Ten Awesome Surprises on New Line's YouTube Channel

Seven years ago, New Line started a YouTube channel. At first, it wasn't clear exactly what we'd use it for, beyond promo videos. But after a while, we started to recognize how useful and also educational our channel could be. We started recording interviews with our actors during rehearsals, and I started uploading clips from historical videos I had. Soon I realized we could do so many cool things with your YouTube channel, including my favorite YouTube feature: playlists!

Seven years later, we've got more than 350 subscribers and our channel gets more than 5,000 visitors a month, watching close to 15,000 minutes of video each month.

So here are ten of the coolest surprises you'll find on our YouTube channel. Fair warning, though, if you're a hardcore musical theatre fan, you may get lost in there and not emerge for several days...

New Line's YouTube History of Musical Theatre
This is my favorite part of our channel. I've assembled two playlists (it wouldn't fit on one), chronicling the history of our art form, from the beginning to the present, though about 250 YouTube videos. The first video is a recreation of George M. Cohan's 1904 show, Little Johnny Jones, one of the very first American musical comedies. Many of the videos have the show's original cast performing numbers on the Tonys, The Tonight Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, and other TV appearances. In some cases, the videos are film or TV versions, or revivals, that are the best records we have. And because we now live happily in The Information Age, we can now see home movies and other rare records of these shows, clips we never could have seen before YouTube. These playlists also include some interviews with writers, directors, and actors. We're always looking for cool new material to add...

And while we're talking history, we also have a playlist of complete Tony Awards broadcasts, from 1967-2014.

Musical Theatre Interviews
This is a playlist of videos featuring writers, directors, designers, and actors talking about their work in the musical theatre, including great artists like Stephen Sondheim, Jason Robert Brown, Hal Prince, Susan Stroman, Tommy Tune, Bill Finn, Tim Rice, Frank Wildhorn, John Kander, Jerry Herman, Savion Glover, George C. Wolfe, Arthur Laurents, Tim Curry, Stew, Michael Friedman, Elaine Strich, Bob Fosse, and that's not even all of them. Much of this is historical video that's never been commercially released. Quite a few of these come from my own personal collection. Some of the coolest things include a 1975 interview with Tim Curry about Rocky Horror, a Charlie Rose segment about George Abbott, with his daughter, Frank Rich, and Mary Rodgers Guettel, an interview with Paul Simon about Capeman, a 1965 interview with Sondheim and Arthur Laurents about Do I Hear a Waltz?, and other cool stuff.

Compare and Contrast
I just started this list recently, and I'll keep adding to it. It's one of my favorite lists, featuring multiple interpretations of famous theatre songs, so far including various performances of "Rose's Turn," "If I Were a Rich Man," "I'm Still Here," "Being Alive," "I Am What I Am," "The Ladies Who Lunch," and "Wilkommen." What's fun for me about this collection is that you can see several "right" but different choices for each song, proving that, most of the time, there really is no "right" answer. I hope this will also be an antidote to all the young actors who imitate the original performers. Every role has so many possibilities!

Random Cool Musical Theatre Shit
Normally, I guess this "Etc." category would go at the end, but I love these videos so much. They just don't fit into our other playlists. There are so many odd but awesome things here, including "Def Ass Musical Theatre Gangsta Jam," Seth MacFarlane doing the "Trouble" speech, "The Horrifying Truth About Life Inside Movie Musicals," and weirdest of all, Muhammad Ali in a Broadway musical (in case you're wondering, it's awful and he can't sing). But my favorite video here comes from my own collection, Chris Elliott's hilarious short film "Housewives," a wacky parody of the famous documentary about making the Company cast album. This aired on the Letterman show in 1994, and I remember at the time thinking, This is hilarious, but no one will get it unless they've seen the documentary. Regardless, I was smart enough to record it...

Great Movie Musical Moments
Exactly what it sounds like, an eclectic collection of some incredibly cool movie musical moments, like "Take Off With Us" from All That Jazz, "Bang Bang" from Robin and the 7 Hoods, and three brilliant clips from the musical-within-a-movie The Tall Guy; alongside more mainstream fare like Gene Kelly's "Singin' in the Rain," and Sweet Charity's "Big Spender." My personal favorite is "Fortuosity," the opening from Disney's The Happiest Millionaire, one of my all-time favorite movie musicals.

Broadway Musical Commercials
The Broadway musical TV commercial was born in the early 1970s, when Bob Fosse asked producer Stuart Ostrow for some money to film a commercial for Pippin. The commercial did wonders for the box office, and from then on, every big show had to advertise on TV. Here is a really cool collection of commercials from the 70s to today. I especially enjoy watching the commercials for the shows I've never seen, to get just a taste of how they felt and how they moved...

Follies and Cop Rock
Whenever I go to New York, I make an appointment to watch videos of shows at the New York Public Library's Theatre on Film and Tape Collection at Lincoln Center. Years ago, I heard that there were home movies of the original 1971 production of Follies. I called the Collection and asked about it. Yes, they had an hour of home movie footage, half of it with sound. Sold! But there was a hitch. Both Sondheim and James Goldman's widow had to give permission for me to watch it. As I had corresponded with Sondheim a fair amount, he readily gave permission, but Mrs. Goldman wouldn't. So I couldn't watch it. The next time I went to NYC, I enlisted Sondheim to ask Mrs. Goldman, and she agreed, and I finally got to see the footage. Truly one of the thrills of my life up to that point.

And now all that footage is on YouTube. God bless the internet. So we've collected all of it into one playlist.

In parallel to that, I wrote a blog post in 2012 in defense of Cop Rock, which I love. The post continues to get quite a bit of traffic (I'm probably the only one on the entire internet saying anything nice about Cop Rock). Not long ago, I acquired the entire series on DVD. It's never been released commercially but I found someone who had all the episodes (it ran less than a full season!). When I was writing that post, I thought the best argument for Cop Rock is Cop Rock. I wanted people to see it. So I found several clips already on YouTube, and I added several of my own, and now there are sixteen clips available of this bold, ballsy TV series. My blog post explains why I think this show was worthwhile. If you're still a skeptic, watch just one of these videos, and judge for yourself. I think the best is "Sandman," powerful, emotional musical drama.

Demo Recordings
One of the many cool things people upload to YouTube is demo recordings of musicals. I put together playlists of the demos from Rent, Cry-Baby, and Spring Awakening. It's so fascinating to hear the differences between these recordings and the later versions we're familiar with now. One of the biggest surprises for me in the Rent demos (among many!) is that Mark's parents had thrown him out of the house! And the opening verse to the title song is Mark's suicide fantasy! Quite a different character from the Mark we know today. So cool to see how a work changes and evolves over time...

New Line Content
We've been adding original, Behind-the-Scenes content since 2010, including interviews with actors during the rehearsal process, video tours of our sets, videos of our talk-back events for each show, and also a few media interviews. We also have a playlist of all our promo videos, going back to Urinetown in 2007. We've experimented with how to do these promos, but now we have Kyle Jeffery Studios as our regular videographers, so they're now making really great videos for us, including our awesome 25th Anniversary Video. We also have clips from several of our shows on our channel, documenting our company's history and evolution over time.

Celebrity Anniversary Wishes
For our 25th anniversary season, we wanted a special video to mark the occasion. So I asked a number of people I know working in New York theatre to record a short video greeting for our anniversary. We ended up with eight very cool videos, from John Waters, Betty Buckley, Amanda Green, Andrew Lippa, Ann Harada, Kyle Jarrow, Lee Wilkof, and John McDaniel. So awesome! And honestly, I was thrilled to get videos from all these folks, but I have to admit the greatest thrill was getting one from John Waters, and wait till you see how awesome his video is...!

