Monday, March 31, 2008

You Bastards

Okay, okay I’m on those sites too, so it’s “We Bastards” (though, for the record, I’m the nice one).

Kathy Henderson’s Broadway.com interview with Laura Benanti, though, really highlights the problem with much of the negativity on the Broadway message boards.

You basically broke your neck during the run of Into the Woods, which is an incident I had never read about.
I think many people didn't know about it. At least for a while, there was a notion going around that either I was lazy and missing shows, or I was behaving badly and missing shows, or I was faking an injury and missing shows. That was really hard for me because it certainly was not the case.


People can be so harsh over any move actors make, and I think it’s best to give the person the benefit of the doubt. People have attacked, literally attacked, Laura Benanti, Donna Murphy, LaChanze, and a number of other stars without knowing the truth about absences. For Benanti, while people were spreading rumors and speaking cruelly, she was recovering from a very serious injury.

That’s not very nice.

the Broadway Mouth
March 31, 2008

I’ll Forget You

Nancy Opel in Making It On Broadway:

I had a baby and I left the business for two years. I literally had to move away. I knew that if I didn’t, I would stay in this business. The lure is too strong. I was warned by some people, “If you stay away too long, they will forget who you are.”
Damn it, that’s right. They do forget, and I don’t care. I did the right thing for my family. Do I have regrets about the things I may have missed? Not really. A scrapbook isn’t the same as a healthy, well-adjusted child.


It’s interesting to watch the trends in Broadway casting; people do get quickly forgotten. Watch how new people are quickly cast from one show into another. One minute, they are nobody, and the next, they are in the latest hit show. While the people who did that a mere five years ago are nowhere to be seen.

Take, for example, Tyler Maynard, who was able to move from Altar Boyz into The Little Mermaid. Tony Yazbeck got Gypsy after A Chorus Line, just as Mara Davi got The Drowsy Chaperone.

Everyone gets their breaks in their own ways, and I’m thrilled for anyone who can make a go of acting on Broadway because each role in earned with much blood, sweat, and tears. I’m not saying that Maynard, Yabeck, and Davi haven’t earned their roles—I’m not implying that at all.

But, as Nancy Opel mentions, I wonder of the great talents who have been forgotten along the way. It’s so easy to focus on the big talents who have deservedly managed to get from one show to the next because they are wowing us right now, but as we reflect on who we’d love to see in roles, let’s not forget that there’s a truckload of major talents who are, from reports, still in the business. It’s not atypical for people to enter into the profession of starring on Broadway, only to then tire of it, crave the stability of family, or to choose other avenues for their talents. However, just because we don’t see them doesn’t mean they are not out there, trying to get seen.

The hot tickets of not-too-long ago, I can’t just forget them. I choose not to forget them. I don’t know what reason we haven’t seen them on stage, but it wouldn’t be surprising to know that they simply haven’t been able to get seen.

Let’s all take a moment and remember all the fantastic performers from the past fifteen years who are still out there—the Matt Bogarts, Sandra Allens, Chuck Wagners, Maya Days’—pounding the pavement, trying to a nice man like a Ziegfeld or a Weismann to get them into a great, big Broadway show.

I’ll not forget you.

the Broadway Mouth
March 31, 2008

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Ten Minutes Ago

Ten minutes ago I saw you
I looked up when you came through the door
My head started reeling
You gave me the feeling
The room had no ceiling or floor
--Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella

Ten minutes ago she was a secretary. Ten minutes ago she was a wedding singer. Ten minutes ago she was scooping poop. Ten minutes ago he was fired from TCBY. But now, they are Ethel Merman, Idina Menzel, Laura Benanti, and songwriter Jeff Marx.

Never underestimate people of talent and ambition, even if that ambition seems far-fetched or muted by shyness. That man waiting your table before you head off to Cry-Baby really could be a Broadway star next year. That kid promoting his songs on BroadwaySpace could write the next Hairspray. That girl with the funny voice who keeps calling you about attending her reading could write the next Les Miserables.

Sure, there are a lot of folks out there knocking on doors who really aren’t the best dancers, aren’t that great with their monologue, and maybe don’t even write strong lyrics. But, some day, if you open your eyes, you’ll find someone who really is the undiscovered Heather Headley or Marc Shaiman.

Idina Menzel has my favorite story, told in Making It on Broadway. She was a wedding singer, one of the same that gets pushed to the back of the brain because she sings “while people chew.” Worst of all, the bandleader of her band once had the sound guy turn her mic down so his girlfriend would be louder. Some time after that, she starred in Rent, Lippa’s The Wild Party, Aida, Wicked, See What I Wanna See, and now people are paying $20 a pop to buy Enchanted, where she became the Disney princess and $15 to hear her new solo album.

But it’s no Cinderella story. It takes a lot of hard work, a lot of determination, a lot of faith in yourself to become something. But the truth is that Idina Menzel was always Idina Menzel, and starring in Rent didn’t change that. If she had never gotten the Rent gig, she’d have the same voice, the same talents, even if she was an administrative assistant.

