Photo: Eren Li

Is Rosie from Bye Bye Birdie Hispanic?

That wasn't where the reworking ended, either: The character of Rosie Alvarez, secretary and girlfriend to Birdie promoter Albert, is Hispanic, and Sullivan felt he had to drop some comments that could now be considered racist.

capecodtimes.com - 'Birdie' says bye-bye to dated references - Cape Cod Times

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KATHI SCRIZZI DRISCOLL

The teenagers in "Bye Bye Birdie" needed an explanation about the importance of a girl being "pinned" and were taken aback at just how huge 1960s-era handsets were for "The Telephone Hour" song. But none of them questioned the casting of a young African-American actor to play the Elvis stand-in of about-to-be-drafted rocker Conrad Birdie. While skin color might have made a difference to music-hungry teens and their parents when the musical hit Broadway in 1960, it didn't cause a ripple in what director Richard Sullivan called "the age of Obama."

"I thought that was the greatest thing," he says.

In fact, Sullivan thought the choice "put an interesting spin on what the musical was about. ... I felt like it elevated the material a little bit." Nontraditional casting is nothing new at Harwich Junior Theatre/Harwich Winter Theatre, but this musical is set in a very specific American time period. Sullivan checked with artistic director Nina Schuessler before casting "very talented" Latez Crawley in that critical role of Birdie, and they agreed they wanted "the best person for the job" — even though that meant tweaking the script and song lyrics. Sullivan says, for example, that he didn't feel comfortable with the mention that Birdie was raised on a plantation in old Virginia because that could mean a very different thing to a white or black family. That wasn't where the reworking ended, either: The character of Rosie Alvarez, secretary and girlfriend to Birdie promoter Albert, is Hispanic, and Sullivan felt he had to drop some comments that could now be considered racist. Then there's the song where Albert tells Rosie that women have to obey men. "All the women in the company were like 'Wait a minute,'" Sullivan recalls with a laugh. In all those out-of-date cases, he says, "There had to be some rewriting and some adjusting ... to make it more sensitive." Nobody wanted to stir up controversy, he says, because they just want this midwinter show to be "fresh and fun," a valentine to the audience. "In these economic times and in the middle of this lovely winter weather," he said, with a touch of sarcasm during a phone interview on a snowy, below-freezing day, "we're just trying to give people a little bit of a boost. It's just fun."

IF YOU GO

"Bye Bye Birdie," with book by Michael Stewart, music by Charles Strouse and lyrics by Lee Adams; presented by Harwich Junior Theatre/Harwich Winter Theatre; 7:30 p.m. Thursdays (except March 5) through Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays Feb. 12-March 15, with an extra 2 p.m. matinee March 7; Harwich Junior Theatre, 105 Division St., West Harwich; $20; 508-432-2002

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