= VICTOR/VICTORIA =
- ORIGINAL BROADWAY CAST -

THE STORY

• ACT I •

CARROLL TODD ("TODDY" to his friends) is tenuously employed as the resident performer at HENRI LABISSE's Left Bank gay club, "Chez Lui." TODDY and Les Boys entertain the small but appreciative audience. ("PARIS BY NIGHT"). TODDY insults a group of customers which includes his ex-boyfriend RICHARD. LABISSE threatens to fire him.

A penniless English soprano, VICTORIA GRANT, auditions unsuccessfully for LABISSE. TODDY tries to help, but LABISSE rejects her and fires him. TODDY befriends VICTORIA, and offers her shelter from the wet wintry night in his tiny apartment. They become instant buddies and confidantes. TODDY wishes he were a woman, like VICTORIA, while VICTORIA believes that there are far more advantages to being a man. ("IF I WERE A MAN").

RICHARD, the ex-boyfriend, arrives at TODDY's unexpect edly to collect his things. VICTORIA is by now wearing his hat and pajamas. RICHARD mistakenly thinks she is TODDY's new boy-friend and insults TODDY. VICTORIA punches RICHARD and kicks him out. TODDY is impressed. RICHARD actually thought VICTORIA was a man! And at that moment The Inspired Idea strikes TODDY right between the eyes. Why not? VICTORIA could indeed be a man - Europe's greatest female impersonator! VICTORIA says he's crazy. TODDY pursues his argument. and dreams up Count Victor Grazinsky - a gay Polish aristocrat and TODDY's new lover. ("TRUST ME!"). "lt will work." he assures VICTORIA. "It will not!" says VICTORIA. They'll never accept a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman! - "They'll know he's a phony!" "Exactly, says TODDY, "They'll know he's a phony!" 

TODDY drags the reluctant VICTORIA to meet ANDRÉ CASSELL. Paris's leading impresario, who is dubious about "COUNT VlCTOR GRAZINSKY" until he hears "him" hit a glass-shattering high G-flat. "VICTOR" is in business.

"LE JAZZ HOT!" introduces VICTOR to Paris cafe society. His show-stopping performance at once makes him the toast of Gay Paree. The only doubter of VICTOR's authenticity is a dashing American businessman - cum - gangster figure. KING MARCHAN, visiting Paris with his brassy girlfriend NORMA and his loyal bodyguard SQUASH. KING is convinced VICTOR is a woman. and determined to prove it. At CASSELL's opening night party for VICTOR, KING invites VICTOR to tango with NORMA, hoping to prove his point.

(THE "PARIS BY NIGHT" TANGO) VICTOR's tango is a sensation. NORMA is thrilled. KING is thwarted, and starts to doubt himself. He finds VICTOR attractive as a woman ...but what if he's a man?

By an unwelcome coincidence, KING and NORMA and SQUASH find themselves in the adjoining hotel suite to the newly successful TODDY and VICTOR. NORMA tries to seduce KING. ("PARIS MAKES ME HORNY"). She succeeds only in making him impotent. Next door. VICTORIA bemoans to TODDY that in KING she thinks she has finally found the man of her dreams, but here she is trying to convince him that she is a man, too! ("CRAZY WORLD").

• ACT II •

VICTOR continues to take Paris audiences by storm. ("LOUIS SAYS"). NORMA complains to VICTOR and TODDY that KING is shipping her back to Chicago because he fancies VICTOR - a man!

KING confronts his doubts about himself and VICTOR. ("KING'S DILEMMA"). Is it possible that he, KING, is falling for a man? He invites VICTOR and TODDY to dinner to try and find out. After dinner they visit "Chez Lui," where LABISSE also has his suspicions that VICTOR is a woman. He invites her/him to sing. VICTOR and TODDY oblige. ("YOU & ME"). RICHARD's group arrives noisily in mid-song. VICTOR trips RICHARD and starts a major brawl in the club. The police arrive to break it up. Outside the club, KING says he doesn't care if VICTOR is a man, and kisses him VICTORIA admits she's not a man. KING says he still doesn't care, and kisses her again (REPRISE: "PARIS BY NIGHT").

Back in the hotel. SQUASH barges into KING's bedroom and finds KING and VICTOR in bed together. He apologizes profusely: "Sorry, guys!" KING tries to explain. SQUASH admires KING for coming out of the closet, and stuns his boss by revealing that he, too, is gay! VICTORlA and KING examine their potential problems if they are perceived publicly as two men. It won't work. ("ALMOST A LOVE SONG").

Back in Chicago, NORMA is performing in a night club. ("CHICAGO, ILLINOIS"). She informs KING's gangster partner, SAL ANDRETTI, that KING has dumped her for another man - and is living with "a gay Polish fairy." SAL is aghast, and says they're all going to Europe. Two weeks later. TODDY and SQUASH have become happy partners. Not so for KING and VICTORIA, unable to be seen together in public. ("LIVING IN THE SHADOWS"). VICTORIA tells TODDY she doesn't want to be a man anymore. TODDY understands. Neither does he.

