Cry-Baby

Last Saturday, while I was in New York, I met the four writers of Cry-Baby the Musical for brunch -- the two songwriters, David Javerbaum (late of The Daily Show and The Onion, and author of the new book, What to Expect When You're Expected: A Fetus's Guide to the First Three Trimesters) and Adam Schlesinger (half of the alt pop band Fountains of Wayne, which was one of the many stylistic inspirations for Tom Kitt's High Fidelity score), along with Cry-Baby's two bookwriters, Mark O'Donnell and Tom Meehan (the team responsible for the Hairspray book, as well as other shows individually).

I don't think I've ever had such an entertaining business meeting! They're just like me and my friends, riffing off each other, piling jokes on jokes on jokes, but these guys are way funnier than we are...

I wanted to meet with them mostly just to get a sense of how they see Cry-Baby, what their intentions were, what's important to them about the show, what about the Broadway production they did not like (a lot), etc. They've agreed to do some rewrites on the script, to reduce the show from the Broadway cast of 32 to a New Line-sized cast of 16; and also to re-orchestrate the score from a Broadway orchestra of 19 to a New Line-sized, 6-piece rock band, which seems to be the sound they wanted all along.

When I work on a show, my favorite thing in the world is to be in conversation with the writers, and I get to do that more often than you'd guess. Failing that, I like to find actors who were in the original production and talk to them about what the director and writers talked to them about. Often times, our production will be nothing like the original, but understanding what the original creators were thinking and working toward helps me so much. For one thing, it helps me remember that directing a show should never be about showing the audience how clever I am by imposing my ideas on the show; it should be about understanding the story as fully as possible and telling it as clearly as possible.

These four writers are all really nice guys and they're all very psyched that we're doing Cry-Baby, hopefully giving it renewed life like we did for High Fidelity in 2008, which has now had several productions around the country, all facilitated by New Line. A friend at one of the licensing agencies in New York told me that they can't pick up a show for licensing to theatre companies, unless they know for sure that quite a few large, regional theatres will commit to producing it. And apparently, many of those regional theatres won't touch a musical unless it's gotten great New York reviews. So because High Fidelity and Cry-Baby suffered from shitty original productions and got (mostly) shitty reviews, they'll probably never be licensed. Luckily, we have the internet now, and so companies can find both shows through us!

This has somewhat broadened New Line's role in the art form beyond our local focus, but we welcome this, if it means wonderful, quirky shows like this can continue to live on through adventurous theatre companies like ours...

All four writers said they'll try to make it to St. Louis next season to see the show. If they can, maybe we can arrange some kind of small party after the show, so the audience can meet them. They deserve some love for this beautiful, weird musical they crafted... Hnmmm, maybe John Waters will come too!

Stay tuned. Much more news on Cry-Baby to come in the months ahead. And soon, we'll tell you about our whole 2011-2012 season, which is totally in place and which will be KICK-ASS...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

The Scottsboro Boys

An empty stage except for a haphazard pile of chairs, staqge-left. Three proscenium arches starting at the front of the stage and progressing upstage to a scrim, but though the front proscenium is straight, the one halfway back is a little crooked, and the back one is very crooked. Just this empty stage tells us something is wrong here. Balance is off, things are amiss, this world is not quite right.

And then the show starts. At first, it's just a black woman sitting on a chair (the chair standing in for a bus stop, we soon realize). And then before we know it, holy shit, we're watching a minstrel show! And John Cullum (Urinetown Shenandoah, On the 20th Century, and lots more), the only white actor in the show, leads eleven black actors in one of the most high-energy, entertaining opening numbers I've ever seen. Susan Stroman's choreography is nothing short of electrifying and the cast is magnificent. Kander and Ebb's songs are utterly brilliant, every one of them. David Thompson, who has written the book for some flop shows (Kander and Ebb's Steel Pier and also Harry Connick Jr.'s Thou Shalt Not, among others) has fashioned a brilliant script.

Soon, though, we learn why we're here. And this is a true story. Nine black men are riding a box car in 1931. When the Scottsboro sheriff stops two white women also riding the train (played by black men, as are all the other characters), the women are afraid of being arrested for the prostitutes they are, so they accuse the black men of raping them. And down the rabbit hole we go...

Over the course of half a dozen trials, setbacks, momentary triumphs, and death hovering over everything and everyone, we are told this bleak tale of injustice in the racist American South, in the form of a minstrel show. It's brilliant and horrifying and wildly entertaining and one of the most powerful, most disturbing shows I've ever seen in my life. It easily equals Kander and Ebb's other masterpieces, Cabaret, Chicago, and Kiss of the Spider Woman. But The Scottsboro Boys is their darkest show yet... and god, what a thrill it is to witness!