So, the quiz of the day is:

1. Who will the people around you become in ten minutes?

A) Someone I will later regret not taking seriously.
B) Someone who’ll invite me to the opening night party.
C) Someone I’ll be glad for keeping in touch with.
D) Someone who could have made me a ton of money.

2. In ten minutes, who will you become?

A) a Broadway performer
B) a Broadway songwriter
C) a Broadway book-writer
D) a Broadway producer
E) a Broadway director
F) a Broadway set-designer
G) a Broadway costumer
H) a Broadway historian
I) all of the above except A and C
J) all of the above except A-F
K) I’m going to Hollywood.

the Broadway Mouth
March 27, 2008

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

From the Mouth of Harvey Fierstein

I love being a genius. It’s hard going undiscovered for so long and all, but I’ll take that over never having been a genius any day.

How can you tell if you’re a genius? If smart people say things you have been holding firmly to for some time or have put into words that which you’ve already written, then you are a certifiable genius without ever having to take an IQ test. Trust me. Being an undiscovered genius, I’m an expert on these things.

Barbara Hoffman’s interview with Harvey Fierstein in The New York Post contains just one of those genius-inducing quotes:

Why turn a creaky flick like A Catered Affair into a musical?

That's why. I don't believe that you take something incredibly great and finished and then make something else out of it. I'm always asked to write a new version of Stage Door. But that film is genius. You can't do better than that cast—Katharine Hepburn, Lucille Ball, Ginger Rogers, Ann Miller. Leave it alone! I saw Catered Affair and I loved how human it was. Paddy Chayefsky's like that. Think of Marty. But Marty is perfect - a dance number isn't going to make it better. A Catered Affair had all this humanity and didn't quite go as far. I thought I could take it to the next level. Debbie Reynolds [one of the film's stars] came to our opening in San Diego and said, "Honey, it's a much better musical than it ever was a movie!"

To steal Hal Prince’s phrasing, there are some exceptions—big ones, like Mame and Les Miserables—but Fierstein has spoken something I have felt for a long time. It’s difficult for me to pull many concrete examples from big musicals simply because I don’t usually bother with the source material, which is often hard-to-find or just not of interest, but I have often contemplated this when thinking of source material to adapt. If you’re just going to plug in songs, then it’s kind of a why-bother proposition. If the adaptation is super faithful, I earnestly wonder where’s the fun in it for the writer, though I’m sure cashing big royalty checks is delightful.

A case in point: I loved The Wedding Singer, but even though I had never seen the film, the second act didn’t feel much like a stage musical. It felt like an after-school special plotted on a stage. I then acquired a copy of the movie and was surprised how literal the musical’s book was, including the whole “Julia thinks Robbie’s slept with Linda” drama which, in part, prevented the second act from lifting from the stage.

Of course, you don’t want to take a beloved work and screw it up either. Mame, Les Miserables, and Jane Eyre are all examples of shows that remained faithful to their source works that not only worked well but would have been doomed had any other direction been taken. I admired the creators of Little Women for attempting some of their own touches, but with a work so beloved, you risk the “Jo never took Beth to the sea!” reaction or the “I want to see Beth die on stage in song!” cliché they worked so hard to avoid but for which the audience, at least I, was craving.

Perhaps it’s like on American Idol. You have to not only follow what the judges tell you but also understand how to apply it. Many a singer has taken a risk at the behest of the judges, only to fail because they took the wrong risk or didn’t have enough of a mastery of their talents to fully grasp how to change. You have to be able to inherently know when and when not to change.

Let’s also address the idea of change. Changes should not be made for the sake of making changes. I always admired Thoroughly Modern Millie for not simply duplicating the movie, but the changes from it are, at times, perfunctory. The fact that Dorothy doesn’t choose Trevor Graydon in the end or that Jimmy starts out a rude jerk isn’t necessary, but giving Mrs. Meers a clear motivation for her dirty deeds or Graydon’s delightful typing test for Millie are. There are changes that are required for the sake of structure, to adjust for the medium of the stage, to flesh out the work, to incorporate musical moments, or to develop or change theme—those are the important ones. Tacking on alterations for the sake of making an interpretation your own isn’t enough.

Even in a strong source work, I would say that it’s important to have some sort of interpretation, something to focus on or add. I recently wrote about this in an entry quoting Arthur Miller.

So, in the end, I guess the best that can be said is that musical theatre is an art, not a formula. Master your art, and you have a better chance of making the choices that lead you to success. Master your art, and you also know when to break the “rules.” Perhaps that the best kind of genius of all.

the Broadway Mouth
March 26, 2008

(Note: Interestingly and contradictorily enough, I think film versions of books and plays must fight to be faithful in order to be great. I won’t go into detail on theories why except to say that the best movie adaptations of books and plays are almost always the ones that are the most faithful.)

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

The Mary Martin Quiz: The Answers

(To first read the original multiple choice quiz questions, click here.)


