Rooney co-starred with Spencer Tracy, and maybe even a fragment from director Max Reinhart’s celebrated movie version of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” in which the actor was a truly memorable Puck and James Cagney scored as Bottom, the Weaver, will be sampled.
In 1979, Rooney enjoyed a genuine Broadway triumph when he co-starred with the late Ann Miller in “Sugar Babies,” a kind of loose-limbed “history” of American burlesque, with special emphasis on its classic comedy routines. The show had a long and healthy run, mainly due to the enduring fondness audiences so obviously felt for Rooney and Miller.
Now, and through Sept. 12, they’ll be able to demonstrate that fondness once again, with “Let’s Put On A Show” firmly ensconced on the cozy stage of the Irish Repertory Theatre.