MINISERIES PUTS SPOTLIGHT ON BROADWAY MUSICALS.

Byline: Valerie Kuklenski Staff Writer

Songwriter E.Y. ``Yip'' Harburg, who penned ``Over the Rainbow'' in the depths of the Depression, once observed that songs are the fever chart of the nation's health and the way to listen to its heart.

That concept has been reflected time and again in the show tunes of the New York theater and is the central theme of ``Broadway: The American Musical,'' a six-part PBS documentary series that starts with the arrival of showman supreme Florenz Ziegfeld and spans 110 years to the opening of the smash hit of the 2003 season, ``Wicked.''

``I guess I was just continually amazed by how, in any given era - 'Hair' in the '60s or 'Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?' in the '30s - the songs just, smack on, they tell you how the country was feeling,'' said producer-director Michael Kantor, who began working on the project nine years ago.

``That somehow became the thesis for the whole thing,'' he said. ``Hopefully everybody will enjoy each different section and look at how entertaining it is, but if you watch the whole thing, I think you come away understanding a little bit more about each era in a way that you just didn't get before.''

The series, narrated by Julie Andrews, picks up in 1893, when Ziegfeld arrived in New York's seedy Tenderloin district, where 10 years later he would mount his famed ``Ziegfeld Follies.'' Interview subjects such as George and Ira Gershwin's sister Frances, Ziegfeld's daughter Patricia and Ziegfeld showgirl Doris Eaton Travis lend colorful recollections of that era. And Travis even takes a turn on the stage at the New Amsterdam, one of the district's oldest landmarks.

``It doesn't get better than that, when you have a 100-year-old lady who's still ready to kick up her heels on the same stage where she performed with Fanny Brice and Eddie Cantor and Burt Williams in 1919,'' Kantor said.

He had to pick and choose but a few of hundreds of titles with which to tell the story - ``Anything Goes'' as a pick-me-up during the Depression, ``Oklahoma!'' marking the historic pairing of Rodgers & Hammerstein, ``West Side Story'' for its contemporary book and music and its demand of ``triple threat'' performers.

Theater people love to tell stories, which left Kantor with much more material than the six-hour series can handle. So the three-disc DVD set includes about five hours of extra interviews and other material and some additional footage will be on the pbs.org site. Kantor and theater scholar Laurence Maslon also have put together a hefty and wonderfully illustrated coffee-table companion book.

Tony winner Jerry Herman, composer of such hit shows as ``Hello, Dolly!'' and ``Mame,'' is in New York now preparing for a November revival of his ``La Cage aux Folles.'' The New Jersey native recalled in a phone interview going to Broadway shows nearly weekly in his youth, when orchestra seats sold for $4.40. He said he was transformed by seeing ``Annie Get Your Gun'' when he was about 12, after which he picked out at least four of the Irving Berlin melodies on the piano.

Herman said Broadway these days mounts probably only one fourth of the number of musicals it did when he was his busiest in the 1960s. ``There were seasons I recall in the '50s and '60s when there were like 12, 15 musicals that opened one after another all during the season, and today we're lucky if we have three or four.''

The show concludes with the rehearsal, construction and opening of the $14 million production of ``Wicked,'' the latest musical variation on the classic ``The Wizard of Oz.''

`` 'Wicked' represents in many ways a new kind of corporate influence on Broadway,'' Kantor said. ``It's produced by Universal Studios, and the goal was to show people how shows are made these days and what they tend to cost.''

Herman, whose ``La Cage'' is co-produced by Clear Channel Entertainment, understands the need for producers to seek corporate backers like Disney, which renovated the New Amsterdam and gets credit for cleaning up Times Square in the '90s.

``I preferred the old days when a man like David Merrick - who may have been a tyrant - but he had a vision and he had a way of doing things and he put a particular stamp on his shows,'' Herman said. ``But the whole business is harder these days. The expense of a show is incredible in comparison and the ticket prices are crazy.''

Despite those hurdles, he sees a solid future for musical theater.

``Everybody has called Broadway the imaginary invalid. Everybody's always predicting doom,'' Herman said. ``And just when somebody says that, a show like 'Wicked' opens and becomes an enormous hit. I love proving all those naysayers wrong. I'm hoping that 'La Cage' is a big hit again.''

Kantor offered a different perspective on eight-show-a-week box office stats.

``I didn't realize until I interviewed Gerald Schoenfeld - he's head of the Shubert Organization - that more people go to Broadway shows than go to see all of the New York sports teams combined - the Knicks, the Nets, the Rangers, the Jets, the Yankees, the Mets,'' Kantor said. ``I find that astonishing.''

The future, he supposes, may see more star vehicles, maybe a country music-flavored show or a Latin vehicle for Jennifer Lopez or Ricky Martin. Corporations are likely there to stay because production budgets will only go up. But he agrees with Herman about the future of the institution of Broadway musical theater.

``It's not going away. It's too important.''

Valerie Kuklenski, [phone]

valerie.kuklenski(at)dailynews.com

BROADWAY: THE AMERICAN MUSICAL

What: Six-part documentary miniseries narrated by Julie Andrews on the history of musicals on the Great White Way.

Where: KCET.

When: 9 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday; a three-hour highlight version with pledge breaks plays at 2 p.m. Sunday.

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Photo:

Fanny Brice was one of the stars in the pivotal Broadway revue, ``Ziegfeld Follies.''