1. Which of the following shows were NOT offered to Mary Martin to originate a role?

Mary Martin was NEVER offered a role in Guys and Dolls; however, she did turn down offers to do Oklahoma!; Kiss Me, Kate; My Fair Lady; and Mame.

She doesn’t address all of them in her book, but she opted to take on an out-of-town closer called Dancing in the Streets instead of Oklahoma!, for which Rodgers and Hammerstein were extremely grateful, realizing that turning Green Grow the Lilacs into a traditional star vehicle would have ruined the show and would have ruined what they did that ended up revolutionizing the Broadway musical. For months after their show opened, they sent Martin flowers in thanks for turning the role down.

She originally thought Cole Porter wanted her for Lois Lane in Kiss Me, Kate, but he wanted her for Lilli Vanessi. The problem for Martin was, however, that all of her touring with Annie Get Your Gun had taken a toll on her soprano. She literally couldn’t sing the part and knew it. Porter, she later learned, was devastated by her turning him down.

She doesn’t say much about My Fair Lady or Mame, though I’ve read in Richard Tyler Jordan’s But Darling, I’m Your Auntie Mame that the reason she gave for turning down Mame was the music. She signed a preliminary agreement to do the show with the exit clause being approval of the score. When Jerry Herman flew to Brazil to share his fabulous score, she reportedly claimed not to like it, which has been said was her way of backing out. She had spent so much time touring and living in dressing rooms that she simply wanted to enjoy life on her farm.

2. Of all her roles, which does Mary Martin proclaim to be her favorite?

Her strongest statement of such is related to Peter Pan. This is not surprising considering the effect that show had on children around the country. She details the fanatic response the show earned from kids in the audience, as well as how people responded to her after each of the three televised airings of the show. In one touching story, Martin and friends travel through the jungles of Brazil to an acquaintance’s house, barely making it before nightfall, when it would have been dangerous to drive through the jungle. Upon arrival, the house appears to be closed, but then one of the shutters opens, and it is an elderly, senile woman who recognizes Peter Pan, saying Wendy’s line, “Peter! You’ve come to my window.”

It doesn’t get much more magical than that.

3. Which of the following statements are true of I Do! I Do!, the two-person musical which she starred in with Robert Preston.

Figuring that people were coming to I Do! I Do! for Martin and Preston, it was agreed that it would be better to cancel shows rather than to send on an understudy, so none were used. The run began with matinee performances but, as it continued to run, those were scaled back to give the stars a rest in a strenuous show where one of them always had to be on stage while the other was furiously changing.

When the Broadway run was followed by a tour, the show began to wear on Preston and Martin, and it eventually had to end because of Martin’s health.

4. According to Mary Martin, what melody cut from South Pacific was she responsible for getting used in The King and I?

The melody of “Getting to Know You” was originally written as a soft-shoe piece for Martin, and when it was cut, Rodgers and Hammerstein promised it to her. Upon seeing the dress rehearsal of The King and I in New Haven, she recommended that it would be a great melody to use as a song to help develop Anna’s character. In all the talk of “character-specific” music used to criticize shows like Hairspray, it’s interesting to see how the masters responded to character-specific music—by handing one song to another character! Cross reference this with “Losing My Mind” from Follies, which jumped characters within the show.

5. According to Mary Martin, how did she and Richard Halliday save William Talbert’s job out of town as the original Lieutenant Cable?

According to Martin, Talbert was great in the role of Lieutenant Cable, but he simply wasn’t “sexy enough.” Martin and her husband Richard Halliday had become experts on home hair coloring and permanents after all of her different roles, so they took Talbert and shook up his look a bit, giving him soft blond curls that made him look “taller, handsomer, [and] a perfect foil for dark-skinned Liat.” To complete the transformation, director Josh Logan gave Talbert tight-fitting pants, and when he next appeared in New Haven, half the cast thought he was a replacement.

6. With which of the following men did Mary Martin not star?

Mary Martin never starred with Alfred Drake. She did star with John Raitt in a later two-stop tour of Annie Get Your Gun (and he was her Frank Butler on a television production as well).

She starred with Yul Brynner in Lute Song, and even claims to have discovered him (with husband Halliday) when they invited him over to see about using him in Lute Song.

Charles Boyer was with her in the mess Kind Sir. She had always wanted to perform with Boyer, so being able to do so helped her overcome the frustrating experience of being in the show. It was directed by Josh Logan, whom she had last worked with on South Pacific. The problem was, however, that Logan was “in the throes of a breakdown.” His mis-guided psychologist said it would be okay for him to take on the project, but the cast was warned not to challenge him on anything. There are several hilarious stories related to this, but in short, you can quickly imagine what comes of a show where everyone “Yes, sir”s the director who isn’t in a right frame of mind.

7. How did Mary Martin get most of her formal dance training?

As a teenager, Mary Martin often got compliments on her dancing, so when she needed a venue to exert herself after being married at sixteen, she opened a dance school. In the summers, she traveled to California to learn new steps to teach her growing student population.


8. To which controversial location did Mary Martin take Hello, Dolly!, going so far as to persuade the cast to do it.

She took the Hello, Dolly! to Vietnam, even though most of the cast originally voted against the idea. She told them that, while she too didn’t support the war, performing for the troops would be a show of support for the men. It was a tough time for her to be in a war zone, but once all is said and done, the cast agreed that it was an amazing experience.

9. During a busy Easter shopping season, Mary Martin stopped by Saks to buy a pair of gloves. It was so busy that there were no salespeople to help her. Who ended up playing salesperson for her, even going so far as to make up a sales slip and accept her payment?

This was Beatrice Lillie. She pops up throughout the book, and what a marvelous, zany woman she appears to have been. I had always known her as Mrs. Meers in the movie Thoroughly Modern Millie, but how I wish I could have seen her on stage.

10. Mary Martin and her husband Richard Halliday found peace and relaxation in what foreign country?

Martin and Halliday had a farm in Brazil for many years, which they loved dearly. Once her husband died, however, she says in the book (copyrighted in 1976) that she could never return to it.

the Broadway Mouth
March 25, 2008

Monday, March 24, 2008

The Mary Martin Quiz

I just finished reading Mary Martin’s autobiography My Heart Belongs, which I picked up for a mere twenty-seven cents at a thrift store. Mary Martin is one of the greats of Broadway—having appeared in eleven shows on Broadway (including originating iconic roles in South Pacific, Peter Pan, and The Sound of Music) as well as headlining shows in London and American national tours.

It’s hard to fully appreciate the appeal of Mary Martin now since, being a stage star, most of her best work is no longer accessible, but there’s no questioning her star appeal, particularly considering the famous roles she was offered but turned down and the ecstatic response she often received after performances, humbly detailed in My Heart Belongs. The fact that she appeared in eleven shows on Broadway alone speaks volumes of her talent.

So . . . how well do you know Mary Martin as told in her autobiography? Take the quiz to find out. Answers will be posted tomorrow along with some engaging discussion.

1. Which of the following shows were NOT offered to Mary Martin to originate a role?

A) Oklahoma! B) Kiss Me, Kate
C) Guys and Dolls D) My Fair Lady


2. Of all her roles, which does Mary Martin proclaim to be her favorite?

A) Venus (from One Touch of Venus) B) Nellie Forbush
C) Peter Pan D) Dolly Levi


3. Which of the following statements are true of I Do! I Do!, the two-person musical which she starred in with Robert Preston.

A) She chose it over originating Dolly Levi.
B) Her husband Richard Halliday wrote the book.
C) Her husband Richard Halliday directed the show with Gower Champion.
D) There were no understudies or standbys hired.


4. According to Mary Martin, what melody cut from South Pacific was she responsible for getting used in The King and I?

A) “I Whistle a Happy Tune”
B) “Hello, Young Lovers”
C) “Getting to Know You”
D) “Shall We Dance”


5. According to Mary Martin, how did she and Richard Halliday save William Talbert’s job out of town as the original Lieutenant Cable?

A) They changed his hair color and style.
B) They helped boost his confidence.
C) They taught him how to relax.
D) They had the keys of his song lowered.


6. With which of the following men did Mary Martin not star?

A) John Raitt
B) Yul Brynner
C) Charles Boyer
D) Alfred Drake


7. How did Mary Martin get most of her formal dance training?

A) She took classes taught by Gene Kelly.
B) She opened a dance school and took the classes in the summer to teach her students.
C) She never actually had any formal dance training.
D) She was trained by her first husband Ben Hagman, who was a well-trained hoofer.


8. To which controversial location did Mary Martin take Hello, Dolly!, going so far as to persuade the cast to do it.

A) Birmingham, Alabama
B) Russia
C) Vietnam
D) China


9. During a busy Easter shopping season, Mary Martin stopped by Saks to buy a pair of gloves. It was so busy that there were no salespeople to help her. Who ended up playing salesperson for her, even going so far as to make up a sales slip and accept her payment?

A) Carol Burnett
B) Ethel Merman
C) Fanny Brice
D) Beatrice Lillie


10. Mary Martin and her husband Richard Halliday found peace and relaxation in what foreign country?

A) Brazil
B) Peru
C) Honduras
D) Colombia

And, in case you aren’t familiar with Mary Martin’s work, an overview:



the Broadway Mouth
March 24, 2008

The Dangers of the First Row

As I’m sure it was on Broadway, the orchestra for the tour revival of Annie Get Your Gun was placed on stage, which meant that the normal orchestra pit space could be covered and used for additional orchestra-priced seating, which is where I managed to get my ticket for. I was seated in the second row, next to two parents whose two sons were directly in front of them in the front row.

As George McDaniel, in the role of Buffalo Bill Cody, walked across the lip of the stage early on to introduce the story, he was unintentionally spurting saliva, as Broadway actors tend to do. As he’d do so, I’d see the boys’ mother reaching forward to wipe of her kids’ foreheads dry.

That’s one experience you’ll never get at the movies.

the Broadway Mouth
March 24, 2008

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Amazing Discovery: Joseph Kramm’s The Shrike

It plays out like a modern movie. A man, in a moment of desperation, attempts suicide. After failing, he finds himself in a mental institution with only his estranged wife to comfort him, not to mention to keep his new girlfriend at bay. With his estranged wife bearing sole legal power to free him from the confines of state custody, he grows increasingly agitated at being a sane man in an institution, as his wife begins to peel away all his connections to the outside world.

Over a year ago, I stumbled upon an old Random House copy of Joseph Kramm’s 1952 Pulitzer Prize-winning play in a used book store on a search for rare musical libretti. Not wanting to leave empty-handed, I grabbed The Shrike on a whim, knowing nothing about it. The play was produced and directed by Jose Ferrer, who also starred as Jim Downs, the man whose life hangs in the balance. According to the book Show Time, Ferrer won the Tony for the role and later brought it to the screen in 1955 opposite June Allyson. The play itself ran for 161 performances and also starred Judith Evelyn as his desperate wife and Isabel Bonner as the female psychologist Dr. Barrow whose feminine perspective inadvertently imprisons him longer.

The story begins as a curious depiction of a man facing a life of broken dreams but emerges as a tense observation of a woman desperate to escape loneliness, despite her mutual consent to the condition. By Act Two, it is unclear exactly why Jim is in the hospital—Is he really, indeed, mentally unstable, or is he being driven there by a system that requires him to give up sanity in order to appear sane. In reading, The Shrike becomes a page-turner.

In all my years of bookstore shopping, in all my years of keeping an eye on plays, I’ve never seen The Shrike before. If you’re into reading plays, particularly in search of something of high interest for your theatre group, check out The Shrike.

From Dictionary.com:

shrike (noun)— any of numerous predaceous oscine birds of the family Laniidae, having a strong, hooked, and toothed bill, feeding on insects and sometimes on small birds and other animals: the members of certain species impale their prey on thorns or suspend it from the branches of trees to tear it apart more easily, and are said to kill more than is necessary for them to eat. any of numerous predaceous oscine birds of the family Laniidae, having a strong, hooked, and toothed bill, feeding on insects and sometimes on small birds and other animals: the members of certain species impale their prey on thorns or suspend it from the branches of trees to tear it apart more easily, and are said to kill more than is necessary for them to eat.

the Broadway Mouth
March 20, 2008

Monday, March 17, 2008

Broadway Star Bingo VIII

Welcome to the eighth edition of Broadway Star Bingo.

Rules for Bingo:
As in regular Bingo, try to get five boxes in a row up, down, or diagonal. Mark off the boxes of Broadway stars you’ve seen perform live.

What counts: Broadway, off-Broadway, regional, or any other venue for live theatre. You must have seen them in a musical or play (not concert, benefit, etc.) and must have seen them live (DVDs, videos, and bootlegs don’t count).

Rules for Bango: For a Bango, you must form the letter B on the Broadway Star Bingo card. To do this, you get the entire B row, the entire top and bottom row, plus the top two and bottom two names under the O. To complete the B-shape, you get the first four names in the very middle row going across (in other words, excluding the name in the O column). This is a little confusing, but it forms a B on the card.

Rules for Bongo: This is the coveted coverall.

Winning: When you hit a bingo, bango, bongo, call it out on the comment space below. You do NOT need to be a registered Blogger user to post. You may be as anonymous as you’d like.

When you have a bingo or a bango, call off the squares in which you won, listing at least one show you saw each performer in. If you have a bongo, you may call off as many as you wish.

Prize: The prize is pride and bragging rights, plus the chance to share your beloved theatrical memories.

the Broadway Mouth
March 17, 2008


Friday, March 14, 2008

From the Mouth of Arthur Miller: The Nature of the Adaptation

“I had never thought to make a play of [the real event that formed A View From the Bridge] because it was too complete, there was nothing I could add. And then a time came when its very completeness became appealing.”

That’s what Arthur Miller wrote as an introduction to a published edition of his revised A View From the Bridge, his 1955 play about a man driven to sacrifice his name and honor out of an unspoken love for his niece, a daughter figure in love with a spellbinding illegal immigrant.

I found this an interesting quote because there is a strange hypocrisy at work among stage people, myself included. As writers, we crave to find our own entry into a story, some way to make it personal and workable to us. We don’t just adapt a life story, for example, but we alter it to fit our own interpretation. If this doesn’t happen—this interpretation of the work—we become critical, call the musical “faux,” and walk away lamenting the easy path taken by the show’s creators.

However, when Hollywood takes on a property, we are not so forgiving of any attempts to personalize a work. Most people, it seems, found the new scenes in the recent A Raisin in the Sun to be unobtrusive, but most did not welcome them with open arms. We accepted Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street without ever agreeing to the cuts to Harold Prince’s original version. To me, I never accepted the add-ons Arthur Miller himself gave the film adaptation of The Crucible, insisting that showing the girls in the forest steals from the mystery of the unraveling of the events.

The problem is that most pieces of creative work are personal. They are somehow a reflection on one’s own ideas and worldview. I recently contemplated how a book would adapt to the stage, and I found myself attempting to interpret the story and characters, not only to breathe some life into them for the new dimension but also to find my way into the story, someone else’s story. I was doing exactly what I dislike Hollywood doing. This is not unusual—the few other works I’ve contemplated adapting for the stage were all rooted in my interpretation—but it still makes me a hypocrite of sorts.

Perhaps the criticism for whether an adaptation is a bastardization or a blessing lies in the success of the work. No one ever complains about the alterations made to the movies of The Sound of Music or Hairspray because they work so beautifully. If Hello, Dolly! or Guys and Dolls had been immensely entertaining, I guess no one would mind the changes.

the Broadway Mouth
March 14, 2008

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

525,600 Million Minutes: How Do You Survive the Workshop Process?

How long does it take to write a musical? I (insert cocky smirk here) wrote the first draft of my first book to a musical in about a month at the age of twenty-three. And I didn’t need the help of any pesky songwriters either. Unfortunately, my show needed much work (insert humble-pie downcast eyes here) and, though greatly improved in the eight years since, it could still benefit greatly from the right collaborators (after all, a musical isn’t very good without music, or so I’m told).

I have had self-produced readings of my work, both public and private readings to gauge the success of my work. Particularly since I’ve worked alone, it’s very hard to know what you’ve got until you experience a reaction from someone as a result of reading or seeing your show (not to mention hearing the words read and the characters interpreted).

That said, the workshop process baffles me. I guess I’ll fully understand it when I’m actually taking part in one, but until then, I must wonder aloud in written form.

In video interviews on Broadway.com taken opening night of the exciting new musical In the Heights, various people allude to workshops of the show being produced, one person mentioning a workshop from five years ago. Five years! Considering that workshops are a relatively new invention (it all started with A Chorus Line, in case you didn’t already know), I find it interesting that work-shopping is now the norm and that all those masterpieces of the Golden Age didn’t require them. In those days, a team sat down, wrote the show—sometimes guided by a producer and director—presented the material, found backers, then their names were shining on the Great White Way. Then they’d do it again.

None of this is a knock on In the Heights or the state of contemporary theatre because what matters is not how a show gets to Broadway, but whether it’s good when it gets there.

However, I can’t help but wonder why it takes so long for a show that has an actively interested producer to find its way. It’s hard to say because with In the Heights, for example, there was a fresh new team working, which is very different from having seasoned professionals at work. By the time Rodgers and Hammerstein were writing Oklahoma!, they each had numerous Broadway credits. They had the time to refine their talents, which goes a long way in creating something new.

It’s also important to remember the change in Broadway economics. Shows no longer tour several cities to work out the kinks before arriving in New York. In the Heights, for example, only had an off-Broadway run. Perhaps the workshops act as additional stops out of town.

I still wonder, though, why it takes so long for a show to get perfected. Sometimes the workshops are more than the work of the writers; the length between workshops may be from funding problems, conflicting producers’ schedules, or the availability of performers tied to the roles.

I bet much also has to do with life commitments. When you’re in the workshop process, you’re still supporting yourself with that day job or two or three, maybe even a fourth if you want health insurance. I guess it’s hard to fix everything in a month’s time.

But five years when a team is assembled?

I used to gasp when I heard about people working on film projects for ten or twenty years, wondering how on earth they could sustain that. Naturally, I’ve learned the hard way. If someone had told me when I sat down that month to write the first draft of my first book to a musical, “You’ll make every wrong decision along the way to screw yourself up, won’t find dedicated and knowledgeable collaborators, and after eight years, will still find yourself many states away from anyone who actually cares about Broadway,” I don’t know if I would ever have started. You sustain that project because you love the characters, you believe in it, and you believe in yourself. After all, when you’ve carried yourself ten miles, ten more doesn’t seem as daunting.

When I do get to Broadway—which will happen—I just hope to God I don’t have to go through eight years of workshops first. Give me one workshop, a month to fix it, another workshop, then get me on Broadway before I get Alzheimer’s!

the Broadway Mouth
March 12, 2008

Monday, March 10, 2008

Broadway Star Bingo VII

Welcome to the seventh edition of Broadway Star Bingo.

Rules for Bingo: As in regular Bingo, try to get five boxes in a row up, down, or diagonal. Mark off the boxes of Broadway stars you’ve seen perform live.

What counts: Broadway, off-Broadway, regional, or any other venue for live theatre. You must have seen them in a musical or play (not concert, benefit, etc.) and must have seen them live (DVDs, videos, and bootlegs don’t count).

Rules for Bango: For a Bango, you must form the letter B on the Broadway Star Bingo card. To do this, you get the entire B row, the entire top and bottom row, plus the top two and bottom two names under the O. To complete the B-shape, you get the first four names in the very middle row going across (in other words, excluding the name in the O column). This is a little confusing, but it forms a B on the card.

Rules for Bongo: This is the coveted coverall.

Winning: When you hit a bingo, bango, bongo, call it out on the comment space below. You do NOT need to be a registered Blogger user to post. You may be as anonymous as you’d like.

When you have a bingo or a bango, call off the squares in which you won, listing at least one show you saw each performer in. If you have a bongo, you may call off as many as you wish.

Prize: The prize is pride and bragging rights, plus the chance to share your beloved theatrical memories.

the Broadway Mouth
March 10, 2008



The Saturday Night Live Wicked clip

Congratulations to Stephen Schwartz for making it on Saturday Night Live. When was the last time a Broadway show got this kind of coverage? Could this be a sign that Broadway is headed closer to pop culture.

We can hope.




If the above clip isn't working, following the this link.

Friday, March 7, 2008

Pop Culture?

I’ve been talking much lately about getting Broadway into mainstream culture. Well, one way of that happening is getting people to write about it. Two recent articles of note that you might be interested in and links to them:

Entertainment Weekly, March 3, 2008—This is the issue with the Oscars on the cover. There’s an article inside that consists of snippets from interviews from people involved with the Broadway and film versions of Rent, including Fredi Walker-Browne and Daphne Rubin-Vega discussing not being in the movie.

Time, March 10, 2008—This is the issue with the back of Obama’s head on the covering and the headline “How Much Does Experience Matter?” There’s a great article here about the closing of Rent and, more importantly, discussing the future of Broadway in terms of reaching out to new audiences and changing the storytelling perspectives to more personal subject matter (which I recently wrote about myself). The article highlights In the Heights and Passing Strange.

the Broadway Mouth
March 7, 2008

Thursday, March 6, 2008

The Million Dollar Question: Getting New Butts in Seats

How do you get people into a theatre? How do you get people, who are otherwise oblivious to ads for some crazy show called The Drowsy Chaperone or that show they’ll never get tickets for anyway but saw on Martha Stewart, Wicked, to actually take out the debit card and order the tickets?

When I was teaching high school, I organized three trips to see Broadway tours. One was a class field trip to the second national tour of Beauty and the Beast, which was an amazing experience for my kids. Most of them left exhilarated and thrilled. One of my boys, not one you’d expect to say it, was practically jumping out of his skin wanting me to organize a trip to see Kiss Me, Kate the following fall (a show I had talked much about in class since my then-recent trip to New York; I ended up resigning the position before I could take them, though, because I wanted time in my life to write). My second trip was an after-school activity where I brought 20+ students, teachers, and parents to see Aida, another thrilling event for the students. My third was bringing a smaller group to see Les Miserables, which was a great trip, with the girls wearing their prom dresses because it was a chance to use them a second time.

As long as kids have an iota of understanding of the arts, they like the big Broadway shows. The question becomes, then, how do you get them to form a bridge between liking musicals and actually dishing out the money to see them? Shows are quite expensive, but people are willing to dish out money for what they really want—be it a $75 video game, $50 concert tickets, or $65 baseball tickets (and another $25 for the soda and hot dog).

The more that we can get young people attending the theatre—without pandering to them in content and, therefore, cutting off the older bread-and-butter crowd—the stronger roots we’ll have in the years to come.

One significant aspect of this is making Broadway an all-important part of pop culture, which is slowly happening with Legally Blonde, Hairspray, and High School Musical. Producers need to find ways to make people aware of their shows outside New York and to generate a must-see aura about their work, such as through music videos, pop versions of songs, and strong MySpace and Facebook presence (as in links and video clips on member sites).

I was recently at a well-to-do suburban school, and I had a student telling me how much she loved the OBCR of Sweeney Todd; however, when the John Doyle show came to town, she didn’t even know it was here until I told her (and also warned her it probably wasn’t the best production for her to see). That’s a problem.

So, it’s a dilemma, getting people of all ages to find enough value in making the trip and spending the money. But solving it holds the key to, perhaps, a Second Golden Age.

the Broadway Mouth
March 5, 2008

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Gypsy in Vanity Fair



Thanks to folks at All That Chat and Broadway World for posting this picture from Laura Benanti’s website. This is a photo from Vanity Fair. Not only does the cast look great, but it’s one big step in making Broadway a part of popular culture (more on that topic tomorrow).

the Broadway Mouth
March 5, 2008

Clip Me, Kate


I was digging through my programs and clippings from various shows I’ve seen over the years, and I came across this advertisement I saved from the tour of Kiss Me, Kate, which starred (at the time I saw it) Rachel York, Rex Smith, Jim Newman, Jenny Hill, and Chuck Wagner.

I loved this advertisement, which made me do a double-take. Because I had seen the show in New York as well, the poster looked eerily familiar—familiar because it not only features mostly the Broadway cast, but eerily because it features ¾ of the original stars as well.

That’s Rachel York’s beautiful face on Marin Mazzie’s beautiful body and Rex Smith’s head on Brian Stokes Mitchell’s body (though those aren’t Mitchell’s hands), twice. Interestingly enough, York on tour, just like she did in the recorded London production, had red hair.

I actually have the Broadway show poster that looks like this with the original cast hanging in Shubert Alley, my hallway with Broadway posters (not to be confused with my living room with its Broadway posters). Probably no one on the tour route would even notice the short-cuts, so it’s not a big deal, but I thought it was funny.

If you live in New York and find the picture familiar, you may recognize it from Rick McKay’s documentary Broadway: The Golden Age, flashed up when Elaine Stritch is supporting revivals.

the Broadway Mouth
March 5, 2008

Monday, March 3, 2008

Broadway Star Bingo VI (Honoring Actors Who’ve Appeared in Les Miserables)

Welcome to the sixth edition of Broadway Star Bingo, honoring the Broadway runs of Les Miserables and the myriad of performers Cameron Mackintosh has employed for many years, giving extremely talented people a chance to play roles that they might not otherwise have gotten had the show not been the big-name draw.

Rules for Bingo: As in regular Bingo, try to get five boxes in a row up, down, or diagonal. Mark off the boxes of Broadway stars you’ve seen perform live.

What counts: Broadway, off-Broadway, regional, or any other venue for live theatre. You must have seen them in a musical or play (not concert, benefit, etc.) and must have seen them live (DVDs, videos, and bootlegs don’t count).

Rules for Bango: For a Bango, you must form the letter B on the Broadway Star Bingo card. To do this, you get the entire B row, the entire top and bottom row, plus the top two and bottom two names under the O. To complete the B-shape, you get the first four names in the very middle row going across (in other words, excluding the name in the O column). This is a little confusing, but it forms a B on the card.

Rules for Bongo: This is the coveted coverall.

Winning: When you hit a bingo, bango, bongo, call it out on the comment space below. You do NOT need to be a registered Blogger user to post. You may be as anonymous as you’d like.

When you have a bingo or a bango, call off the squares in which you won, listing at least one show you saw each performer in. If you have a bongo, you may call off as many as you wish.

Prize: The prize is pride and bragging rights, plus the chance to share your beloved theatrical memories.

the Broadway Mouth
March 3, 2008

The Winner Takes It All

I won, and luck had nothing to do with it.

I will return later today with a new Broadway Star Bingo board, but while I had a minute, I wanted to share my great win. Ken Davenport, producer of the off-Broadway show Altar Boyz (among others), writes a blog that I follow regularly. It’s an interesting amalgam of producing theories, inspiration, and viewpoints that, as I did earlier, I still highly recommend. Whatever your role is in producing commercial art, it’s easy to get caught up in circumstances and, in the end, to lose sight of your initial vision. When the stress comes, adversity arises, or the pressure’s pressed, we panic and toss vision out the window, almost always to the detriment of our work. Davenport’s blog entries work to keep us on track toward the prize.

Occasionally Davenport will ask questions for which he’ll award prizes to the first person who responds without using Google. I’m usually not the first person to read the blogs, but I was, this time, the first to read it with the right answer.

The best part was that, while reading what he had written about John Grisham, I was thinking, “That’s like Hal Prince,” which was an easy connection for to me make because, like Hal Prince (or should I say, because of Hal Prince), I have always aspired to start new projects the day after one opens (mostly because I have so many projects I want to do and can’t wait to get started; plus, if you want to be prolific, you have to act prolific). In fact, I started writing the book to my second musical while I was (literally) in the throes of producing a reading for my first one. I liked the idea and couldn’t wait.

After thinking, “That’s like Hal Prince” while reading his blog entry, I got to the bottom and had forgotten my initial response (the question was asking what Hal Prince and John Grisham had in common, which was basically what I discuss above). When I finally made the connection, I was so excited, I almost fumbled my response.

I don’t know where I learned Prince’s work habits from—I’m thinking maybe from watching the bonus features on Broadway: The American Musical so much, though it could have come from Broadway: The Golden Age, the book Harold Prince and the American Musical Theatre: Expanded Edition by Foster Hirsch, or any of the number of books I’ve read on the topic.

What I have found is that your life calling (or area of study, as the case may be) is the area in which you could work extremely hard at something and actually look forward to it. Some people could never imagine sitting down to write a book or a play or a sitcom pilot. I could and have (though none have been published or produced professionally yet). Likewise, I could never imagine sitting down to take apart a car engine or to tackle cleaning a trashed hotel room. Thank God others can.

Hard work. Hard work is how I know that Hal Prince starts a new show the day after his last one opens. It wasn’t really work in the traditional sense, though. I’ve loved learning all that I have. But, like all good things, knowledge and success takes work to acquire, a mountain of hard work.

Luck has nothing to do with it.

the Broadway Mouth
March 3, 2008