Pretty cool, huh? Even cooler, ever since we did Cry-Baby, I've been on John Waters' Christmas card list. You can't even imagine...

Admit it, our YouTube channel sounds amazing! So take some time to browse around and see what treasures you can find. If you subscribe (it's free), you'll be notified whenever we add anything new. Enjoy!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

We'll Make It Beautiful

The Heathers have left the building.

New Line's sold-out, critically acclaimed production of the brilliant rock musical Heathers is now just a memory. Right now, I don't think we'll ever return to this show, but I've learned never to say never.

The response was amazing. Every night sold out except our preview, with standing ovations every night, and so much love from the press! Here are just a few quick samples:

"This is beyond must-see entertainment. . . You'll be dazzled by its brilliance." – Chris Gibson, BroadwayWorld

"A racy rock score drives 120 mph into the dark, libidinous story with a narrative intelligence reminiscent of Gilbert and Sullivan on coke." – Chris Limber, Buzz On Stage

"A spectacular production." – Tina Farmer, KDHX

"As entertaining as it is terrifying." – Paul Friswold, The Riverfront Times

"Ruthlessly intense in the final 20 minutes" – Richard Green, TalkinBroadway

"One of the standouts of the year." – Lynn Venhaus, Belleville News-Democrat

What a wild, awesome ride it's been. We assembled a truly exceptional cast, funny, gutsy, inventive, and more than half of them new to our company; our designers all did excellent work; and we discovered as we worked that this powerful, beautiful show is way more serious, more intelligent, more insightful than any of us thought. And way more relevant. It's about far more than high school violence.

As J.D. puts it, "People are going to look at the ashes of Westerberg and say there's a school that self-destructed not because society didn't care, but because that school was society." How meta. I can't imagine any other moment in history more exactly tuned to Heathers' satire and its message than right now. And what is that message?

We don't have to be assholes.

In this historical moment, when many Americans genuinely believe our President is trying to destroy our country, when huge chunks of the American electorate think the usually nasty Donald Trump would make a good President, when Congress is pursuing the nastiest kind of partisan witch hunt against a Presidential candidate, Heathers delivers an important lesson for us.

We can choose not to be assholes. Each one of us, every day. We can choose.

When the relative anonymity of the internet makes it so easy to be mean, to belittle, to insult, to assault verbally (have you ever read the comments on political news stories?), Heathers tells us that we can choose to be Heather Chandler and Heather Duke, or we can choose to be Veronica. J.D.'s response to the cruelty of Westerberg High is to be even worse than they are, but that only drags him down to hell with them. Veronica learns that the only reasonable answer is to reject the cruelty, to be different from the assholes.

Veronica and Gandhi.

She chooses not to be an asshole. Okay, sure, it takes her a while, but we should cut her some slack. Who among us could resist Charming J.D. in Act I?

Heathers starts and ends with twin phrases. At the beginning, we hear it many times, "We can be beautiful." By the finale, that phrase changes to "We'll make it beautiful." It's no longer just a possibility; now it's a decision. That's not some Hallmark sentiment. That's the point of the show. We can choose to be beautiful, to be open and optimistic and joyful. We can choose to embrace life, rather than struggle against it. We can chose not to see life as a zero-sum competition.

To be fair, J.D. (at least as drawn in the musical) is probably too fucked up to choose well. He's more complex than that. We all have damage, but J.D.'s goes pretty deep and pretty far back. As he sings to Veronica, just before the finale, "I am damaged, far too damaged, but you're not beyond repair." He's right. Maybe his most tragic flaw is his self-awareness. He's knows exactly how damaged and how toxic he is. But at least there's enough good in him to make his final selfless act. Which makes him even more tragic.

Veronica is our surrogate, the audience's way into the story and also our guide (as narrator) through these moral "woods." As the great James Baldwin wrote in his 1962 essay, "The Creative Process":

The conquest of the physical world is not man’s only duty. He is also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of himself. The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.

The redemption at the end is so powerful for us because Veronica is our stand-in. We know we've all done mean things, said mean things, hurt people. But through Veronica we can be redeemed. We can find our way out of those dark woods.

We can choose not to be assholes. If Veronica can do it, so can we.

Despite its darkness, its aggression, its vulgarity, Heathers is ultimately a show that asks us to "make the world a decent place for people who are decent," to reject all Heathers and their types, whether in high school or out in the world. Not with explosives, like J.D., but with decency, like Veronica.

It's a more hopeful companion piece to both our last two shows, The Threepenny Opera and Jerry Springer the Opera.

I think most of our audiences were both deeply moved and genuinely surprised by this show. It's so much richer and more beautiful and more emotional than anyone expected. In comparison, the film (which I've always loved) seems a little less intense now that we can see how powerful this story really can be, how emotionally harrowing. In all fairness, much of that power comes from this rich, evocative music, and the musical theatre's ability to do interior monologues, like "Kindergarten Boyfriend," "Fight for Me," and the first part of "Dead Girl Walking." What a fucking show!

I am forever indebted to our cast, our musicians, and our designers and staff. Musical theatre is the most collaborative of all art forms, and a show isn't this great unless everybody involved is doing their very best. I am a very lucky man – I get to do what I've always wanted to do, and I get to do it with really talented, really smart, really creative people. I often end my blog posts with "I love my job," but that doesn't begin to cover it...

Many, many thanks to all the New Liners who worked on this, to the press who really understood this difficult piece, and to St. Louis audiences, who so embraced our show and gave us a sold-out run full of standing ovations. I am so grateful.

And one last special mention. Pretty much from the minute I decided we'd produce Heathers, or at least from the first time I heard the score, I knew I needed Anna Skidis to play Veronica. We don't often pre-cast roles, but this was a no-brainer. I knew she'd be extraordinary in this role, and I was right. I can't imagine any actor being more right for this role. Every night, she and Evan (as J.D.) made me laugh out loud and they broke my heart, and Jesus, I could listen to them sing (together or separately) forever. Actually, if I were really rich, I'd just hire these sixteen actors to come sing for me once in a while. What a glorious sound they all made together.

One line from the show pretty much captures my feelings right now: "Holy shit!"

Goodbye, Westerberg. We'll miss you!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

A Raging Black Ocean

Jonathan Gottschall writes in his excellent book The Storytelling Animal, "Story – sacred and profane – is perhaps the main cohering force in human life. A society is composed of fractious people with different personalities, goals, and agendas. What connects us beyond our kinship ties? Story. As John Garner puts it, Fiction 'is essentially serious and beneficial, a game player against chaos and death, against entropy.' Story is the counterforce to social disorder, the tendency of things to fall apart. Story is the center without which the rest cannot hold."

And we have been engaged in some heavy-duty storytelling these last several weeks.

There are three things about Heathers that surprise the hell out of our audiences. First, that the show is as vulgar and aggressive as it is. It paints a very ugly picture of this micro-society. Second, that it is as intense as it is; at least on stage, it's definitely more crime thriller than teen comedy. And third, that the show includes moments of genuinely transcendent beauty and emotion, amidst the terror and hormones run amok. It's those moments in which the show really earns it.

It continues to baffle me why it seems that the director off Broadway thought this is a musical comedy, but that's how he staged it. Of course, I think he wildly misdirected Reefer Madness off Broadway as well. He's a director who does not trust his material or respect his audience. Heathers is a much more serious, more complex piece than the off Broadway production would suggest.

Here are two cases in point, both from Act II, where the story turns considerably darker. Several people in our audiences have remarked to me how much darker and more serious the musical is than the movie (something the off Broadway production did not understand). I think one of the central reasons for that difference in tone is that musicals use interior monologues, so characters can just tell us outright what they're thinking and feeling. In the case of Heathers onstage, the implications of the outrageousness and cruelty become much more obvious, because emotion is at the forefront of the story.

Because this is a musical.

It's interesting how constantly murder and suicide dance around each other in this show, masquerading one for the other, sometimes real, sometimes not. The show traps us by making the first three murders, all in Act I, funny. By the time we get to Act II, we're not taking death any more seriously than J.D. does. And then the show shakes us out of that complacency and smacks us with the real pain all this ugliness causes – all this ugliness we were laughing at all through the first act.

It's when Larry O'Keefe and Kevin Murphy force us to face this shit, that the show makes its bones. This is no teen comedy. This is a show comfortably in the artistic company of Cabaret, Chicago, The Scottsboro Boys, and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.

Early in Act II, the guidance counselor Ms. Fleming's ridiculous anti-suicide rally gets accidentally sidetracked into genuine emotion, with Heather McNamara's powerful solo, "Lifeboat." Notice that the lyric follows one of Sondheim's rules, that rhyme in theatre lyrics connotes intelligence and/or presence of mind. The more intellectual, the more rhyme; the more emotional, the less rhyme. Here is a song that's uncomfortably emotional, and so there is very little rhyme here, essentially one rhyme per stanza, only at the end, which is in real contrast with much of the Heathers score. Not only that, but it's the same rhyme in every verse, subtly altered each time, but still...

I float in a boat
On a raging black ocean.
Low in the water
And nowhere to go.
The tiniest lifeboat,
With people I know.

Cold, clammy and crowded.
The people smell desp'rate.
We'll sink any minute,
So someone must go.
The tiniest lifeboat,
With people I know.

Everyone's pushing,
Everyone's fighting,
Storms are approaching,
There's nowhere to hide!
If I say the wrong thing
Or I wear the wrong outfit
They'll throw me right over the side!

I'm hugging my knees,
And the captain is pointing.
Well, who made her captain?
Still, the weakest must go.
The tiniest lifeboat,
Full of people I know.
The tiniest lifeboat,
Full of people I know.

One of O'Keefe's favorite acts is to give his audience emotional and narrative whiplash, jerking them between hilarious and poignant, wacky and sad. Mac's short monologue leading up to "Lifeboat," ends with a very dark, but undeniably funny punchline, which gets a big laugh that almost immediately quiets, as the audience sees Mac is dead serious. She says:

My sort-of boyfriend killed himself because he was gay for his linebacker. And my best friend seemed to have it all together, but she's gone too. Now my stomach's hurting worse and worse, and every morning on the bus I feel my heart beating louder and faster, and I'm like Jesus, I'm on the frickin' bus again 'cause all my rides to school are dead.

That's a dark fucking punchline, and the audience instantly recognizes the uncomfortable truth in what she says. And really, it's brilliant writing, leading seamlessly into the song, fully character-driven. And it really drives home the social isolation of this girl who until recently was on the top of the social heap, her pain, her fear. It's funny because the punchline is such a surprise, but it's also sad as hell. And that's the beauty of this show.

The other powerhouse emotional solo, Martha's "Kindergarten Boyfriend," just shatters our audience every night. It's intentionally childlike, with short sentences, very simple vocabulary, very child-like images, which give her a palpable innocence. Martha is forever stuck emotionally at age five, kissing Ram on the kickball field in kindergarten, a time and place before judgment and cliques and social cruelty.

This song is very much like the brilliant "Somewhere That's Green" in Little Shop of Horrors. It's power is in its simplicity, in how little Martha asks from life to be happy, and how impossible we know her dreams to be. Lyricist-bookwriter Howard Ashman wrote a forward to the published Little Shop script that also applies to Heathers, and especially to Martha. He wrote:

Little Shop of Horrors satirizes many things: science fiction, B movies, musical comedy itself, and even the Faust legend. There will, therefore, be a temptation to play it for camp and low-comedy. This is a great and potentially fatal mistake. The script keeps its tongue firmly in cheek, so the actors should not. Instead, they should play with simplicity, honesty, and sweetness – even when events are at their most outlandish. The show’s individual “style” will evolve naturally from the words themselves and an approach to acting and singing them that is almost child-like in its sincerity and intensity. By way of example, Audrey poses like Fay Wray from time to time. But she does this because she’s in genuine fear and happens to see the world as her private B movie – not because she’s “commenting” to the audience on the silliness of her situation. Having directed the original New York production of Little Shop myself, and subsequently having seen it in many versions and even many languages, I can vouch for the fact that when Little Shop is at its most honest, it is also at its funniest and most enjoyable.

In fact, this applies to many shows New Line produces, including Bat Boy, Urinetown, Cry-Baby, BBAJ, and many others. The more honest, the most heartfelt, the more powerful. The writers take care of the outrageousness; the actors supply the honesty and emotional reality. Notice that there are no rhymes in this song. Just raw emotion.

Martha sings:

There was a boy I met in kindergarten.
He was sweet, he said that I was smart.
He was good at sports and people liked him.
And at nap time, once, we shared a mat.
I didn't sleep, I sat and watched him breathing;
Watched him dream for nearly half an hour,
Oooo...
Then he woke up.

He pulled a scab off, one time, playing kickball.
Kissed me quick, then pressed it in my hand.
I took that scab and put it in a locket.
All year long I wore it near my heart.
He didn't care if I was thin or pretty,
And he was mine until we hit first grade.
Oooo...
Then he woke up.

This last sentence returns, now with much different, much deeper meaning; and this image of waking up will return again. Once the real dream dies, the song moves into fantasy, just as Martha has done all these years. And the music takes flight along with the imagery...

Last night I dreamed
A horse with wings
Flew down into my homeroom.
On its back there he sat,
And he held out his arms.
So we sailed above the gym,
Across the faculty parking lot,
My kindergarten boyfriend and I...
And a horse with wings…

The only world she knows is school and the people there. And reality is smacking her in the face now.

Now we're all grown up and we know better.
Now we recognize the way things are.
Certain boys are just for kindergarten,
Certain girls are meant to be alone.

You've got to be carefully taught. The script tells us, "Lights change to reveal Martha standing on the edge of a bridge."

But I believe that any dream worth having
Is a dream that should not have to end.
So I’ll build a dream that I can live in,
And this time I’m never waking up.
And we'll soar
Above the trees,
Over cars and croquet lawns.
Past the church,
And the lake,
And the tri-county mall!
We will fly
Through the dawn,
To a new kindergarten...
Where nap time is centuries long.
Oooo...
Oooo...
Oooo.

Martha raises her arms, as if to fly. As she leans back... Blackout. Splash. And all this was foreshadowed back in Act I, at the homecoming party.

"So I'll build a dream that I can live in, and this time I'm never waking up." Wow. This image of waking returns, now in the context of the story's first real suicide attempt, a "dream" in which "nap time" – the big sleep? – the only possible safe place, "is centuries long." It's not just beautiful language, not just authentic emotion, but also rich, character-driven poetry. Only Martha could sing this song, because only this character would feel these things, but only in a musical could her pain be this eloquent and revealing.

These two songs change how we watch the rest of the show. We are no longer at an ironic distance; we are elbows deep in these messy, authentic emotions, and it makes for some powerful, harrowing theatre in the last twenty minutes.

We close this week, having sold out all but one performance (our preview). I will miss this show, this cast, and this wild, wonderful experience of living inside this gorgeous, rich, thrilling music for the last several months. It's been such a privilege and such fun.

On the bright side, half this cast is going on to American Idiot with us...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Hot and Pissed and On the Pill

One of the coolest songs in Heathers, “Dead Girl Walking,” is also a master class in lyric writing and storytelling, courtesy of Larry O'Keefe and Kevin Murphy.

Veronica has risen to the peak of high school society and now she has fallen. But instead of licking her wounds, she becomes active for the first time, no longer just recording life in her diary, no longer doing what others command, but now actively making choices and choosing a path.

Of course, the greatest irony here, in a show positively dripping with it, is that while Veronica rejects passivity to the Heathers, soon she will become equally passive to J.D.

As the homecoming party moves inside Ram's house, Veronica takes us on a whirlwind tour of plot. In the first two verses of "Dead Girl Walking," she assesses her situation and makes a big decision, in the chorus she takes action, and as the song climaxes, we see what she learned from the Heathers, to take what she wants.

The demon queen of high school has decreed it:
She says Monday, 8 a.m., I will be deleted.
They’ll hunt me down in study hall;
Stuff and mount me on the wall.
Thirty hours to live – how shall I spend them?

I don't have to stay and die like cattle:
I could change my name and ride up to Seattle.
But i don't own a motorbike – wait ...
Here's an option that I like:
Spend those thirty hours gettin' freakay!
Yeah!

I need it hard.
I'm a dead girl walkin'!
I'm in your yard.
I'm a dead girl walkin'!
Before they punch my clock,
I'm snapping off your window lock.
Got no time to knock,
I'm a dead girl walkin'!

This narration of Veronica approaching J.D.'s bedroom is mirrored in Act II in "Yo Girl," when the ensemble sings of J.D. approaching Veronica's bedroom, but this time looking for violence, not just violent sex:

Guess who’s right down the block?
Guess who's climbing the stairs?
Guess who's picking your lock?
Time's up. Go say your prayers.

But back to "Dead Girl Walking"... Veronica comes into J.D.'s bedroom, and initiates hot, rough sex:

Had to see you, hope I didn't wake you.
See, I decided I must ride you till I break you.
'Cause Heather says I gots to go.
You're my last meal on death row.
Shut your mouth and lose them tighty-whitays!

Come on!
Tonight I'm yours.
I'm your dead girl walkin'!
Get on all fours.
Kiss this dead girl walkin'!
Let's go, you know the drill...
I'm hot and pissed and on the pill.
Bow down to the will
Of a dead girl walkin'!

And ya know, ya know, ya know,
It's 'cause you're beautiful.
You say you're numb inside ...
But i can't agree.
So the world's unfair. . .
Keep it locked out there.
In here it's beautiful. ..
Let's make this beautiful!

Yeah!
Full steam ahead!
Take this dead girl walkin'!
Let's break the bed!
Rock this dead girl walkin'!
No sleep tonight for you,
Better chug that Mountain Dew.
Get your ass in gear,
Make this whole town disappear.
Slap me! Pull my hair,
Touch me there and there and there,
But no more talking!
Love this dead girl walkin'!

The music and lyric builds with the sex, as the song rises to its orgasmic finish. First, as Veronica keeps singing the title phrase, JD’s vocals fall into the rhythm of their sex:

Whoa, oa, oa, oa!
Whoa! Whoa!
Hey! Hey!
Yeah! Yeah!
Whoa! Whoa!
Hey! Hey!
Wait! Wait!

And then they fall into sync with each other, and as they climax sexually, they also climax musically, singing a unison “Yeah” over and over, until a final held “Yeah” and a big musical finish, as they collapse on the bed.

This song returns for the show's climax in Act II. This time, “dead” is no longer a metaphor for social banishment; now it means DEAD. By this point in the show, we've become aware of Veronica's progression of culpability, from complete innocence at first to full complicity later on.

As in the earlier version of this song, so much plot happens during this reprise – Veronica makes a decision in the first verse, goes looking for J.D. during the chorus, then finds him and confronts him in the second verse, almost exactly the way the first incarnation of the song works. That's some economical writing.

I wanted someone strong who could protect me.
I let his anger fester and infect me.
His solution is a lie;
No one here deserves to die,
Except for me and the monster I created!
Yeah ... Yeah!

Heads up, J.D.!
I'm a dead girl walking!
Can't hide from me!
I'm a dead girl walking!
It's one more dance and then farewell,
Cheek-to-cheek in hell,
With a dead girl walking!

(to JD)
I wish your mom had been a little stronger.
I wish she'd stayed around a little longer.
I wish your dad were good;
I wish grownups understood;
I wish we'd met before
They convinced you life is war.
I wish you'd come with me…

And J.D. replies only, "I wish I had more TNT." We see now how fundamentally incompatible they are (even if they do complete each other's rhymes). And that leads directly to the climax of the show, this time a narrative climax, rather than a sexual one...

I continually marvel at the quality of writing in this show. It's such fun to watch it every night, to see new things all the time, to see new little moments the actors have found, and to watch audience after audience transfixed by our story, followed by a cheering, shouting, standing ovation after every show. What an experience this has been!

It reminds me a lot of the two times we produced Larry O'Keefe's Bat Boy. And our adventure isn't over yet...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Bam! Bam! Bam!

Musical theatre has a few great mad scenes, including Bat Boy's "Apology to a Cow," Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson's "The Saddest Song," Edwin Drood's" A Man Could Go Quite Mad," The Wild Party's "Let Me Drown" (and arguably, "Life of the Party"), Sweeney Todd's "Epiphany," Gypsy's "Everything's Coming Up Roses" and "Rose's Turn"...

"Freeze Your Brain" in Heathers is closer kin to Gypsy's "Everything's Coming Up Roses," giving just hints, glimpses into the madness to come. And Heathers' "Meant to Be Yours" is a lot like Gypsy's "Rose's Turn," the characters half talking to themselves, half screaming at the world, in a full-blown meltdown.

J.D. is one of the musical theatre's more complicated characters. For anyone born before the 1960s, the initials "J.D." are still 40s and 50s slang for "juvenile delinquent." As Paul Friswold put it, in his Riverfront Times review of New Line's production, "He has lost his first love. He's a motherless child of a brutal and distant father. He's outside everything and against everything, a nihilist who feels only hatred for this world." Yet in certain ways, he's also a perverse Christ Figure, persecuted, beaten, mocked, excluded, and with his own Mary Magdalene. He even (sort of) dies for "our" sins. And his full name is Jason Dean, which isn't too far off from Jesus Christ.

Because musicals can do what movies can't, we get inside J.D.'s brain far more in Heathers onstage than in the film. Both his "mad scenes" are just full of great character writing and insightful details, as well as great 80s pop music and incredibly well-crafted lyrics, full of rhyme and alliteration. Notice that both these songs are chock full of rhyme – the verses of "Freeze Your Brain" are ABCBDD and the chorus is ABACCDD. Following Sondheim's rule, this abundance of rhyme shows us J.D. is too much in his head. He over-thinks everything.

J.D. and Veronica's first extended scene happens in a 7-11, and once the scene gets underway we realize this is no accident. This is J.D.'s home turf. This is a safe place for him to meet Veronica. The one place that's the same no matter what town his father moves them to. He's been waiting for her here. Maybe what's most surprising in this scene is that Veronica is still interested in him by the end.

He sings "Freeze Your Brain," by way of unorthodox introduction:

I've been through ten high schools.
They start to get blurry.
No point planting roots,
'Cause you're gone in a hurry.
My dad keeps two suitcases packed in the den,
So it's only a matter of when.

I don't learn the names,
Don't bother with faces.
All I can trust
Is this concrete oasis.
Seems every time I'm about to despair,
There's a 7-Eleven right there.

Each store is the same,
From Las Vegas to Boston,
Linoleum aisles
That I love to get lost in.
Yeah, I live for that sweet frozen rush...

Notice the lyric writing craft here, the richness of "No point planting roots," with the alliteration of the Ps, and the three terminal Ts. Notice all the Ss in "...faces. All I can trust is this concrete oasis. Seems... despair, there's... store is the same... Las Vegas to Boston..." You get the idea. In the third stanza, there's also a lot of L sounds, in "Las Vegas... linoleum... love to get lost in. Yeah, I live..." The lyric sounds effortless, casual, conversational, fully organic to the character, but every word is carefully chosen.

So far in the song, J.D. has told us his problem, and the solution he found. But we don't yet know why that's the solution. What does he find at 7-11 that he can't find anywhere else? Slurpees. Now we get to the real J.D. and the chorus. Notice the many S and Z sounds mashed up together here.

Freeze your brain,
Suck on that straw,
Get lost in the pain.
Happiness comes
When ev'rything numbs.
Who needs cocaine?
Freeze your brain.

Okay, that's pretty creepy. Happiness comes when everything numbs? Seriously? Back to the verse, and the problem.

When mom was alive
We lived halfway normal,
But now it's just me and my dad,
We're less formal.
I learned to cook pasta, I learned to pay rent.
Learned the world doesn't owe you a cent.

So he's fucked up, he's a loner, and he has a chip on his shoulder. Sounds like a fun date. But now he has to convince Veronica that she's as fucked up as he is...

You're planning your future,
Veronica Sawyer,
You'll go to some college,
Then marry a lawyer.
But the sky's gonna hurt when it falls,
So you'd better start building some walls...

Not if it falls, but when it falls. Happiness will not last, so the only solution is disconnection. Freeze your emotions. The opposite of what Veronica is seeking. He keeps going.

Freeze your brain.
Swim in the ice,
Get lost in the pain.
Shut your eyes tight,
Till you vanish from sight,
Let nothing remain...

But the already insistent, percussive music becomes even more relentlessly pounding, and the music moves up a key, as it drives toward the end, with an extra four lines at the end, to keep up the relentlessness.

Freeze your brain.
Shatter your skull,
Fight pain with more pain.
Forget who you are,
Unburden your load,
Forget in six weeks
You'll be back on the road.
When the voice in your head
Says you're better off dead...
Don't open a vein...

Wait a minute, what? He's also suicidal...? And he has a voice in his head? Suddenly the madness of the music stops and goes back to a light, innocent pop sound. Which is even creepier.

Just freeze your brain.
Freeze your brain.
Go on and freeze your brain...

And it ends with him insisting she take a sip of his Slurpee, and then she gets really painful brain freeze, and the audience laughs. And like Veronica, we sort of ignore all the crazy shit he's just said, 'cause he's charming. But even though it's a cute, funny moment, we've just seen J.D. convince Veronica to cause herself pain, even if in small doses. It's the first test.

And that's the less crazy of his two mad scenes.

J.D.'s big mad scene comes in Act II with "Meant to Be Yours," when Veronica has abandoned him. He climbs through her bedroom window and finds she has locked herself in the closet. And he lets loose, in a genuine mad scene, to driving, pounding, angry music...

You chucked me out like I was trash,
For that you should be dead.
But! But! But!
Then it hit me like a flash:
What if high school went away instead?
Those assholes are the key!
They're keeping you away from me.
They made you blind,
Messed up your mind,
But I can set you free!

You left me and I fell apart,
I punched the wall and cried.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Then I found you'd changed my heart
And set loose all this truthful shit inside!
And so I built a bomb.
Tonight our school is Vietnam.
Let's guarantee
They never see
Their senior prom!

The rhyme scheme of the verses is once again fairly elaborate – ABCABDDEED – even as he's losing his mind. Also notice that all this is her fault, for changing his heart and setting shit loose...

Then the music turns romantic, but also very "wrong" – it sort of feels like it's in "romantic" triple time, but it's actually alternating back and forth between 4/4 and 3/2, with each phrase 14 beats long, in other words, two beats more or two less than a normal musical phrase. The audience hears it in triple time because the first three notes are each three beats long, but once they've heard it that way, then the phrase seems to drop a weird beat at the end, like a musical hiccup.

J.D. sings, over this odd pseudo-ballady music:

I was meant to be yours!
We were meant to be one!
Don't give up on me now!
Finish what we've begun!
I was meant to be yours!

This section is also the same melody as the "Yo Girl" section the dead students sing before "Meant to Be Yours," yet when they sing it, it doesn't drop a beat. The driving music of the verse returns.

So when the high school gym goes boom
With ev’ryone inside –
Pchw! Pchw! Pchw!
In the rubble of their tomb
We'll plant this note explaining why they died:

And all the students appear in his head, saying the words with him rhythmically:

"We, the students of Westerberg High
Will die.
Our burnt bodies may fin'ly get through
To you.
Your society churns out slaves and blanks.
No thanks.
Signed, the students of Westerberg High.
Goodbye."

The driving music returns as he imagines his violent triumph.

We’ll watch the smoke pour out the doors.
Bring marshmallows, we'll make s'mores.
We can smile
And cuddle while
The fire roars!

That's so chilling! He still doesn't take death seriously. But also, notice the craft here, like the interior rhyme of "smile" and "while;" the triple rhyme of "doors," "s'mores," and "roars;" and the alliteration of all the Ws.

And then the song transitions back again into the creepy-romantic chorus, but even that music gets crazier and crazier. Suddenly, he draws his gun and sings to the door, (with the ensemble singing certain phrases with him, which makes it all even creepier):

Veronica!
Open the, open the door please.
Veronica, open the door.
Veronica!
Can we not fight anymore please?
Can we not fight anymore?
Veronica,
Sure, you're scared, I’ve been there.
I can set you free!
Veronica,
Don't make me come in there.
I'm gonna count to three!
One!
Two!
Fuck it!

And he charges the closet and throws it open on a huge dramatic chord. And significantly, the song does not actually end; instead it moves into underscoring and then into the next song. By this point in the story, the music is almost continuous, to keep the tension mounting. But notice that even at his maddest, he still rhymes – door and -more; free and three; and been there and in there. There also a close internal rhyme with scared and there.

It's a powerful, dramatic scene, that is made even more so by the power of the music and the way these two writers use it. And I gotta say, our J.D., Evan Fornachon has created an utterly fearless and intelligent performance that makes it very hard to condemn J.D. outright and impossible to hate him. It's a tightrope not all actors could walk, but Evan's nailing it. You really feel deeply for this J.D., and you're also terrified of him. What a role!

There's so much about this score that is surprising, that is far more sophisticated and subtle and carefully wrought than you'd ever guess just experiencing this wild, heart-pounding show for the first time. But the way the music works on you shouldn't be obvious or even conscious. At the same time, recognizing the craft and artistry that O'Keefe and Murphy put into this score makes me love it even more. There's nothing in the world like a really well-written musical.

Our Heathers run continues. We're completely sold out this weekend, and we have just one weekend left after that. I'm sure none of us will be ready to leave Westerberg High when that time comes. What a joy it is working on a show this amazing.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Yo Girl, Keep it Together

Much like Larry O'Keefe's score for Bat Boy, so too is O'Keefe and Kevin Murphy's Heathers score far more sophisticated and complex than you'd guess after one hearing. Here, music is a powerful storytelling tool, not just accompaniment. The writers use quite a few musical themes both to give the score (and the show) a sense of unity, to hold it together, but also to enhance the storytelling, to dial up the suspense, to add subtext and subtle connections.

In many places throughout the score, this is film music, more soundscape than melody, intensifying the tension and emotion in dialogue scenes, and illustrating my argument that this show is more thriller than comedy. In other places in this score, the music connects moments and ideas, reminds us of relationships and plot points, reveals dramatic or thematic ironies, and lots more.

The show begins with I call the Westerberg High "Daily Life" theme, which is used throughout the show to introduce scenes in the school, often coupled with a school bell to suggest a new day. The music is almost entirely off the beat, and it drops a beat at the end of each phrase to make us feel like something is a little off here…

Both in the opening and in the “Blue” reprise, this off beat instrumental theme pairs up with percussive vocals in opposition to it, hurling horrible insults. In the opening, it seems funny, "typical" of high school kids; but the second time it’s scary. The stakes are higher now, and the insults sound more like threats now. In the opening, the insults are random, generalized; in the “Blue” reprise, they are very specific and designed to hurt.

There's also an "intrigue" instrumental motif that shows up throughout the show. It first appears in the opening number, underscoring the scene in which Veronica forges a hall pass to fool Ms. Fleming and rescue the Heathers from detention. That's the moment that brings Veronica into the Heathers' orbit, which sets the entire plot in motion. This motif returns again when the Heathers visit Veronica's house; she is one of them now.

This music returns again, but altered, when Chandler first sets in motion the humiliation of Martha, here with the "Beautiful" theme in counterpoint. This double-motif also shows up in the scene where Duke claims the top Heather spot, and also under the scene in which Martha tells Veronica that she thinks J.D. killed Kurt and Ram. In all of these moments, the music tells us subliminally that the intrigue has infected Veronica's dream of a "Beautiful" world in which everybody gets along. Her dream in the opening number was joining the "Beautiful" world of the Heathers; now that she's arrived, she finds it decidedly un-beautiful, made (literally) dissonant by the intrigue.

The "intrigue" motif is sometimes paired in underscoring with what I'll call the "Yo Girl" motif (also connected to intrigue and suspense), music that we don't hear in its full form until "Yo Girl" in the middle of Act II, but we hear it before that under dialogue, leading us to Veronica's impossible situation in "Yo Girl." It also shows up under the confrontation between Veronica and J.D. versus Ram and Kurt at the end of Act I.

The show's central musical theme is the "Beautiful" theme, established in the opening number. This music tracks Veronica's dramatic arc over the course of the show.  We first hear it several times in the opening, representing her optimism (“I know…”), and the future she assumes is ahead. Late in this first song, Heather Chandler appropriates this theme as the Heathers are making over Veronica. Now because the singer and point of view have both changed, the lyric refers to outer beauty, and no longer to moral or emotional beauty. Veronica's theme has been made shallow by Chandler, a musical equivalent of what will happen plot-wise.

The “re-made” Veronica finishes the show’s opening with one more quote of “Beautiful,” but this time as an over-the-top 80s pop anthem with full choral backup; and now the word “beautiful” refers to social success. Veronica has already had her worldview corrupted by the Heathers before the first song is even over. The measure of Veronica’s narrative arc is when and how she returns to using the word “beautiful” (and its musical theme) to mean inner beauty again. It's the musical equivalent of Veronica's overall arc, from empathy to selfishness, and back to empathy again.

Each time this music is repeated, the section of music right before the chorus (can we call it the “Dreams theme”?) becomes less percussive, less syncopated, more linear, smoother, prettier, and that “nicer” music always accompanies Veronica thinking about better days in the future.

The "Beautiful" theme returns in “Dead Girl Walking,” but now referring to J.D.’s physical beauty and their burgeoning love affair. It returns again at the very end of the show (I love bookends!), but now “beautiful” refers to their collective decision to act to make the world beautiful. They’re no longer naive enough to believe the world is already beautiful; now they know that it takes effort and vigilance. They've grown up, and this musical theme has tracked that.

The “Heathers” theme ("Ahh-ahh, Heather, Heather, and Heather...") is a major musical theme that doesn't gets used as one. It’s actually a fake theme. It dominates the second part of the show’s opening (“Beautiful” Part II), when the Heathers first enter. But we never hear it again, except twice as underscoring. Why? Because this show isn’t about the Heathers; it’s about Veronica. And even though we assume by the end of the opening that the Heathers are our antagonists for the evening, they’re really not; J.D. is. I have no idea if O’Keefe and Murphy did this consciously, but it’s a brilliant fake that powerfully serves the purposes of the story…

What's fun about this theme is that it's made up of four short phrases. The first time we hear it with vocals, the first phrase accompanies a generic "Ahh-ahh," and the following three phrases each get a "Heather." By the end of the opening, the "Ahh-ahh" is gone, and the four phrases now include the three Heathers plus Veronica; she has been raised up to their (musical) status and the whole school is singing her praises. But the writers don’t let us forget that she has been a nobody, so the first sightings of the new made-over Veronica are "...and someone," "...and a babe," and only when Martha shouts out her name do the rest of the students finally sing, “Veronica” – over and over, as obsessively as they just sang about the Heathers.

But this seemingly important musical theme doesn't return, except as underscoring, first under Heather Duke's appropriation of Heather Chandler's red scrunchie, and then again, when Veronica returns and claims the top Heather spot (and the scrunchie) from Duke. Here at the end, it's in a much less bombastic form. Things are different now.

The "Stomp-Stomp-Clap" is an aggressive rhythmic theme that permeates the entire score. If you listen for it, you can hear it all over "Dead Girl Walking," in the last verse of "Freeze Your Brain," and in other places in the score. (Weirdly, the first musical rhythm we hear as the show opens is an exact reverse of this pattern.) This "stomp-stomp-clap" rhythm is used in Act II as a powerful device that first just establishes a staple of high school life, the pep rally, but when it becomes background underscoring for the harrowing scenes late in Act II, when we realize the rally soon may be the site of mass murder, that sound becomes a tool of suspense, menacing, scary.

Exactly like a ticking timebomb.

In addition to these musical themes, O'Keefe and Murphy also use reprises very strategically. When songs return, it's always in a new context because the plot is so fast moving, but also because that's good storytelling, connecting two disparate moments that share something, even if only ironically.

The first time we hear "Dead Girl Walking," the title refers to social death, and also in the later part of the song, maybe also le petit mort ("the little death," a French phrase for orgasm)? But when the song returns late in Act II, this time the title refers to actual death.

The first time we hear "Our Love is God," at the end of Act I, it's about J.D. and Veronica's "specialness," their favored position above the rest of humanity by virtue of their love and their clarity of vision, about the power their love gives them (sounds like Leopold and Loeb, doesn't it?). At the end of the show, that same song is now about the failure of J.D.’s perverse morality and the irony of his impending death. In Act I, it's about love and passion; in Act II, it's about Nietzsche's ubermensch in collapse.

The first time we hear "Blue," it's about (very funny) begging to have sex. The second time we hear it, it's about (very ugly) lying about having had sex. The first time it’s about the boys’ desire; the second time, it’s about the boys’ revenge. It's such a smart use of reprise, as sex turns from fun to ugly.

Likewise, the first time we hear "Shine a Light," it's a song (clueless as it may be) about lifting people (and yourself) up. When it's reprised, it's about tearing Mac down. The first time, we’re laughing at its ineffectualness; the second time, we’re not laughing. The first time the song is anti-suicide; the second time it's pro-suicide. Again, that's some smart, and disturbing, writing.

"Seventeen" is the song of connection, first between Veronica and J.D., then later between Veronica and Martha. It’s also under­scoring in the scene where Veronica rescues Mac, the moment when these two characters really bond. One of the show's underlying textual themes is about teens having to grapple with adult issues before they're adults. The song "Seventeen" is about letting kids stay kids for a while. It's the impossible wish throughout the story that just might be possible at the end.

Okay, probably not. But still...

By the time we get to the last part of the show, O’Keefe and Murphy have created such a full musical language for this story, they can now let each of those pieces pay off, reprising “Dead Girl Walking” (in counterpart to the “Stomp-Stomp-Claps,” and “Hey Yo Westerberg”), then “Seventeen,” then finally “Beautiful,” the three main pieces that describe Veronica’s dramatic arc.

The score's structure provides us with musical bookends to open and close our story. Musical bookends work so well because they mirror the structure of drama: a stable situation at the beginning gets thrown out of balance, and only when balance is restored can our story end. "Beautiful" represents that balance in this story, the way things should be.

Now I have to admit, very few people sit in our audience and consciously recognize all these themes and other devices. But that's okay. Musical themes and motifs are meant to work on us under the surface. Music is about emotion, and musical themes makes us feel things that help the writers tell their story well.

I've been a rabid fan of Larry O'Keefe's work since we first produced the amazing Bat Boy in 2003 and 2006. He's one of the strongest and most interesting voices in the musical theatre today, and his work with Murphy on Heathers confirms that. And really, on top of everything else I've written here, maybe what's most important about this score is that it's packed with great songs! Gorgeous, rowdy, wild, emotional music in a gloriously 80s pop vocabulary, paired with clever, outrageous, insightful, intensely emotional lyrics.

What a score!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

They’ll Die Because We Say They Must

Make no mistake – Heathers is no "teen comedy," at least not on stage, it's not. This is a story driven primarily by murder and suicide.

I overheard a patron after one performance saying, "I liked the first act, but Act II hit too close to the real world."

Yeah, exactly.

What's the point of doing a piece of theatre that doesn't speak to this moment and this place? What's the point of doing theatre that isn't about real life? Humans don't tell stories because there's nothing better to do, or to "divert" ourselves. Storytelling is how we explore and understand and preserve our knowledge, culture, politics, history, morality, and so much more.

Reading about Heathers the Musical in the New York press, or even seeing the off Broadway production photos, you'd think it was a silly, spoofy take on a quirky cult film comedy. That couldn't be further from the truth. There's so much more to this show than the New York production revealed.

Since we started working on Heathers, I've argued that, as outrageously funny as much of it is, it's really a thriller and not a comedy. A fucking intense thriller. Over the last couple weeks watching all the pieces come together, and particularly seeing the show in front of audiences now, it's confirmed for me that Heathers is closer cousin to West Side Story or Sweeney Todd than Legally Blonde.

And now that my directing job is essentially over, I can really just watch the show, without constantly assessing everything. And holy shit, it is a wild roller coaster ride that leaves you breathless by the end. Our audiences are going wild for it, with sold-out houses and standing ovations every night, and the reviews have been raves.

Part of the fun of being able to relax and just enjoy the show now, is that I'm now noticing even more musical and textual themes than I had already found. As only one example among many, even though the story itself is packed with murder and suicide, the script and lyrics are also riddled with death-related slang and euphemisms and metaphors. Even beyond the actual deaths in the story, death permeates this show…

Fair Warning: There are bound to be some spoilers here...

In “Beautiful,” Veronica sings, "College will be paradise if I’m not dead by June.” She also says she'd like to "light a match and set this dump [the school] abalze." Strictly metaphorical at this point, but also sly, ironic foreshadowing. Later in the song, Ram threatens the Geek, “You’re gonna die at 3p.m.” Here, Ram sort of means it literally, but doesn't actually intend to murder the kid, right?

In “Candy Store,” the Heathers sing, “You can live the dream or you can die alone.” Not really metaphorical this time, but dying of old age isn't murder or suicide. And again, this line is foreshadowing, but only recognizable in retrospect.

In “Freeze Your Brain,” J.D. starts one verse, “When Mom was alive…” which of course implies that she's dead now. That sets up an important plot point, and it's the first time death is part of the story, though the audience doesn't know how yet. Later in the song, J.D. sings, “When the voice in your head says you’re better off dead, don’t open a vein…” What's fascinating about this is that on the surface, he's saying "Don't kill yourself; just numb yourself." But the lyric also foreshadows J.D.'s fate.

There's so much death in this script that even a stage direction during the piñata scene says, “The party has come to a dead stop.” Can't blame 'em, right?

In “Dead Girl Walking,” Veronica is thinking about metaphorical, "social" death, and her thoughts are packed with death metaphors, a whole song as foreshadowing. She sings, “I don’t have to stay and die like cattle.” and “Before they punch my clock…” and to J.D., “You’re my last meal on death row.” Death is on her mind, well before any actual deaths happen.

Another fun throwaway... Right before Chandler drinks from the mug, she says to Veronica, “You’re dead to me.” Once again, metaphor in ironic opposition to reality.

Then Act I ends with one of the theatre's most terrifying love songs (how long can that list be?),“Our Love is God,” in which Veronica and J.D. sing:

We can start and finish wars.
We're what killed the dinosaurs.
We're the asteroid that's overdue.
The dinosaurs will turn to dust.
They’ll die because we say they must…

Think about this. They're talking about the Biggest Death Metaphor possible: the extermination of the dinosaurs. As a freaky declaration of love. Their power is now infinite; they are a destroying asteroid, a Heavenly Body. Actors love high stakes, and I don't think they could get much higher than this. This last line lays it all out for us: "They'll die because we say they must." Suddenly, we're not in metaphor anymore. J.D. is now talking about the Bad People. But the audience doesn't know that yet.

Before the song is over, we get the clearest foreshadowing yet, a description of the end of the story, as J.D. sings, “I’d trade my life for yours.” If we don't know how it the ends we hear this line as romantic metaphor. It's a brilliant fake. It's the one time in a musical when someone sings that and means it. And we don't see that coming.

What's fascinating here is that Veronica and J.D. essentially have two love songs. This first one starts with J.D. and it's full of violent imagery, The second, "Seventeen," starts with Veronica, and it's all the most innocent imagery you could imagine. We see in these two songs how fundamentally mismatched our lovers are. They see the world very differently.

Then J.D. finally tells the full story of his mother's suicide, and so many pieces of the larger puzzle fall into place. This is the death that started it all. And the writers make us wait this long to get that information, for a really good reason. All through Act I, though J.D. seems a little scary, he's also charming and romantic, and we grow to really like him. Only at the end of Act I is that tested. Now, halfway through Act II, we finally find out the whole truth, which reveals so much to us that's horrifying, but we're invested in J.D. now.

Both that story and Heather McNamara's powerful “Lifeboat” really shake us for the first time, and makes us grapple with something that has been an ironic joke up till now. We can feel the truth in the simplicity and honesty of the lyric. We know this is real.

Before she sings, "Lifeboat," she starts by saying:

My sort-of boyfriend killed himself because he was gay for his linebacker. And my best friend seemed to have it all together, but she's gone too. Now my stomach's hurting worse and worse, and every morning on the bus I feel my heart beating louder and faster, and I'm like Jesus, I'm on the frickin' bus again 'cause all my rides to school are dead.

In our production, the gifted Larissa White plays Mac so honestly that the laugh after the punchline is very low. When acted well, the punchline is powerfully emotional, because it's not just a joke; it's awkward and uncomfortable, because it's Mac being nakedly honest about what she's feeling. And when the Mean Kids end the reprise of "Shine," almost screaming "Die alone!" over and over at Mac, the gravity of all this becomes inescapable. This is where Heathers earns it all.

In “Meant to Be,” J.D. has two potent lines: “You chucked me out like I was trash, for that you should be dead.” and “You carved open my heart, can't just leave me to bleed!” Everything in his head, all his imagery, comes from violence. He's stuck in that traumatic moment in his childhood. By now, the accumulation of all these death images and language becomes overwhelming. It makes the last twenty minutes of the show "ruthlessly intense," as one of our reviews put it.

There are two other very funny-sick "death" moments in Act II. First, as Ms. Fleming is introducing her anti-suicide dance number, "Shine a Light," she says with ponderous self-import, "Whether to kill yourself or not is one of the most important decisions a teenager can make." She goes on, "So you know what I'm gonna do right now?" And the Hipster yells out, "Kill yourself on stage?" And everybody laughs. Including us in the audience. But that's some sick shit, especially right after a student has apparently killed herself. We've become numb to death.

Briefly.

The other funny-sick moment is when Fleming runs into Veronica and is very put out to discover that Veronica has not killed herself. Fleming is "vaguely disappointed," according to the stage direction, and she says, with a bit of a pout, "I threw together a lovely tribute. Especially given the short notice." Again sick but funny. Death, death, death.

But wait, there's more.

As the show climaxes, “Dead Girl Walking” returns. In Act I, the title referred to metaphorical "social" death; now it's about actual death. And the lyric for the Westerberg pep rally return, its images of death suddenly scarier:

Hey, you Westerberg! Hey, yo Westerberg!
Tell me what's that sound?
Here comes Westerberg,
Comin’ to put you in the ground!
Go go Westerberg,
Give a great big yell,
Westerberg will knock you out
And send you straight to hell!

In context, that's some heavy shit. Which makes it powerful vocal underscoring for the dramatic climax of the story. And also still more foreshadowing.

Even at the very end of the show, when a brighter tomorrow seems possible, even as we return to the show's opening song, "Beautiful," just before the end, they all sing, “And maybe then we’ll never die!” Surely that's not literal, right? So what does it mean? Maybe it means if we all have some empathy, our society will live and thrive, and if we don't, we won't.

This is a story about conquering darkness, a fable about the death of selfishness and the rebirth of empathy. They're leaving the 1980s. They're gonna be okay.

At least until the 2000s.

What an amazing musical and social document this is.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Celebrate You and I

We just had one of the most electric, most thrilling opening nights we've ever had. And we've had our share.

Part of it was our beautiful new theatre, the Marcelle, designed by the hardest working man in local showbiz, Rob Lippert, and only possible because of the endless generosity of Ken and Nancy Kranzberg. I think we'll get some serious rave reviews for this show, but there will also be raves for the theatre. It really is beautiful, and because Rob is a lifelong theatre animal, it's so intelligently designed, both for us and for the audience.

A big part of tonight's thrill is this extraordinary Heathers script and score by Larry O'Keefe and Kevin Murphy. It's big and goofy, dark as hell, profoundly moving, and piercingly truthful. And the score is nothing less than powerful, and deceptively complex – entirely in the musical language of 1980s Top 40, and yet built with a sophistication few musical theatre scores can match, using multiple leitmotifs, lots of cinematic underscoring, and a hundred clever ways of building and sustaining tension through the music.

And as an added bonus, so much of the music is really funny. Which is rare. O'Keefe's Bat Boy score was the same. Most composers can't write music that's funny itself, but Larry really can.

As important as the script and score is this team of ours, this fearless, powerhouse cast, kickass band, top-notch designers and staff, and my brilliant artistic partner, my co-director Mike Dowdy. But I have to give a special shout-out to the enormously talented, brave-as-shit Anna Skidis, who carries this whole show on her shoulders in the role of Veronica. She's extraordinary in this role, and she is matched every step by Evan Fornachon as J.D. I owe them both a great deal.

(They also played opposite each other as Roger and Mimi in New Line's Rent.)

You don't often come across a show with five female leads, all of whom have to be amazing singers and actors and comedians, but Heathers is such a show, and our five women are fucking fierce. I've never before seen an audience cry twice within the span of a few minutes, but Larissa's "Lifeboat" and Grace's "Kindergarten Boyfriend" both just shattered the audience.

It feels great to make an audience laugh, but making an audience cry is real power.

An old lesson was driven home again for me tonight. When you try to be funny, it's less funny. When you try to be truthful, it's way funnier. I thought the off Broadway production of Heathers was very good, but I felt it too often trying to be funny. Heathers isn't really a comedy, at least not on stage, where the interior monologues give the story so much extra weight. It's a thriller.

Just summarize the story in one sentence – Two misfit kids start murdering the popular kids in school – not that funny.

This is a dark, mean story. Much of the show is not funny, though parts of it are flat-out hilarious ("Blue," anyone?). It's a serious story, about murder, suicide, school shootings, bullying, though with a lot of laughs. Exactly like Bat Boy, Urinetown, High Fidelity, Cry-Baby, and others shows we've done. The reason these shows are so good, is that that mix of funny and serious is real. That's life. That's what being human is.

The reason the audience was crying during "Lifeboat" and "Kindergarten Boyfriend" is because they were emotionally engaged with these characters. They understood and cared about Martha and Mac. If those characters are cartoons or caricatures, the audience won't care. But if we successfully navigate that tightrope, we make something palpably real. Though you might not realize it, this is a show that requires strong, skilled, honest acting.

Funny is good, but truthful is better. And funnier.

Our cast has plumbed the depths of these characters, they've formed a Westerberg community, with shared backstory, and they all found their path to Fearlessness. There is nothing safe about this show or our production. It's harrowing. It's overwhelming. It's fierce. It's fearless. Because that's the story we're telling.

"Civilians" often ask me "Where do you find such talented actors and musicians?" The answer is that we pay shitty, but where else would any of us get to do Jerry Springer the Opera, Bukowsical, High Fidelity, Love Kills, Cry-Baby, bare...? The reason we get all these talented and skillful artists to work with us is the work itself.

Tonight at the after-party in the gorgeous Marcelle lobby, so many of our actors and musicians hugged me and thanked me for this opportunity and this experience. I think every one of us feels profoundly lucky to be doing this show. It's so much richer and smarter than any of us first thought. Beneath its loud, rowdy, vulgar surface, Heathers is surprisingly subtle in ways that most in our audience won't even consciously recognize.

But what our actors and musicians don't understand is that while I have given them all the wonderful gift of this opportunity, they all give me an equal gift in return: the performances that make Heathers and all our New Line shows so consistently excellent. No matter how clever or insightful I may be, my ideas don't mean shit without actors and musicians at a high enough level to pull off the freakishly difficult shows we produce, suffused with the kind of emotional depth and intelligence that New Line has become known for over the last twenty-five years.

I don't bring Heathers to life. They do. Musical theatre is the most collaborative of all art forms, and so the art is only as good as the collaboration.

I think I got more hugs tonight at the party than I've ever gotten before in a single day. It was great. From what I can tell, the reviews are going to be raves. And all of us are beyond psyched to run this beautiful show for the next four weeks.

What a great fucking night.

Oh, and BTW, our Opening Night Tweeters were also in top form. You can read their tweets by going to Twitter and searching #STLHeathers.

Thank you, St. Louis, for the best opening night audience we could've hoped for, and I suspect, many more awesome audiences to come. Word-of-mouth is going to be really good. Thank you, Ken and Nancy, for our beautiful new home. And thank you, New Liners, for climbing another mountain with me. Isn't this fucking FUN?

If you haven't gotten your tickets yet, you'd better do it fast. We're already selling out performances. Metrotix, 314-534-1111.

The adventure continues...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott