Hard times called for a harder, more cutting approach. Designers such as Theoni V. Models and performers ranging from the incomparable Donna Jordan to Viva and Jackie Curtis shaved off their eyebrows and made urban, Deco-shiny masks of their sardonic faces. He was born rich.
A native of Peru, Indiana, he was the only child of Kate Porter, a strong-willed, music-loving woman, who had been greatly indulged by her wealthy father, J. Cole, and he was spoiled, body and soul. In addition to coaching him on violin, she supported his desire to be a composer; Cole had written his first operetta by the age of ten.
But Grandfather held the purse strings, and he wanted Cole to be a lawyer. He was accepted at Harvard Law School in , but even the dean smelled a rat, and suggested that his precocious student study harmony and counterpoint instead. His sharpest lines are like strings of bright-colored flags strung across the deck of a long white ship; you want to grab them as they sail by.
The original book, by Guy Bolton and P. Here Porter proves that he knows how to balance his cleverness and his sophistication with real emotion. Sutton Foster does, too. Soon after the curtain rises, we meet Reno Sweeney. She enters a bar; a man she likes is sitting there, a young Wall Street guy named Billy Crocker perfectly played by Colin Donnell. Porter believes what he says, even at his most overheated.
His first Reno was the abrasive and indomitable Ethel Merman. As a gay artist, married to a woman and working in a popular medium in an intolerant world, Porter often spoke of his own desireโto be bossed around, if not controlled outrightโthrough the tropes of female desire. Reno is a mover, an entertainer, and so is Foster; she knows exactly when to fling her long limbs about and when to stand perfectly still. And yet she has something even rarer than talent: humility. Marshall has kept things modest.
