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Kander and Ebb and Flow And the World Goes ’Round spotlights the give and take at the heart of Kander and Ebb’s music BY E.J. IANNELLI
T Eckart Preu conducts the Spokane Symphony Soprano Meredith Arwady & Spokane Symphony Chorale
Saturday, May 10 - 8pm Sunday, May 11 - 3pm sponsored by Brenda & LeRoy Nosbaum
................. SPOKANESYMPHONY.ORG MARTINWOLDSONTHEATER.COM ................. 38 INLANDER MAY 8, 2014
he songwriting duo responsible for contemporary hit musicals like Cabaret (1966), Chicago (1975) and Kiss of the Spider Woman (1992) was not two collaborators so much as a single entity with a singular sound. “We walk into the studio as John Kander and Fred Ebb,” the former is quoted as saying, “but what comes out is authentic Kander and Ebb.” The two were young men during the heyday of another inextricable pair of songwriters, Rodgers and Hammerstein, but Kander and Ebb’s first collaboration didn’t take place until each was nearly 40. That was with 1965’s Flora the Red Menace, which helped launch the Broadway career of Liza Minnelli. By the time Cabaret was staged the following year, they’d carved out a new theatrical niche that would later be dubbed the “concept musical.” “Kander and Ebb were the Rent of the ’60s and ’70s. They created an entirely new musical
genre — a hip, cool, [Bob] Fosse style,” says Cheyenne Nelson, who stars in Interplayers’ production of And the World Goes ’Round, a musical revue of their extensive body of work. “What happened in pop culture at that time was that Fosse was the name everyone picked up on,” she says. Kander and Ebb didn’t exactly go unnoticed and uncredited as a result, but their songs — instantly recognizable numbers like “New York, New York” and “All That Jazz” — took on a life independent of their creators. Like a family reunion, And the World Goes ’Round brings dozens of those songs together into one show. Accompanied by piano and drums, the cast of five sings, acts and dances its way through the Kander and Ebb songbook, reenacting the self-contained narratives that are at the heart of much of their work. “Each song is written as a story,” says director Michael Weaver. “Discoveries are made in