The Long and Winding Road comes to Boston

By Tiffany Touma
October 15, 2009
The 1960s and 1970s introduced the world to the legendary influences of Bob Dylan and The Beatles, exposed the peaceful heart of the American Hippie, and set our pop culture and our political culture on fire. Maureen McGovern is now 60 years old. The 1960s and 1970s got her out of Ohio and in the direction of a long and winding road. She has brought that journey to the stage in Boston in her one-woman show called “The Long and Winding Road” at the Virginia Wemberly Theatre.
McGovern was beautiful and elegant with a stage presence that dominated the audience’s attention. She portrayed her American story through famous generational songs and funny, but at the same time, poignant anecdotes.
This show should have been a recipe for success. Grammy Award winner Maureen McGovern has won her share of awards like the Grammy, Oscar-winning songs such as “The Morning After,” as well as several Broadway credits including “Little Women,” “The Three Penny Opera,” and “Nine.” She has a singing voice that is absolutely tremendous. The audience member will truly feel not even for her, but with her. Her belt is epic, her range is wildly large, and her ability to switch from intense to submissive is remarkable.
Jeffrey Harris, the musical director, conductor/pianist, and comedy assistant to Ms McGovern, has worked with a variety of performers including Barbara Cook and Audra McDonald, and is a frequent performer with the New York Pops Orchestra. The director of the show is Philip Himberg. He has helped many shows go from local to big-time Broadway including “Spring Awakening” and “The Light in the Piazza.” But as is very realistic of any person’s journey through life, “The Long and Winding Road” is as bumpy as it is beautiful.
Either the creators of this show were very self-aware of the ups and downs that come with life, or they were not sure what this show was meant to be. On the one hand, they give us a beautiful theater worthy of a performer as rare and uninhibited a talent as Maureen McGovern. The audience members are asked to remember their own pasts, and face areas of their collective history such as the Vietnam War, the arrival of The Beatles, the tragic assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and the epidemic of AIDS.
But the organization of the show leads to a certain element of a demise. It starts with a rendition of Bob Dylan’s timeless “The Times They are A’Changin,” but is not followed by any song more original in adaptation. The most poignant of the anecdotes were either told too soon, or not given enough attention. The audience is challenged with pictures of war and our soldiers, but all of this comes in the middle of the show. Anything that comes after simply falls short.
Consistent in her singing ability, McGovern was much less organized in the telling of her story. She never addressed the generational gaps that might cause certain stories and songs to be lost in translation for the general audience member. Plus she jumped from one era to another. One story that could have been beautiful and relatable had she continued with it was the story of her relationship with her father. It was both complicated and heart warming.
A very captivating part of McGovern’s “long and winding road” was her many transitions. In a span of a few years she goes from Ohio bar performer to Oscar-winning pop sensation to an unknown secretary. This sudden and quick fall from fame is a quality of celebrity we can recognize today with our reality show stars, but certainly not with our musicians. Unfortunately she never explains how these transitions occurred.
McGovern is the perfect person to be a part of a series of telling American Stories, because she lived the American Dream. But, we are never let in enough to know how. We understand that her manager was incompetent and dishonest but never learn how someone so famous could be stuck with such a bad business partner. Furthermore, Ms McGovern’s story-telling was not so much story-telling as it was acting, which took away from the intimacy of the theatre and made it more difficult to take her stories as something she really lived. The grandiose deliverance of lines was out of place for what the show was.
Had the creators of the show thought more about audience perspective, sense of order, and proper depth to the character that is Maureen McGovern, the show would have been much more relatable, and would not have felt so long.
That being said, one of the stand out elements of the show, besides McGovern’s stunning and stirring voice, was the lighting designed by Tony Award nominated David Lander. For example, when McGovern is recalling the “free love” spirit of the hippie days, the scenery and curtains are given a tye-dye look that is subtle enough to reinforce the values of a peaceful symbol, but also give the reflection a more mature outlook.
Photo credit: Eric Antoniou.