Even though we've only done one show so far this season, it's already time to think about next season! Funding applications will start coming due in a month or two. Plus, I usually announce at the New Line Dinner (which is next week) what shows we're thinking about for next season, although I think there was only one year when the three shows I mentioned at the dinner were the same three shows we ended up producing...
So here's what I'm thinking about... First, as I mentioned in my blog entry about my trip to New York, I've decided that we're definitely doing Two Gentlemen of Verona, the rock musical, with a script by William Shakespeare and Mel Shapiro, lyrics by John Guare, and music by Hair composer Galt MacDermot. It is truly one of the rowdiest, wildest, sexiest shows I've ever seen, and the score is this wonderful mix of Latin, 70s pop, and a touch of Broadway.
Clive Barnes wrote about the original Shakespeare in the Park production in The New York Times: “The New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater is currently doing Shakespeare a power of good and turning Central Park into a place of celebration with its new production of Two Gentlemen of Verona. It is jeu d’espirit, a bardic spree, a midsummer night’s jest, a merriment of lovers, a gallimaufry of styles and a gas. It takes off.” After its move to Broadway, Barnes wrote, “It has a surge of youth to it, at times an almost carnal intimation of sexuality, and a boisterous sense of love. It is precisely this that the new musical catches and makes its own. The musical also has a strange New York feel to it – in the music, a mixture of rock, lyricism and Caribbean patter, in Mr. Guare’s spare, at times even abrasive lyrics, in the story itself of small-town kids and big-town love. It also has a very New York sense of irreverence. It is a graffito written across a classic play, but the graffito has an insolent sense of style, and the classic play can still be clearly glimpsed underneath.”
Originally, I was planning to put this show in our fall slot, mostly because we expect to do another St. Louis Political Theatre Festival this fall and it has some political content. BUT... this spring we're doing The Wild Party, with a cast of 16 (which is pretty much our limit), then Evita with a cast of 16 this summer. If we do Two Gents in the fall, which also needs at least 16 (the original was bigger), that gives us three shows in a row that are as big as New Line Theatre ever gets. And that's a problem. We only get those big casts because a fair number of veteran New Liners show up for auditions, but very few of our actors can do three shows in a row (particularly since there won't be much break between the shows). Plus, if we do big shows in the summer slot, it's also easier to cast because college kids are home... So now I'm thinking maybe Two Gents should go in our summer 2011 slot... Still, no matter which slot it's in, I'm almost positive it will be in our season.
I've also rediscovered a real gem – the 1977 wife-swapping jazz musical I Love My Wife, with book and lyrics by Michael Stewart (Hello, Dolly!, Bye Bye Birdie, Barnum, and the extremely dark Mack and Mabel), and music by Cy Coleman (Sweet Charity, City of Angels, The Life, Little Me, Barnum). It's this bizarre, quirky little musical about two couples in the late 70s who decide the Sexual Revolution is leaving them behind, so they decide to try a threesome... or a foursome... What's really cool about the show is that there is also this four-man Greek chorus that sings half the score, commenting on the action but never a part of it. These four guys even have character names and solos, but they are never part of the action. And the lyrics are some of the smartest, funniest, most suggestive lyrics I've come across in a long time – and just loaded with brilliant interior rhymes. In certain ways, it's a looser, cooler, raunchier companion piece to Company.
It's such a terrific show, and I can only assume no one produces it because it's fairly dirty... but that's never stopped us before! I'm almost positive this show will take our fall slot. But what about the Political Theatre Festival?, I hear you cry... Well, not every show in the festival is always explicitly about politics – sometimes the shows have political content under the surface. And that's the case with I Love My Wife. It's about the end of the Sexual Revolution, surely one of the most potent and pervasive social movements in American history, yet one that left many mainstream Americans behind. Like they say, the personal is political.
We've also discussed taking How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and playing it much more Brechtian, sort of like Urinetown but not that silly. I got the idea from watching Mad Men and being reminded of how oppressive that time (1962) was for so many people. There's real darkness in How to Succeed that most productions sweep under the rug, but I'd love to bring that out in front. The one drawback is that it is an awfully old show and one that a lot of companies produce – that's not necessarily a deal breaker for us, but next season is our 20th, so I'm not sure that's the time to be doing a more mainstream show, even if our approach would not be mainstream...
We're also talking about The Story of My Life, this very dark two-man musical about a lifelong friendship and how it fell apart. The show begins with the one friend, Tom, a professional writer, trying to write a eulogy for the other friend, Alvin. Before we've gotten very far, Alvin appears and guides Tom through both the eulogy and a look at their long-standing friendship, and we realize that this isn't about Alvin at all – it's about Tom. It's a really smart, really emotional, but also really dark show, and it only ran on Broadway for 5 performances. I guess a two-actor musical on a unit set that doesn't leave you happy isn't what Broadway audiences (i.e., tourists) want to see...The drawback to a show like that is with most shows, the actors' families and friends help build up the early audiences, before word-of-mouth and reviews start spreading. So having only two actors probably means that first weekend will have smallish crowds... But that's not necessarily a deal breaker... And the short Broadway run doesn't bother us – we've brought shows like that back from the dead – most notably High Fidelity, which, despite its disastrous Broadway run (13 perfs.), is now getting produced all over the country because of New Line. More than a dozen other companies have found the show through our website, they've emailed us, and we've passed them on to the authors for production rights. None of the licensing agents in New York will touch High Fidelity because it wasn't a Broadway success, but we don't need no stinking agents!
The other problem is that we try to choose at least one show every year with name recognition and that will have a good chance of selling really well (last season, it was Hair; this season, it's Evita). If we do I Love My Wife, The Story of My Life, and Two Gents, we don't have a sure-seller in the mix... We'll have to think about that...
There are other shows we've discussed but that's the first string. Like I said, both Two Gents and I Love My Wife are 99% sure things. The third slot we're still thinking about...
Then again, with my track record, who knows what shows we'll actually announce in April...
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
