A CHARMING LITTLE MUSICAL. Before the songwriters Howard Ashman and Alan Menken worked on Little Shop of Horrors and The Little Mermaid, they collaborated on a little adaptation of the Kurt Vonnegut novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Last Friday, a modest crowd gathered at The Cooper Union to sample a little concert version of this charming Off-Broadway musical, which was first mounted at the WPA Theatre in the late 1970s

The story revolves around Eliot Rosewater (Jim Walton), scion of a fabulously wealthy family, who loses interest in the typical philanthropic practice of supporting talented go-getters. Instead, he adopts a town of thoroughly banal Hoosiers.

The seriocomic ramifications of Eliot's decision play out over the course of the show. His jet-setter wife Sylvia (Carolee Carmello) enters a convent after discovering folks who prefer junk food to the delicacies she tries to serve them. (Her breakdown aria "Cheese Nips" was a wonderful travesty.) Eliot winds up in an asylum, haunted by World War II flashbacks and a vision of a holocaust devouring Indianapolis. Meanwhile, crafty lawyer Norman Mushari (David Pittu) plots to use a sanity clause to secure a portion of the Rosewater fortune for himself.

The audience greeted the performance warmly, with plenty of back-slapping for Menken and Vonnegut, who were both present. (Ashman died due to complications from AIDS in 1991, when he was 40.) The reduced musical accompaniment came from Jimmy Roberts on piano and Mairi Dorman on cello.

The Cooper Union was a fitting location for the revival. The school's founder, Peter Cooper, was himself a philanthropist—albeit one of the "rags-to-riches" mold. As the Cooper Union website puts it, he believed "that education should be 'as free as water and air'" and used his fortune to put his principles into practice. The school, founded in 1859 with Cooper's money, stands today as "the only private, full-scholarship college in the United States dedicated exclusively to preparing students for the professions of architecture, art and engineering," according to the website.

Meanwhile, on Broadway, relations between producers and musicians frosted over, threatening to nip the recent revitalization of the American musical in the bud. After several days, a settlement had been reached--but not before the minimum number of musicians for a typical production had been reduced about 25% (basically, from 24 to 18). Who, if anyone, would keep Broadway's rich legacy of living, breathing, and full-bodied pit orchestras from being frittered away even more?