Gliding through history on a song
Theater Review | 3 out of 5 stars

By Michelle Beehler
Tuffs Daily
October 20, 2009

Courtesy of Eric Antoniou
'A Long and Winding Road' uses projected images as the backdrop to monologues.

Bob Dylan. Joni Mitchell. The Beatles. James Taylor. Simon andGarfunkel. What do these artists have in common? Right now it's the Huntington Theatre Company's production "A Long and Winding Road," an autobiographical tribute to Grammy Award-nominated singer and actress Maureen McGovern. McGovern's voice is the strong and stirring vessel through which this captivating performance celebrates and pays respect to the musicians and music that defined a generation.

McGovern and Philip Himberg were the joint conceivers and writers of "A Long and Winding Road," a production that has no ordinary narrative. The play uses popular and well-loved songs to recall important moments, funny memories and traumatic events that occurred throughout McGovern's life. The result is a musical scrapbook that McGovern shares and sings wholeheartedly, and that the audience hears and appreciates.

The music, which McGovern strings together and breaks up with comedic anecdotes and personal short stories, is the attraction for this show. Each song is symbolic, and when McGovern sings, specific memories are effortlessly evoked. The songs and stories distributed throughout the performance are a reminder that the production is not only a memorial to great music, but also a commemoration of a great life -- and one that continues with gumption.
Parsing the mixture of songs and memories is like solving a puzzle -- one that McGovern helps to solve with her own personal history, but that audience members can solve for themselves on an individual level. From World War II to John F. Kennedy's assassination to the Vietnam War, the decades that make up McGovern's life are momentous historically as well as musically. Broader associations and historical context make the show a shared walk down memory lane for McGovern and the audience, more like a conversation with an old friend than a self-indulgent monologue.

McGovern's voice remains impressive at age 60, as she continues to belt out lyrics from Carole King's "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" and The Beatles' "Rocky Raccoon" with confidence. Also on stage is Jeffrey Harris on piano, whose playing nicely complements McGovern's voice and presence and who provides small moments of comedy. Though he could be easily forgotten on the side of the stage, Harris makes a few jokes to help remind the audience that he is there, and his humor is refreshing in an otherwise McGovern-dominated performance.

The set is the only element lacking in "A Long and Winding Road." While the curtains and tapestry on the piano are appropriately simple and elegant, they are also vaguely reminiscent of a lounge -- an environment that doesn't seem to fit revolutionary music from the '60s, '70s and '80s. The curtained background also creates an uneven surface for the photo and video projections displayed throughout the performance, making it difficult to read some of the slides shown.

McGovern is perhaps best known for her Oscar-winning recordings of "The Morning After" and "We May Never Love Like this Again," which garnered fame in the 1970s from their use in the classic disaster films "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972) and "The Towering Inferno" (1974), respectively -- earning her the nickname "Maureen the Disaster Queen." McGovern's diverse career also includes appearances in "Little Women: The Musical" (2005) and "The Pirates of Penzance" (1981), and a cameo as the singing, guitar-playing nun in the film "Airplane!" (1980).

"A Long and Winding Road" is showing Oct. 9 through Nov. 15 at the Virginia Wimberly Theatre, Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts. Student rush tickets are $15 and are available two hours before the performance

The Huntington Theatre Company continues its 28th season - a season of American Stories - with Grammy Award winner, Broadway star, and pop icon Maureen McGovern's world premiere musical memoir A Long and Winding Road, conceived and written by Philip Himberg and Maureen McGovern and presented in cooperation with Arena Stage. Chronicling the moments that define the Baby Boomer Generation, Ms. McGovern returns to her roots as a folk singer as she performs the classic songs The New York Times has dubbed "the second half of the Great American Songbook." Sundance Institute Producing Artistic Director Philip Himberg directs; Jeffrey Harris provides musical direction and accompaniment.