Susan Stroman's direction is flawless, just like her choreography, and to my personal great delight, the twelve chairs on stage stand in for everything, from a box car to a jail cell. There's never a stick of furniture onstage other than those chairs. (I'd like to think that's because they saw New Line's Assassins and Evita but I'll have to admit that's unlikely...)

And there's a surprise in the last few seconds of the show that absolutely blows your mind and gives the entire show even more weight and context than it already had.

The incredible Colman Domingo, who I first encountered playing several roles in the brilliant Passing Strange (now on DVD, check it out!) plays "Mr. Bones" among several other roles. But Joshua Henry steals the show with his powerful, emotional performance as the tragic Heywood Patterson, one of the accused, a man who refuses to accept injustice as a given. It's one of those performances that people will be talking about for decades, like Brian Stokes Mitchell in Ragtime or Michel Bell in Show Boat.

I can't wait to get hold of the Scottsboro vocal selections. These songs surely rank up there with the best of Kander and Ebb's past work. Lyricist Fred Ebb died during the writing of the show, so composer John Kander finished it alone. In a wonderful tribute, the program credits both Kander and Ebb for both music and lyrics. I think that's the only time that has happened.

All in all, an amazing finish to a week of amazing theatre: the revival of La Cage aux Folles, American Idiot, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, and The Scottsboro Boys. Yes, I also saw The Pee-Wee Herman Show at the Saturday matinee, and as wonderful as it was (I've never heard an ovation like the one Pee-Wee got when he first entered; it just went on and on and on...), and as much joy as it brought me (the secret word was FUN), it really is more sketch comedy than theatre, and only has a little music in it, so it doesn't merit a blog entry here, but if you're in NYC and you're the right age, you ought to see it. There were some kids in the house, but they didn't get a lot of it; most of the audience was my age or older...

I'm sooooooo glad to be home (I hate travel), but it's nice to see some of the cool work being done in New York, in some cases, work that New Line will be tackling down the road...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson

Absolute fucking genius.

Yes, that's right, I think the new emo rock musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is pure gold. Rowdy, hilarious, intensely serious sometimes, wildly original. And the lead, Benjamin Walker is incandescent, not to mention wearing the tightest jeans on Broadway.

The show tells the true story of our seventh President, our first populist President and the founder of the Democratic Party, from birth to death, including his systemic genocide of the Native Americans. It tells the story in today's vernacular, in terms of today's pop culture (my favorite political sign read, "Emocracy!"), and with dozens of sly, subtle references to both Dubya and Obama. It shows us both his greatness and his darkness (some historians today call him the American Hitler for his murder of tens of thousands Indians). And I know from a friend on the "inside" that absolutely everything that happens in the show is true, including Jackson's penchant for cutting. (You thought that was only teenage girls, didn't you?)

The songs are outstanding, the dialogue is incredibly funny, pointed, and there's as much subtext as there is surface action. It's both smart and smartass. If I didn't know better, I'd say they wrote it just for this blond musical theatre rebel.

Not only does the show give us a much needed -- and freakishly accurate -- history lesson, it also says some very interesting things about these times we live in now. When Jackson warns of the dangers from terrorism in our homeland, danger on the border, etc., you realize that the modern language and references aren't just stunts or cheap laughs. The writers are saying something serious: Those who do not learn from history... yeah, no shit!

Unfortunately, the production doesn't always live up to the brilliance of the material. This show has been infected with the same virus that killed Cry-Baby and that made Toxic Avenger even worse than it already was. It's this belief that nothing's funnier than "bad acting," in giant ironic quotes, and then mugging to the audience, mouth agape, to make sure we know how funny that was just now. It makes me want to strangle the director and some of the actors. Bad acting isn't funny. It's just silly, and that's not always the same thing. Children and sitcom actors mug. It's not that hard. What's really deep down funny is what's truthful, people! That's why Bat Boy is so brilliant.

Like Bat Boy, Urinetown, Spelling Bee, Cry-Baby, Little Shop, and other shows, the way to make this show work -- and to make it funnier than this current production is -- is to play it absolutely serious. Hyper-uber-serious. It's the ridiculously high stakes that makes us laugh, not mugging at the audience. This is one of those completely overwhelming shows, so crazy, so intense, so fast-moving, that it's thrilling to be in the audience (and probably, on stage, as well). It doesn't need "help" being funny.

