Answer the phone...it's Birdie!

 Finish off your turkey leftovers 

to Bye Bye Birdie,

the opening number: The Telephone Song.
The original cast included Dick Van Dyke, Chita Rivera
(when Eydie Gorme and Carol Haney refused the Rosie role),
Charles Nelson Reilly, Susan Watson, Dick Gautier, Kay Medford,
Paul Lynde, and Michael J. Pollard.
Direction and Choreography was by at-the-time newbie,
Gower Champion.

This original set design: Robert Randolph...

and of course the great music of Charles Strouse

(below)

and lyrics by...

... Lee Adams, below with Patti Karr and Susan Watson

(Susan was the original Kim).
Audiences loved the show and it won Best Musical of 1961,
but the critics were more discerning.
Said Brooks Atkinson of the NYTimes:
"The audience was beside itself with pleasure,
but this department was able to contain itself.
 Bye Bye Birdie is neither fish, fowl, nor good musical comedy.
It needs work."

 We'll also hear Michael Feinstein

with "Long Ago And Far Away,"

a song originally from Cover Girl (1944),

with the music of Jerome Kern/Ira Gershwin...

this selection released by Michael on his

Romance on Film, Romance on Broadway album.

Another luscious Broadway ballad, "What'll I Do?" was written back
in 1923 by Irving Berlin for one of his many Music Box Revues,
and recorded by Judy Holliday

on her Trouble Is A Man recording of 1958.

 Christine Baranski played Tracey Gardner

in Nick & Nora, 1991, a flop of the first degree, unfortunately.
Music: Charles Strouse and Richard Maltby Jr.

As Nick and Nora Charles, Barry Bostwick and Joanna Gleason.
Reviews were brutal:
Cranky, arbitrary, tedious, ham-handed, and club-footed
were just some of the adjectives employed.
71 previews, 9 performances!

We'll hear "Everybody Wants To Do A Musical"(!?!?)

Another dreamy ballad:  "Goodnight My Someone"
from The Music Man,
performed by the marvelous
Jessica Molaskey on her Make Believe release of  2004.

 And adding classical Broadway panache to this week's show,
the My Fair Lady revival of 2018!
The starring foursome:

Norbert Leo Butz, Lauren Ambrose, Diana Rigg, and 

Harry Haden-Paton.

Lauren was dubbed by Jesse Green "a feral and then luminous Eliza,"
Harry is a "wiley", "baffled and petulant" professor,
and Norbert capable of "philosophical dancing!"

Above, Norbert "getting to the church on time",

a number with male can-can dancers,

and below, rehearsing that "Rain In Spain."

At center, Colonel Pickering as portrayed by Allan Corduner.