A Long and Winding Road revisits the hope-filled years of the 1960s, the tumultuous era of Vietnam, Watergate, the Civil Rights movement, the AIDS crisis, and on to today and its hope of a better tomorrow. It includes beloved music by Bob Dylan ("The Times, They Are a-Changin'"), Carole King ("You've Got a Friend"), The Beatles ("Let it Be"), Joni Mitchell ("All I Want," Paul Simon ("America"), Laura Nyro ("And When I Die"), and many more.
Maureen McGovern's (Performer, Conceiver, Writer) almost 40-year career includes Grammy Award nominations for "Best New Artist" and "Best Traditional Pop Vocal," a Grammy Award for "Best Musical Recording for Children" for her participation in "Songs from the Neighborhood: The Music of Mister Rogers," and the Academy Award-winning Gold Records "The Morning After" (Billboard #1) and "We May Never Love Like This Again." Her PS Classics release A Long and Winding Road was praised by The New York Times as "a captivating musical scrapbook from the 1960s to the early '70s. Ms. McGovern is blessed with a vocal technique second to none." Other critically acclaimed musical tributes include her Gershwin, Arlen, Rodgers, Marilyn and Alan Bergman CDs and more.

On Broadway, Ms. McGovern appeared in Little Women, The Musical, creating the role of Marmee, for which she was nominated for a 2005 Drama Desk Award, The Pirates of Penzance, Nine, 3 Penny Opera, and the recent national tours of Little Women, The Musical and The King and I. Off Broadway, she appeared in Brownstone, originating the role of Mary. Regionally, she has performed in Maureen McGovern: A Long and Winding Road (world premiere at Arena Stage, presented in cooperation with the Huntington), Elegies, Dear World, Letters From 'Nam (originating the role of Eleanor Bridges, at the North Shore Music Theatre), The Lion in Winter, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Of Thee I Sing, Let 'Em Eat Cake, The Sound of Music, South Pacific, Guys & Dolls, I Do, I Do, and The Bengal Tiger's Ball (composed the music, co-created, and starred). She also appeared in The Towering Inferno and as the guitar-strumming nun in the film Airplane!, and lent her voIce To DreamWorks' animated feature Joseph: King of Dreams.

The Huntington's season of American stories is the first in the Company's 28-year history comprised entirely of shows by American writers. The plays of the season relate to one another through stories of opportunities lost and found, of intergenerational struggles and successes, and of the most intimate and meaningful relationships. Drawn from some of the best writing the country has to offer, the Huntington will engage its audience in a season-long conversation about issues of race, class, values, and a shared American experience.

Broadway World

Stage Photos by Eric Antoniou

In the slide show above, Maureen McGovern discusses the inspiration that brought her to A Long and Winding Road.

"It was 1969, and by God, we were determined to change the world."
Maureen McGovern is best known for her Billboard-topping hit "The Morning After," the theme song from The Poseidon Adventure, which catapulted her to stardom and landed her an Academy Award.

But before she became America's "disaster theme queen," the strawberry blonde from Youngstown, Ohio, was singing tunes composed by folk icons Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Judy Collins. "It was a very exciting and volatile time," McGovern recalls. "Amidst the Vietnam War, there were these remarkable songwriters singing incredible songs of peace, hope, and justice."

McGovern revisits the songs of that era in her one-woman show A Long and Winding Road, the current production of the Huntington Theatre Company. Part memoir, part concert, the play is a musical scrapbook chronicling the singer's recollections from four decades: the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the Kent State University shootings, the AIDS crisis. "I've always been a storyteller through song," McGovern says, "so recounting the story of my own long and winding road through the music of my youth wasn't such a stretch."

Although some may dismiss A Long and Winding Road as "just another Boomer show," director Philip Himberg, who cowrote the script with McGovern, maintains that audiences of all generations will relate. "It's less of a 'me' and more of an 'our' story," he says. "It's the universal tale of a woman finding her personal and artistic voice during a time of tremendous uncertainty."

McGovern believes that the songs she weaves through the narrative -- among them Paul Simon's "America," Mitchell's "The Circle Game," and Pete Seeger's "If I Had a Hammer" -- are still relevant. "In many ways, 1969 and 2009 parallel each other," she says. "Dylan's 'The Times They Are a-Changin' ' could have been written yesterday."

The melodies may be mellow, but there's an underlying sense of urgency. "Time is precious," McGovern says, "and 'someday' is not in my vocabulary. The time to act is now. Raise your voice, raise your fist, and pass along the torch to the next generation."

A Long and Winding Road runs at the Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) Calderwood Pavilion, 527 Tremont St., Boston, through Sunday, November 15. Tickets range from $20 to $82.50 and may be purchased online, by phone at 617-266-0800, in person at the BU Theatre box office, 264 Huntington Ave., or at the BCA box office. Patrons 35 and younger may purchase $25 tickets (ID required), and there is a $5 discount for seniors and military personnel. Student rush tickets are available for $15 at the box office two hours before each performance, and members of the BU community get $10 off (ID required). Members of the BU community are eligible for a special subscription rate. Call 617-266-0800 for more information.
Vicky Waltz can be reached at vwaltz@bu.edu.

By Christopher Muther, Globe Staff | October 11, 2009
boston globe/boston.com

If a disaster took place on celluloid in the early 1970s, it seemed that Maureen McGovern was there and ready to offer comfort with a song. Best known for her blandly optimistic No. 1 hit "The Morning After," theme for "The Poseidon Adventure," McGovern quickly became known as the "Disaster Theme Queen" when she scored more hits with songs from "The Towering Inferno" and the British mine-flood action film "Gold." She even scored a hit with the theme for an unintentional disaster - a flop TV show called "Angie."

But through the skyscraper fires and the watery Shelley Winters heroics, McGovern says her heart wasn't entirely invested in singing big '70s anthems that swelled with heavy orchestration and syrupy lyrics. Though they were worldwide hits, they didn't satisfy her artistically, and she always longed to return to her days as a folk singer. Now, decades later, she's singing the songs she says she has always wanted to perform - works by her personal heroes such as Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Jimmy Webb, and Laura Nyro. McGovern is presenting the world premiere of "A Long and Winding Road," a one-woman show told through the music of the 1960s, at the Wimberly Theatre, Boston Center for the Arts, presented by the Huntington Theatre Company.

"I'll obviously be grateful to 'The Morning After' until the day I die, but it was a frustrating time for me because the producers kept picking the songs, the keys, and the orchestration," she says one morning before rehearsal for "Road." "What I wanted was to go back to my folk roots and sing meaningful things."

In fact, at one point in the 1970s, McGovern was so disillusioned with the direction her career was taking, and so broke because of managers who had taken advantage of her business naivete, she dropped out of the music business altogether and went to work as a secretary under an assumed name, she says. It was only when she found a new outlet for her creative energies - Broadway - that she eased herself back into show business.

It is this circuitous path that brought her to "A Long and Winding Road." The production began as an album and a cabaret show in New York, but she has spent the past year turning the song cycle - which follows her life, politics, and career - into a full stage show. It stretches from the idealistic 1960s to the materialism of the 1980s and to a milestone that McGovern faced this year: turning 60.

"We call this a theatrical concert," McGovern says. "So it's not Rodgers and Hammerstein, but it's not strictly a conventional concert. It really has a spine and a story. The songs spring naturally from the dialogue that is taking place. We conceived this ultimately as a one-woman show that takes the '60s generation on a journey with me. My life mirrors theirs in a lot of ways. Every generation has their breaking away from the past, but in the 1960s that was particularly explosive because of the Vietnam war."

McGovern has no shortage of musical stage experience. She took over for Linda Ronstadt in Broadway's "Pirates of Penzance" with Kevin Kline, created the role of Marmee in "Little Women: The Musical" on Broadway, and starred with Sting in a Broadway production of "Threepenny Opera," in addition to touring and playing regionally with "Elegies," "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg," and "The Sound of Music," among other shows. She did not have experience, however, when it came to writing productions for the stage. That's when she turned to Philip Himberg, who serves as co-writer and director of "The Long and Winding Road."

Himberg is the producing artistic director of the Sundance Institute Theatre Program - part of Robert Redford's Sundance empire - which has overseen the development of hit shows such as "Spring Awakening," "Grey Gardens," and "The Light in the Piazza." Himberg met McGovern when he directed her in "Umbrellas of Cherbourg."

"It was her idea to look at her coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s," Himberg says. "The songs that she chose are really the second part of the Great American Songbook. The first time I heard her sing 'The Times They Are A-Changin' I was blown away. I could actually hear the words. It really meant something, and you realize how much resonance those words have."

All involved in "Road" are shying away from labeling it a baby boomer show. Both Himberg and McGovern say they feel any generation can relate to experiencing periods of personal growth and change, no matter what era they happen to take place in. The challenge both faced was first narrowing down the number of songs in the show - McGovern started with a list of hundreds - and then transforming the show from a straightforward cabaret program to a theatrical evening. They first worked on the show in Florida before bringing an early version of it to Washington, D.C.

It was while in Florida that Himberg contacted Peter DuBois, who had recently been named artistic director of the Huntington Theatre. DuBois went to Florida to hear the show in its developmental stage and was immediately impressed. He agreed to add the show to the Huntington's schedule.

"Listening to the songs and to the dialogue, I thought there's really something here," DuBois recalls. "This is like an exploded cabaret. You have Maureen, and you have these arrangements with real drive. The projection designer has created this big theatrical event."

Since that early run in Washington and a few invitation-only performances at the Huntington in March, more than half the story has been rewritten and songs have been added and removed.

"I've had my meltdowns because the contents of the show are highly personal," says McGovern. "I'm singing, and I get to Joni Mitchell's 'Circle Game,' and I started weeping because the words are so incredibly moving. I believe that music really reaches inside you emotionally. We are instantly taken back. We exercise to music to get the heart rate going. We lower the blood pressure with music. It's just a very strong, profound vehicle. Telling a story through songs makes it just that much more powerful."

Christopher Muther can be reached at muther@globe.com

Mad about McGovern

Who knew '70s siren Maureen McGovern was such a draw? The singer, who had a No. 1 hit with her milquetoast movie theme "The Morning After," is doing brisk box-office business with "A Long and Winding Road," a one-woman show that's set to open at the Wimberly Theatre, Boston Center for the Arts. We're told "A Long and Winding Road" has the largest pre-sale of any show presented by the Huntington Theatre Company at the BCA...

boston.com / A&E / celebrity news

The Times
May 21, 2009
London, England

Maureen McGovern /... Pizza on the Park, SW1 / Bellamy's, W1

Clive Davis

Readers old enough to have endured the golden age of disaster movies may recall that Maureen McGovern had a No 1 hit with The Morning After, from The Poseidon Adventure and sang the Oscar-winning theme to The Towering Inferno. She also played the guitar-toting nun in that magnificent parody Airplane! before becoming a sleek cabaret performer who was sometimes a little too eager to display her multi-octave talents.

After a long absence, she has returned to London with a show -- part of the American Songbook season -- in which she courts listeners with controlled displays of emotion rather than grandstanding high notes. It is a feast for baby-boomers, McGovern celebrating the era of Simon & Garfunkel, Lennon & McCartney and Joni Mitchell. Now approaching her 60th birthday, the singer has aged gracefully. Her voice is warmer and darker, and she weaves songs into a gently self-mocking study of her generation's hopes and dreams.

Her musical director Jeff Harris supplies subtle accompaniment. McGovern's enunciation is so pure that you sometimes catch phrases that are indistinct on the original recordings. She is at her most vulnerable on Carole King's Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?, while her anguished treatment of Jimmy Webb's The Moon's a Harsh Mistress is a tour de force. John Lennon's Imagine was too obvious and sentimental a choice, but McGovern had great fun revisiting her Catholic schooling with the help of Tom Lehrer's Vatican Rag.

The Stage Reviews
21 May 2009
London, England

"There's got to be a morning after," Maureen McGovern once sang in the 1973 Oscar--winning theme tune to The Poseidon Adventure. And more than 35 years later, the one-time 'disaster theme queen', as she was dubbed, is back again, radiant and resplendent under a canopy of flame-coloured hair, still holding on through the night.

And what a night. She may have taken, as the title song of her new album and cabaret set has it, a long and winding road to bring her back to Pizza on the Park for the first time in more than 15 years, but it has been one both well travelled and worth a detour to visit yourself. Just as vintage wine improves with age, so McGovern - always possessed of one of the most technically proficient and lovely voices in cabaret - has matured with a new darker, mellower quality to her sound that resonates more beautifully than ever.

The last time she was here in the early nineties, her programme centred around Gershwin and her magnificent 1990 album Naughty Baby. Now there's not a showtune in sight, as she visits a repertoire of classic pop songs by Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Lennon and McCartney, Jimmy Webb and Carole King, amongst others.

That both expands the reach of the American Songbook (under whose umbrella this season is presented) and also allows her to find different emotional colours to paint with. There's a liltingly haunting version of Mitchell's The Circle Game that finds her "captive on a carousel of time", and could sum up the place where she finds herself and we now find her: "We can't return/we can only look behind from where we came/and go round and round and round on the circle again."

Now cheerfully admitting to 59, she is entering a new phase of life that sees her at the height of her vocal powers - she doesn't just sound beautiful, but she is connecting to the lyrics as never before. There's a similarly wistful spirit of enquiry to her wondrous version of King's Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? Yes, and for years to come, I hope.

As accompanied by Jeff Harris, who also provides the gorgeous, movingly effective arrangements, this is the classiest cabaret London has seen for some time. It was also, incidentally, one of the poorest attended I've been to -- on the second night, there were just 19 of us there when the show started. But if there's any justice, it should be full for the rest of the run.

The Arena Stage Blog
I'll Give You Something to Cry ...
March 23 , 2009

Where Were You When...?

by David Dower

I'm back in DC after the final presentation of Maureen McGovern's Long and Winding Road workshop at the Huntington in Boston. The performance on Saturday night was a surprising finish to a great three weeks of development. As I've written here, the show has an alchemical capacity to sneak up on you, particularly if you are of the Baby Boomer generation as I am. About half an hour in, the show directs our attention to Martin Luther King (Carry It On) and then to John F. Kennedy---- two indelible moments of tragedy in our lifespan (we Boomers and our parents, that is) which are so seared we remember exactly where we were when we first heard.

She then makes a surprising personal connection to another tragedy which followed closely but has receded behind so many others of that era. As she asks, "How could we possibly know what was to come?", a photo of a high school classmate appears. And then she gently reminds us why this person is familiar. I won't tease---- it is a photo of Sandy Scheuer.(Sorry, you'll have to look that one up yourself, or just come see the show!) There have been, at every public presentation of the piece so far, gasps of recognition but on Saturday, the gasps were followed by a period of weeping that swept the theater as Maureen sang Let It Be. I couldn't tell from my seat, but I think it got Maureen as well. And it kept going 'round the audience as song after song triggered deep emotional memories of this generation. See this show with someone you shared this era with.

The evening has an equal share of comic high points as well. She's got a gift for self--deprecating humor that connects us. On Friday night she began her "Nantucket" story, which starts with "In my mid--forties I was on Nantucket, nursing a broken heart..." and a woman in the front row said, gently "Weren't we all, honey. Weren't we all." The audience and Maureen cracked up as one. Of course, this was Boston. Is there a DC equivalent to the Nantucket cure?

Cabaret singers are extraordinary artists who bring a depth of interpretation and emotion to love songs, Broadway show tunes and "personal" songs, those intimate tunes that break our heart or bring us to the edge of tears. Maureen McGovern is among that rarified group of artists, though her choice of music is unabashedly American. Washington's Arena Stage has collaborated with Boston's Huntington Theatre Company on this production, the latter having recently sponsored a workshop of this show last month. This evening promises to be something quite original ---- an evening with the other American songbook.

A Long and Winding Road is an entertaining and introspective look at the songs that inspired Maureen McGovern before her Academy Award--winning hit song "The Morning After." A nostalgic tribute to Maureen's roots as a folk singer, this theatrically infused concert celebrates her love affair with the early works of James Taylor, Jimmy Webb, Carole King, Bob Dylan, Randy Newman and other groundbreaking singer--songwriters from her youth. The repertoire includes an eclectic selection of iconoclastic singer--songwriter material including "The Circle Game,""Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" "The Moon's a Harsh Mistress," "Imagine," "Fire and Rain" and many others.

Co--conceived and written by McGovern and director Philip Himberg, with musical direction by Jeffrey D. Harris and production design by Clifton Taylor, A Long and Winding Road runs March 27 ---- April 12, 2009 at Arena Stage in Crystal City.

"At this time in my life, looking back, what interested me most were those introspective singer/songwriters who influenced my musical coming of age on the way to 'The Morning After,'" says McGovern. "I started out as a folk singer in the late '60s, so it was an emotional journey for me to go back and explore this particular section of my musical influences. The concert takes us on a vivid journey back to a time when everything was possible and people set out to change the world."

Arena's Artistic Director Molly Smith observes, "Maureen McGovern has the kind of voice you never forget. In this intimate show, she shares her personal perspective on her years growing up and into her talent. These songs and stories take us back to a time many will remember dearly, and it's a true pleasure to share an evening with her."

Tickets may be purchased online, by phone at (202) 488--3300 or at the Arena Stage Sales Office at 1800 S. Bell Street, Arlington, VA 22202.