A revival of Bye Bye Birdie is heading for Broadway. The new version, which stars John Stamos as Albert (the Dick Van Dyke role) and Gina Gershon as Rosie is set to open in mid-October. Bill Irwin has the Paul Lynde part.
Theater folks are buzzing at reports that the producers are dropping a dance number in Act Two — the one where Rosie, out for a wild night on the town, gets chased around by a bunch of Shriners. The number was in the original production with Chita Rivera. It was in the movie with Janet Leigh. It's been in darn near every production since, including some staged by high schools. But now there's apparently the fear that it's socially inappropriate since it is, after all, about a bunch of older men acting like they're about to gang-rape a lady.
There are a couple of ways of looking at this kind of thing. One is that it's wrong for any producers of anything to get too worried about offending those who might be offended, especially when there's little or no empirical evidence that anyone ever has been offended by whatever it is. A lot of things that never would have bothered anyone — or at least, anyone rational — have been pointlessly changed or omitted because of bad guessing in this category. It's one of those kinds of predictions that's nearly always wrong.
You can also say that there's a duty to the original authors and to history to perform a piece as written. I'm less impressed by this argument as it pertains to something like Bye Bye Birdie. Some creative works feel sacrosanct and others are practically begging to be revised and updated so as to remain successful. I think this one's in the latter category.
Matter of fact, I think Bye Bye Birdie has a great premise and a great score and a really, really stupid book. When they did the movie, screenwriter Irving Brecher rearranged a lot of things, including the insertion of a Disneyesque bit about a hyper-kinetic tortoise and drugging a Russian conductor so that he conducted a ballet at breakneck speed. It was inane stuff but it wasn't any worse than what he was trying to fix, and it may have been an improvement.
This is the first-ever Broadway revival of the show. If they're going to be utterly faithful to the original book, it will be the last, because the whole thing needs a major overhaul. If in the process the Shriners Ballet gets tossed, fine. While one never likes to see the "let's not offend too-sensitive people" mentality prevail, the more important question is whether the storyline works. If it doesn't, then it doesn't matter if that one number is in or out. If the show does work, and it works without it, okay. What I'm getting at is that I think anyone who sets out to revive Bye Bye Birdie has bigger problems than that one number.