SAL and the spurned NORMA arrive in Paris. KING admits he loves "VICTOR," keeping the secret. SAL, disgusted, ends their business relationship. VICTORIA reveals herself to NORMA as a woman. NORMA is horrified. LABISSE witnesses this moment of naked truth. VICTORIA is horrified. TODDY tells her not to worry. "Trust me!" Dissolve to VICTOR's farewell appearance. ("VICTOR/VICTORIA"). LABISSE tries to expose him/her as a fraud. TODDY, thrilled to be back in drag. replaces VICTORIA in a blink, to thwart LABISSE and leave the way clear for a happy ending for our two loving couples - KING and VICTORIA. and TODDY and SQUASH.

• END •

- Leslie Bricusse

JULIE ANDREWS

by ANDRE PREVIN

I met Julie Andrews well before every child in the civilized world I could ask whether she could actually fly around the room. She had just arrived in Hollywood in preparation to filming "Mary Poppins" and I was introduced to her by a mutual friend, Mike Nichols, who had also recently made the trek to the West Coast in order to direct "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?." Conversely, shortly after this meeting, I left the orange groves to conduct the London Symphony Orchestra. It will not take the slightly malicious long to figure out that this was more than thirty years ago, but what no one knew then was the fact that Julie had obviously made a deal with the devil, since the passing years have been forbidden to leave a mark on her. 

She is as much a knockout now as she was in the Sixties: clear-eyed, beautiful, serene and impeccable. She has also always been a deeply nice woman. "Nice," in today's violent vocabulary, is a pejorative, interchangeable with square and boring, and reeking of "Little Women." In Julie's case, nice also means friendly, helpful, delightful, pleasing and congenial. What is not so instantly recognizable is the other side of her personality which is hip and raucous and ribald. It is a great pleasure to hear her produce a loud dirty laugh. A great many English women look as though they should constantly be carrying a garden basket over one arm, clad in floral dresses and one of those Margaret Lockwood hats. but their sense of humor is. I'm convinced, a holdover from Elizabethan days. There was a time when Julie drove around town with a bumper sticker that read "Mary Poppins is a Junkie," and the stunned recognition on the faces of passersby must have amused and pleased her a lot.

It has been my good fortune to work with Julie from time to time, even though our geographical distance has been great. I did a film with her ("Thoroughly Modern Millie"), she sang Christmas Carols with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall. I interviewed her for the BBC. and a few years ago I conducted for her in Tokyo when she helped celebrate the anniversary of Japan's leading television network, the NHK. If a dictionary or encyclopedia ever wanted an illustration of the word "professional," it would do well to use a photo of Julie. Nothing can deter her from completing her work as a performer. She sails through some situations that would try a saint. (I mean, of course, a singing and dancing saint.) The week of shooting the Japanese TV show was a potpourri of languages, opinions. shortened schedules and misinterpreted instructions. I remember the director Michael Kidd giving the following plan to the camera crew: "When Julie crosses over to Andre at the piano, there's no rush, he'll just noodle at the keyboard till she gets there," a simple piece of advice which resulted in my having a steaming bowl of noodles placed before me before the number was shot, Julie just sailed through it benignly smiling, never making the noodle-producer feel silly, entrance after entrance in her sweeping gowns, hitting her marks flawlessly.

When we recorded the Christmas songs which she had done in London, it was the middle of July (the customary time for a Christmas record to be produced), and it was bizarrely hot in the studio. The orchestra members as well as the recording staff were sweating profusely, and the comments were not always the zenith of the season of good will. But Julie? Take after take, good nature cloaking the hard work, the expressions on her face were totally in keeping with the lyrics at hand and never served as a mirror of the physical circumstances. A sudden glint of memory: there was an advertising executive in the studio, from a firm anxious to promote Julie's album. After she finished singing "Coventry Carol," he sidled over to me. In a conspiratorial whisper, he asked, "Does she have to sound so damned British?" I confided in him that it would be easier to make John Wayne sound French than to temper Julie's accent. While on the subject of her presentation of the lyrics of any song, let me point out that her diction, the clarity of her words, is better than any other singer's I have ever heard, including the most celebrated Divas of the opera world. And while we're on the subject of singing, allow me to say that it is a rare note that is not produced perfectly in tune, and should such a note slip by during a take, it is inevitably Julie herself who will wince when hearing a playback and who will insist on another try. No one ever has to be flatteringly tactful when it comes to her work; Julie is her own toughest critic. 

She has been a Star for a long time, on stage and on the screen. No one ever predicted that she would have only a short reign in the firmament; it was clear right from the beginning that she would shine for as long as she wanted. Now she has come back to Broadway, in a play written and directed by her brilliant and hilarious husband Blake Edwards, a gentleman whose sense of humor is infallible. basic and off-the-wall at the same time. They are a remarkable couple, as well as being remarkable individuals. Julie is a gift to the performing world. She is an unalloyed pleasure to hear and watch, and I hope she decides to shine on us for a great many seasons to come.

- André Previn