New Line will do this show the second they let us. Goddamn, BBAJ (that's what the cool kids are calling it) is AMAZING!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

American Idiot

Thursday night I saw American Idiot, the rock musical based on the Green Day album. I wasn't sure what I was gonna think about this one -- it got generally positive reviews, but several people I know really don't like it. But I was quite pleasantly surprised. It's an incredibly cool, interesting show.

I realized as I watched it that this was the next logical step in the art form after Rent, though where Rent still has traditional musicals in its roots, American Idiot really doesn't. It works physically much like Rent, using a basically empty stage, the band right there on stage, but even more integrated into the action than in Rent. There's very little furniture, lots of ensemble work, and a lot of direct address to the audience.

American Idiot chronicles a year in the life of three friends who are lost in the labyrinth of modern day American culture. You might call them slackers, but that would trivialize the complexity of these characters' journeys. As the story begins, the three decide to head for the Big City, but one stays home with his pregnant girlfriend, and one decides to join the military, while the third pursues a life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. All three ultimately find their paths unfulfilling, and they end up back home, much the wiser... though still lost..

In some ways, this is a classic story built on the hero myth, and while there are echoes of Rent here, there are also echoes of Tommy, Act II of The Fantasticks, and other works, yet it's still very much its own, very original work, with a very distinctive, authentic rock voice that Broadway doesn't often hear. I found myself really emotional at the end, as I realized that as much as I've always known what I wanted to do with my life, there are always those moments in life when we feel lost. It's a universal experience. And far from being just a rock album on stage, this is a fully realized rock musical with some interesting things to say about our culture and our times -- the show begins with a video montage of very dark, depressing news stories, setting the angsty tone of the show.

The cast is absolutely amazing, freakishly high energy, and absolutely immersed in their characters. The hip-hop-ish choreography is incredible. The walls of the set, are covered with newspaper, rising all the way up past the proscenium, dotted with TV screens, and here and there the word OBEY is written across the papers. The lights are spectacular, sometimes feeling like a rock concert but doing much more than that, really accomplishing mood and storytelling, like good theatre lighting should. There's only a little dialogue, most of it spoken to the audience.

All in all, I loved it. Very powerful, very intense, very emotional. It's got a great score, it's beautifully directed, and the acting is everything I want from a piece of theatre -- honest, truthful, and consistently surprising.

For those who hate American Idiot, you have to remember that this show is not the same animal as The Full Monty or Hairspray or Hello, Dolly! This is rock theatre. Its aesthetics are different, its language is different, its goals are different. Rock theatre generally tells much more primal tales. American Idiot is a triple hero myth, as each of the three lost friends have to take their own path and face their own obstacles, each cross into the underworld, learn something about themselves, and then return to their people with their new knowledge. The central guy even has to face his own "evil wizard" in the person of the drug dealer. It's classic stuff. The tragedy of the ending is that the three friends are still lost at the end. They've learned something but it's not enough in this oppressive, over-stimulated world of ours. I think what the show is saying is really truthful and really timely.

Personally, I love this trend toward emo rock musicals. The key to musical theatre is emotion, after all, and emo rock is the most emotionally expressive language American youth has right now. Rock theatre isn't just about the rock anymore. I think Hedwig and Rent started that. That's why we did Love Kills last season and why we're doing the pop opera Bare in June...

I don't know if New Line could produce American Idiot -- I think the overwhelming spectacle of it is very key to the story and the point of the show, which woould be beyond our reach. But as always, I never say never...

See this one when the tour comes through! This is one of the several directions the musical theatre is heading right now, and I couldn't be happier about that!

Long Live the Musicals!
Scott

Grey Gardens

I was back at Lincoln Center Thursday, this time to watch a video of the musical Grey Gardens. I've been curious about this show for a while. I saw the wonderful, sad, beautiful documentary from the early 1970s that the show is based on a few years ago, and I couldn't imagine how it could be a musical.

It is very cool. I don't know if it's something New Line will ever produce. Right now, I'd say probably not, but I've learned to never say never.

As it turns out Act II of the show is based on the documentary about these two women, both relatives of Jackie Kennedy, who live in a decaying mansion in East Hampton. In the film, the two talk directly to the filmmakers, so here they talk to the audience. The relationship between the two women is remarkable -- they clearly love and need each other very much, but they also do their level best to tear down and humiliate each other. Very complicated stuff.

Act I is the backstory, set in the early 1940s, on the day of the daughter's engagement party, where we see the seeds of the connection and the destruction to come, as the mother drives the fiance away and ruins her daughter's chance to escape this complex emotional web.

Not a happy show. Not super tuneful songs. But good, solid theatre. I'd like to see it live, though I don't think I want to work on it. It's so depressing with no real redemption or hope at the end. And those flat Kennedy accents would be tough to get right. Plus, there are two kids in the cast, and I really hate working with kids.

I'm just sayin'...

Still, well worth seeing. I love how endless the possibilities are in contemporary musical theatre. Literally nothing is off limits. Even documentaries.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

La Cage aux Folles

So here I am in New York. I got here Tuesday night and will leave Sunday morning. In addition to seeing some very cool friends (yes, Amy, that includes you), I'm seeing some very cool musical theatre.

I started Wednesday afternoon at the New York Public Library's Theatre on Film and Tape Collection at Lincoln Center. My home away from home. I watched the 2005 revival of Two Gentlemen of Verona at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park. It's a terrific production and it's what convinced me a year ago that New Line had to produce the show -- it's one of the rowdiest, funniest, sexiest shows I've ever seen. Even though we'll come at it somewhat differently, it helps me so much to see shows on their feet rather than on the page, so it was great to see it again. My head is positively swimming with ideas now, but you'll have to wait till March to see what they are...

Wednesday night I saw the latest revival of La Cage aux Folles. I had heard great things about it and I had seen the original Broadway production when I was in college, so I was anxious to see this. I had been told that it was way darker (which we all know I love) and that in this version, the club in the show was much seedier.

But that's not entirely true. What was so different may just be a product of changing expectations from the musical theatre audience. The biggest difference was the acting. So real, so honest, so truthful. They didn't play it as musical comedy; they approached the characters, relationships, etc. the way they would in a serious play. So though it's a funny story, there was no layer of irony distancing us from the emotions of these characters and events.

Kelsey Grammer (yes, that's right, Fraiser) played Georges, and he absolutely disappeared into the role. There was no hint left of Grammer's (or Fraiser's) ego, none of his regular bag of comedic tricks. This was a fully drawn, subtle, honest character, and it was a real delight to see it.

Also, this time around the drag queens -- Les Cagelles -- looked like drag queens! It was very obvious they were all men; in fact, they were all hot, muscular men (and for this gay man, the killer abs on display were an unexpected treat), and the show never tried to fool us into thinking they were women. Unlike the original, there were no real women among them. When we were seeing the club show, it was rowdy, nasty, hilarious, and overflowing with anarchy. Precision was not the main agenda; fun was. It felt so much like the real drag shows I've seen...

But the real highlight of the show was Douglas Hodge as Albin. His performance was nothing short of pure genius. Funny, honest, painful, subtle, joyful, and most of all, incredibly real. The kind of guy you'd love to have for a friend. Again, this was no musical comedy performance; this is an actor at the height of his power. Sometimes a naughty little boy, sometimes a weary middle-aged man, sometimes just a charismatic, lifelong entertainer who knows how to connect with an audience. His songs, "A Little More Mascara" and "I Am What I Am," both start out very quiet, very small, and that little detail made it so real, so emotional. He wasn't entertaining us with these songs; they were soliloquies from a man who isn't as sure or as strong as Albin usually is.

It's one of those productions that makes me see the material from an entirely different angle, much like the 1990s revivals of Carousel and The King and I. What I always thought of as a very sweet, fun musical comedy is now something much, much more. And what a joy it is to witness real artists of the theatre find that greater depth and subtlety in a show that isn't known for those things. It must've been there all along, hiding, waiting for actors and a director like this.

When Albin sings, in his brilliant "I Am What I Am," the lyric "Life's not worth a damn, till you can say, Hey world, I am what I am," I couldn't help but think of Don't Ask Don't Tell, gay marriage, and the other civil rights gay Americans still don't enjoy. Who knew that more than 25 years later, this show would remain this timely? It casts a fascinating shadow over the story.

Perhaps the nicest thing about this revival is that in the original, Georges and Albin never kissed. We had no hint that they had a physical relationship. In this production, the final image the audience is left with is a real, loving kiss between the two. Not a peck, the kind of kiss that a couple of 20 years would share. It was so clear these two men love each other, which is so central to the story but so absent from the more skittish original...

By the end of the cheering standing ovation, I was so overwhelmed with emotion, I could barely speak. I was supposed to meet a friend after the show, and I thought I wasn't going to be able to talk without bursting into tears. It was that powerful for me.

Not a show I'll soon forget.

I know what you're thinking -- now that I've seen this production, will New Line do La Cage? Well, first, there were some noticeable rewrites of the script and score, and I don't know if they'll be licensing this new version or not. Second, though it's a smaller version of the show, it's still a cast of 19, which is a bit big for us. But I'll say this -- it's not out of the realm of possibility...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott