louder, faster, funnier, deadlier, more, more, choices upon choices...

People often ask me why we repeat shows. We've done it several times in our twenty-one seasons -- Assassins (1994, 1998, 2008); Hair (2000, 2001, 2008); Bat Boy (2003, 2006); and now High Fidelity (2008, 2012). When I get that question, I always respond, "Would you ask the Symphony why they repeat Beethoven's Ninth? Would you ask a classical theatre company why they repeat A Midsummer Night's Dream?"

We repeat shows because we think there's more to discover there. And High Fidelity is proving my point for me yet again.

Initially my plan was to recreate my staging from 2008 with the knowledge that some things would probably change, since we have two-thirds of a new cast this time. But as I blocked the show (stoned) on my living room couch, and also in rehearsal (not stoned), we strayed much further from our original production than I expected. Not only has a lot of the staging changed now (I bet less than a quarter of my 2008 staging remains), but we're also finding so much new depth and nuance in these characters and in this rich dialogue and lyrics.

Monday night, we were staging the first part of Act II and we got to this amazing monologue Rob has listing the Top Five things he loves about Laura (a list that eventually swells to ten). Jeff was so great with that monologue last time we did the show; he totally had the audience eating out of his hands every night. But as we worked on it this time, I suggested a couple things to think about, and Jeff found a whole new level of depth and truthfulness in these words. One thing I suggested was that Rob has not made this list before, that as he moves through the list, he discovers each one of these things as he says them, that they occur to him in real time, rather than reporting back to the audience on something he had already worked through. I thought that was a pretty minor note to give Jeff, but it must have opened a door for him, because instantly the monologue came to life in a way it hadn't before. It became more emotional, funnier, sadder.

It functioned as character development last time, but Jeff's new reading also now allows it to work as plot development. Now, Rob realizes as he talks to us how much he has lost, how deeply he regrets everything, and that propels him forward in the plot. We actually get to see him learn in real time now.

And yet I have to be careful. There are a lot of ways a director can fuck up an actor's performance, and the easiest way is to overwhelm them with fine tuning when they're just trying to get comfortable with the dialogue and staging. Expect too much too early, and the actor will feel either bullied or incompetent. Neither is good. Expect profound depth at this relatively early point, and the actor may just shut down. The kind of emotional and character depth we're dealing with in High Fidelity takes some time to find and figure out, even for those of us who've done the show before...

My job is to make sure we're all on the right road, and heading for the same destination, but then I have to let the actors work. I have to get out of the way as much as I can and let them create their brilliant performances. I've learned over the years how to do what I think of as "minimalist" directing, specifically for this point in the process. When an actor is having a hard time turning the emotional or comic (or both) dial up to eleven, I try to find really evocative words or phrases that will sound like fun to a good actor, that will open a door for them, like joy, adventure, rowdy, shattered...

In a couple weeks, I'll start tweaking and nitpicking, but for now, we just run the show and the actors get to play and experiment. They must have the freedom to fail without consequences. Otherwise, no one will take any risks. And risk-taking is where all the coolest shit comes from...

It's important for all of us who've already done the show to remember that we're creating a new show now. Some of the staging may be the same (although a lot less than I expected), but since two-thirds of the cast is new, that makes almost every scene and every song new in some way. Aaron is finding Ian now and he's so different from our Ian in 2008, that it automatically changes every scene he's in. The same is true of Dowdy playing Dick. Plus we're all four years older and wiser -- that may not sound like much, but you'd be surprised how differently I see this story this time around. It's kinda cool...

This is such fun work we're doing! Partly because the show is AWESOME and the songs are AMAZING. But also partly because we can already see how much our head start (from doing the show before) is paying off. Several of us already did all the heavy lifting four years ago; now we can sort of skip ahead to the more subtle, artistic work that usually isn't happening till later. Jeff and Kimi (as Rob and Laura) are finding very different, very powerful moments in their scenes together. Together Jeff and I are really discovering that "rock bottom" that Rob has to hit before his redemption. His fight with Liz late in Act II is really a fight now -- as in yelling at each other -- and it takes Rob to a much darker rock bottom. More so than we did last time, we are absolutely shattering Rob, and I think that makes him much realer, his story much more emotional, and his redemption that much richer.

All the blocking is done. There's just one piece of choreography left to do on Sunday, and it's really easy. Then we do nothing but run the show. Next week, we'll run the acts separately and do our best to work out the major kinks. Then we move into the theatre and start running the whole show at every rehearsal. That's the most fun part for me...

The adventure continues.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. In case you're wondering... I always title my blog posts with lyrics from whatever show I'm working on. And this post's title comes from the "tone poem" that opens High Fidelity's finale, "Turn the World Off (And Turn You On)."

It's No Problem

High Fidelity was treated really badly in New York. It was given a clueless, money-centric production and greeted with (mostly) shallow, condescending reviews. I'll grudgingly stipulate that the fault for those shallow reviews might not lie entirely with the reviewers -- after all, it must have been tough to tell there was such a great show beneath that tricked-out, fast-and-furious mess of a production on Broadway. But Broadway critics are supposed to be the best at what they do, right? Shouldn't they be able to recognize strong material poorly executed?

I think the critics' real problem was that they didn't understand the story's content. They didn't understand who Rob, Dick, and Barry are. They seemed not to understand an entire American generation. Several reviews complained that the show wasn't a very good love story, oblivious to the fact that High Fidelity is not a love story. Would they categorize Star Wars as a love story? Probably not, and yet Star Wars and High Fidelity are exactly the same story at their core -- a coming-of-age Hero Myth. Luke has The Force; Rob has his music. But as they've done with countless other under-rated musicals, the New York critics treated this complicated, nuanced -- and primal -- story like it was The Book of Mormon or [title of show].

Exhibit A. The song “It’s No Problem,” sung by Dick. (That's Aaron Lawson as Dick in New Line's 2008 production. Mike Dowdy plays the role this time...)

"It’s No Problem” is a song that operates almost entirely on a subtextual level, like many songs in serious musicals. And yet some New York critics used this song as an example of how High Fidelity is “about nothing.” In reality, the exact opposite is true. This song is about so much, if they'd just listen to the damn lyric...

It's early in Act I. Rob has just assaulted Barry. Dick asks if he's okay, and Rob replies, "Yeah. Look Dick, Laura and I broke up. She's gone. So if you ever see Barry again maybe you can tell him that." Rob's offhand remark becomes for Dick a genuine honor, an Important Assignment, to be Rob’s “ambassador” to Barry, to be a Solution to a Problem. Dick doesn’t have a lot of human interaction outside the record store, so this new and strangely complicated situation is not only dramatic, but exciting for him as well. He takes his new charge seriously. He sings:

It’s no problem,
No problem, Rob, you’re on.
I’ll tell him when I see him next:
“Rob says to tell you Laura’s gone.”
My schedule’s pretty open,
So I’ve got some time today.
Plus I’ve got some other stuff to tell him anyway.
So I’ll tell him when I tell him all the other stuff,
Or I could even call.
So it’s no problem,
No problem at all.

As the song continues, Dick considers the optimal time and place for telling Barry, thinks through the logistics of his assignment, etc. Part of the “joke” of the song is that Dick’s life is so empty (by mainstream standards) that this offhand request from Rob seems monumental. But it also reminds us that Dick simply feels too much (as evidenced earlier by his first solo, “Hiroshima of the Soul”), and that he is profoundly empathetic, which is what will later save his budding relationship with Anna. This song tells us a lot about Dick, about his relationships with Rob and Barry, about the qualities Anna will find attractive in him, and about how closely intertwined Rob’s, Dick’s, and Barry’s lives are. It's a hell of a good theatre song.

It's not "about nothing."

And later in Act II, the reprise of “It’s No Problem” goes even further in defining Dick, showing us how he has grown and changed, as any fully drawn character does. And as the best reprises do, this one doesn't just repeat the earlier lyric; it uses new lyrics against the resonance of the earlier song to show us the changes in Dick. In the previous scene between Dick and Anna, Dick is forced to choose between the guys and Anna, and poor Dick chooses the guys. But he later realizes his mistake and this reprise is Dick’s Declaration of Independence from the “authority” of Barry and the guys. It's the moment we know that Dick has grown up...

And that change manifests itself in a redefining of the song's title. In Act I, the words "It's No Problem" means you're not inconveniencing me because I have nothing else to do. In Act II, "It's No Problem" means I reject your narrow definition of what's acceptable and not acceptable. That's pretty different. In Act I, Dick is accommodating and in Act II, the same words are now about forging his own path. Dick is taking control of his life for the first time. Before either Rob or Barry learn the lessons they have to learn, Dick has learned his. He sings, “And I’m thinking it’s not what you like that counts, but who you are…”

None of the three of them has ever had this thought before.

Anna may like John Tesh – an unthinkable crime in this world of music snobs – but she’s also smart, pretty, nice, the right height, she has a great laugh, and she really likes Dick. Surely all those things outweigh John Tesh. Dick finally realizes that if pop music defines his world, that world can be pretty narrow. He now knows that actual human connection is more important and more satisfying than just listening to songs about human connection (or the lack thereof). Dick rejects the safe, insular world of Championship Vinyl for the less predictable, harder-to-navigate, real world, and in the process he becomes a whole person. Though this is Rob's story primarily, to some degree, it's a Triple Hero Myth.

But Rob won’t learn his lesson for another scene yet. There’s an argument to be made that Rob only learns his lesson by watching Dick’s transformation. If Dick can suffer through John Tesh for Anna, maybe Rob can suffer through Art Garfunkel for Laura. A sacrifice is required from both Rob and Dick before they can complete their journeys.

Without "It's No Problem" and its reprise, Dick’s character would be far less well drawn. But, as with the rest of the show, too many of the critics refused to see what’s going on under the surface, to recognize the complexity and honesty and truthfulness of the writing. Was this because the world of High Fidelity is just too foreign to the senior citizens who review most New York theatre? Was it because the production itself was so clueless? Or was it because Broadway is so dumbed down that critics are no longer accustomed to giving musicals the same thoughtfulness and respect that they routinely give to plays that lack music?

And is it any different in 2012 than it was in 2006?

Exhibit B. The show's opening song, "The Last Real Record Store on Earth," sung by Rob and the company.

Ben Brantley wrote in his New York Times review, “The seeming credo of this production at the Imperial Theater can be found early in its lyrics: ‘Nothin’s great, and nothin’s new, but nothin’ has its worth.’ This declaration is sung by the show’s hero, the romantically bereft Rob, as he describes his uneventful life as the owner of a vinyl record store in Brooklyn. . . And that’s a problem.” He goes on to say that the problem is that the whole show is "about nothing."

No, the problem is that Brantley can’t see that this lyric introduces the central conflict of the show. It’s not that Rob’s life is uneventful; it’s that his life is too self-involved and lacking in the joy that comes from a giving, two-way, adult relationship. The “nothing” of the lyric refers on the surface to Rob’s outer life, but also subtextually to his inner life. He is emotionally empty, running on the fumes of a once great (though immature) relationship. The “nothing” that his and Laura’s relationship has become has the comforts of familiarity and little effort, but it can’t sustain either of them. Rob doesn’t have enough self-knowledge at the beginning of the story to assess his own problem, so we have to read between the lines – as audiences do routinely with plays by Tennessee Williams, August Wilson, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Lanford Wilson, Suzan-Lori Parks, Tracy Letts, etc.

Would Brantley have missed all this in a Williams play? Probably not.

That High Fidelity's opening number ends with everyone singing, “I wouldn’t change a thing” tells us exactly what the story's central conflict is and what this show is about: the stagnation of a generation. Could there be a more powerful or clearer metaphor for stagnation than a used record store in the mid-1990s? Rob’s story is the story of millions of people on the cusp between the Baby Boomers and Generation X, caught between cultural forces, the expectations of the previous generation, and world-shattering changes in technology.

This is not a show about nothing, and it’s not the Seinfeld of musical theatre, as its clueless director said in an interview. It’s a deeply felt, deeply authentic show about America (the UK in the novel) at the turn of the millennium. It's about us and it's about now.

And isn't that the whole point of theatre -- of storytelling?

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Number Five with a Bullet

I wrote in an earlier blog post about discovering High Fidelity. My love affair started with the songs of course. But as I've said before, a great score is necessary but not sufficient. What's even more important is a great script. When I finally got to read the High Fidelity script, it instantly spoke to me. I could immediately see it in my head. I really understood how it worked. The same was true with Love Kills and Cry-Baby, but that doesn't happen all the time.

Sometimes it happens later, as it did for me with both Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. Sometimes I just have to stay on the road and the answers will come. But sometimes I have to scratch and claw my way to that understanding. Some shows are just tougher nuts to crack. But not High Fidelity. Not for me anyway.

So here are the Top Five Things I Love About the High Fidelity Script.

Number One. The characters in High Fidelity really talk the way people talk. I'm a big fan of stylized dialogue (when it's done well), but I also really love dialogue that sounds completely natural and spontaneous but is actually very carefully wrought. David Lindsay-Abaire does what he does in his play Rabbit Hole -- the dialogue is at once both poetic and naturalistic. Now that I think about it, the same was true of Love Kills. The Hi-Fi dialogue is funny in exactly the way that my friends are funny in real life. It's not about punch lines, but about pop culture and the social zeitgeist of the story. It's about shared experience. And the dialogue leaves so much unsaid -- again, just like real people do. I'm consistently amazed at how well crafted, how seriously funny, and how subtle this script is.

Number Two. I love the use of the narrator voice, and even better, that Rob as narrator steps in and out of scenes, sometimes within a line or two, both narrating and participating in the story, even commenting on his own words in real time. It changes the storytelling in a really interesting way for Rob to be such an obviously biased narrator -- we can't always know that his version of events is the truth. Rob even admits to exaggerating one of his flashbacks in Act I. What was so special about the novel -- its first person voice, and the confessional tone that voice lent to the storytelling -- Linsday-Abaire was smart enough to retain. Several of our reviews in 2008 mentioned that the show seems truer to Nick Hornby's novel than the movie did. And I think it's the intimacy of live theatre in a small space, and also the very dark, confessional first-person voice. It's so powerful to hear a real man standing in front of you admitting his darkest sins -- and demanding that you do the same. There's no distance here. No irony. Just a raw challenge. Because of its very live-ness, I think the show has balls in a way that the movie doesn't.

Number Three. The third thing I love about the script -- and what tripped up the Broadway creative staff -- is that Linsday-Abaire wrote a sad story with a lot of laughs in it, exactly as Hornby had. Lesser bookwriters would have tamed down the darkness, softened Rob's assholery, in a capitulation to commercial Broadway audiences. But Lindsay-Abaire gave us a story about pain -- lots of pain -- and bad choices, but he peppered it with so many laughs! Spoonful of sugar and all that. And yet every laugh delivers something else as well, information about character or situation or plot. This is a script written by a master craftsman, and also, unfortunately, a script too subtle and original for the Broadway director and designers to understand.

Number Four. The biggest mistake that musical adaptations make is putting a screenplay onstage and then just adding songs every few minutes. That's what a lot of screen-to-stage adaptations do. But High Fidelity is so different. Linsday-Abaire, Kitt, and Green found a musical theatre equivalent for Hornby's novelistic storytelling. They didn't just add songs and stage directions; they translated the story into musical theatre terms. They used devices a movie or novel can't use. The real genius of the show is the brilliant conceit of spending the whole show inside Rob's head and therefore writing every song in the show in the voice of Rob's rock gods. It's fun for the audience, but the choices also tell us so much. Of course Rob's nightmare of a sexually aggressive Laura sounds like Pat Benatar. Of course Rob sounds like Ben Folds when he finally opens his heart to Laura. Of course Rob imagines violence in the form of Guns N' Roses, The Beastie Boys, and Snoop Dogg. Every song provides us with subtextual and emotional information that involves us even more deeply in the emotion of the story. We want Rob to find his way to the light.

The reason it's so hard to write a good musical stage script is that singing words takes more time than speaking them, so that leaves much less room in a musical script than in a non-musical script. The dialogue has to be a model of economy. It has to accomplish so much in so few words. The music provides the emotion, but the script provides much of the necessary information. Because we New Liners believe musical theatre is first and foremost about storytelling, nothing matters more in choosing a show than a solid script. As we often remind ourselves, musical is an adjective, but theatre is the noun.

Number Five. With due credit to the source novel, the High Fidelity script never takes the easy way out and never lets the audience off the hook. The novel is uncompromising and so is the stage script. There's no attempt to mask the ugly, no desire to romanticize our hero. The Broadway staff didn't understand that this is not a love story, but a hero quest; but Linsday-Abaire knew it. Rob has to start out an asshole, has to have committed grave sins (the last line of Act I underlines this with a metaphorical Sharpie), in order for him to go on his journey toward growing up and being an adult. If Rob doesn't start in a very dark place (we hear the gory details of their very ugly break-up early in Act I), if he doesn't start out emotionally retarded and hopelessly childish, his eventual growing up would have lower stakes, less impact, less emotional heft. It would become less of a journey. (The same is true in Pippin, though most directors don't realize that.) The stakes have to be high and the journey has to seem impossible. Kudos to all three writers for not succumbing to the obvious temptation to turn the story into a love story just because that's what musicals are "supposed" to be. They resisted that impulse and instead they stayed remarkably true to Hornby's novel and created a truly adult musical.

We're all very lucky we get to work on material this strong and this artful. Some of us are lucky enough to get to work on it twice. Coming back to this rich script and score is such fun, as I get to find new and deeper moments all through the show, and find whole new areas to explore as different actors take on these fascinating roles. The adventure continues...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

I Wouldn't Change a Thing About It

I recently read an interesting column by Alexus Soloski on the Guardian website about pop stars in musical theatre. Her primary argument focused on Ricky Martin in the current revival of Evita on Broadway:

Ricky Martin has jaunty hair, shockingly white teeth, flexible limbs, shakeable hips, and a voice as smooth as oiled leather. Remarkable though it may seem, he makes an undershirt and suspenders seem a credible fashion choice. And yet, as many who have seen the recent Broadway revival of Evita know, he's just a little bit dreadful onstage. Yes, he hits every mark and every note, sneers when called to, smiles when needed, but he does it all with the air of a talented trained dog. In saying this, I do not mean to cast aspersions on Martin's intelligence – interviews and album sales confirm his savvy – or his looks, which seemed much admired by many people in the audience. But his Che offered no interiority, no immersion into character. He did exactly what was asked of him externally, but couldn't conjure any sense of inner life. Writing in the New York Times, Ben Brantley called his performance, "polite, vaguely charming and forgettable. You could add "tail-wagging," too.

And that takes the argument beyond pop stars on Broadway to one of the things that concerns and animates me most when it comes to musicals – the considerable difference between performing and acting.

In my opinion, Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin are performers more than actors. Go to YouTube and watch them perform the Act I finale of Evita on the Tony Awards, and you'll see what I mean. There's no character there, nothing behind the eyes; it's all vocal pyrotechnics, posing, and indicating. LuPone is not inside her character and neither is Patinkin. Having worked on Evita myself, I've seen firsthand how complex and nuanced those characters are, but you'd never guess that from these performances. And they look even worse next to Bob Gunton's rich, subtle, textured portrayal of Peron. I guess no one told LuPone that Eva's successes didn't come from volume; they came from charm, warmth, manipulation, sincerity, political savvy. She was complicated. This isn't a cold story; it's a passionate, emotional, fiery story. But you'd never know that from two of the three leads. I had the same problem with Patinkin in Sunday in the Park with George – no inner character life, just that creepy mixed-voice tenor of his...

Hitting the notes isn't the only goal in a musical. Music takes precedence over all else in opera, but it's story that rules the artistic roost in musical theatre.

And quite honestly, far too often I see actors in local musical theatre and in national tours at the Fox performing rather than acting, giving us all the right moves and facial expressions, good singing and/or dancing, but with absolutely nothing underneath. These actors cross the stage because they were blocked that way, because it balances the stage picture, but not because their character wants to get up in the grille of the character on the other side of the stage. And this disconnect between actor and character is indirectly the reason New Line was one of the companies last year that walked away from the Kevin Kline Awards and its citizen judges who base their acting awards for musicals on singing and dancing but almost never on acting. The Kline process just wasn't meant for a company that works like we do.

And all this makes me even more adamant that we New Liners never fall into that trap. There are many elements that make up a piece of musical theatre – story, character, acting, singing, the band, movement, sets, lights, costumes, sound – but we think story is always most important. Always. No exceptions. Which is why we'll never produce [title of show], Evil Dead, or Silence! So when we're casting a show, we will always cast a great actor with a decent singing voice over an amazing singer who can't act very well.

And what we understand about High Fidelity that its Broadway creative staff did not understand is that High Fidelity is a show about one man's internal emotional life. Nothing matters more in this show than that we believe in Rob's internal journey, and that's why we have cast an exceptionally honest actor like Jeff Wright in the role. (Twice.) I insist on truthful acting in all our shows, even the wacky ones, like Return to the Forbidden Planet, Spelling Bee, Two Gents, Urinetown, Bat Boy, and Cry-Baby; but it's even more important in High Fidelity than just about any other show I've ever worked on.

People like musical theatre and buy tickets to musicals specifically (though not necessarily consciously) because it's the most intensely emotional kind of storytelling humans do. To me, producing a musical with phony emotions and superficial characters and relationships is akin to a jeweler selling someone a fake diamond without telling them. People come to musicals for the emotion, so to give them fake emotions for their money is fraud.

And it's a fraud perpetrated so widely, especially in commercial musical theatre, that audiences generally accept it without complaint. Or they think musicals are just inherently shallow and phony. Which they're not. But then people come see a New Line show and they're stunned and thrilled at the intensity and rawness of emotion roaring across the footlights at them, even in our wackiest shows. It's one of the big reasons our 2008 run of High Fidelity sold out, why the show's lyricist Amanda Green loved our production (especially Jeff) so much, why we earned such rave reviews for it, why people came to see the show multiple times, and why we're bringing it back.

We have such a brilliant, honest piece of writing in front of us, and a truly gifted, fearless cast ready to bring it to life. In a few weeks we'll bring on board our kick-ass New Line Band, all the design work will be made reality, and we'll have an unbelievably wonderful, truthful story to share with our magnificent, adventurous audiences.

What a joy to return to this show!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

All the Love You're Worthy Of

We are underway...!

We've finished our first week of rehearsal and are just about done learning the score. When I first got the idea of reviving High Fidelity, I assumed I'd ask back most of the 2008 New Line cast, but there are so many amazing new performers who have joined the family since then, that I eventually decided to only ask a few key people to return and then re-cast the rest of the roles. So about a third of the cast is returning from last time. That means I don't have to spend much time with Jeff or Kimi, who both pretty much knew their material by heart when they came into rehearsal this week, but I do have to teach the rest of the cast the score. Luckily, though the score is a little tricky sometimes vocally, it's not that hard to sing and it's an absolute blast to play...

Often music rehearsals are a drag, but this time, they've been a blast...

One of the reasons I music direct all our shows is that I like to direct character, relationships, style, etc. while I'm teaching music, to connect the singing directly to the acting from the earliest phase of the process. Often that makes it easier to learn the music, but even when it doesn't, it helps the actors so much in creating integrated performances, avoiding entirely the all too prevalent habit many musical theatre actors have for pausing their acting to sing...

In a complete break from my normal pattern, I've already blocked the whole show. (I usually wait till a night or two before I have to block the actors, or sometimes just a few hours before....) This time I had an obvious head start, having done the show before. And I had already decided that we'd use some of the blocking from the last production, at least as a starting place, although I ended up reblocking more of the show than I expected. Part of that is because our awesome new resident scenic designer Scott Schoonover has designed the coolest, most kick-ass set for us, and the set necessitates me redoing a fair amount of blocking.

One change I'm making -- during much of the show, the songs happen downstage, while customers continue to browse in the record store upstage. The idea is that Rob's music is always in the back of his head, no matter what else he's doing. Last time we did Hi-Fi the people in the background during these numbers were meant to fade into the background. But I think it'll be more interesting this time -- and more in tune with the idea that we're spending the entire show inside Rob's head -- if the customers in the shop are always moving to the music, even when they're not in a song. Sometimes in fairly subtle ways, sometimes much more obviously. In the last production, the idea was that Rob hears his friends' (and enemies') voices as the voices of his Rock Gods. But this time, Rob's entire world will become a rock concert, not just the person speaking/singing, when we're inside those songs. It's a subtle difference, but I think it'll have a cool impact.

We'll see, I guess...

Don't tell anybody, but lately I block most of our shows stoned. Not in rehearsal, but when I'm sitting on my couch at home working everything out. When I wrote my bizarre, subversive, political stoner musical Johnny Appleweed in 2005 (that's Aaron Allen in the middle, who's playing Ian in Hi-Fi), I made myself a rule from the beginning that I could not work on the Appleweed script unless I was stoned. The result was an incredibly weird show, but one that (some) people (stoners) really loved. And I realized that's because God's Goofy Green Goodness largely disables my internal editor, opening up a vastly wider array of possibilities to choose from. Some of the crazy ideas I come up crash and burn in the rehearsal hall, but most of them work out pretty well...

Thank you, Mary Jane!

The division of labor was an accident last time we did the show, but very much on purpose this time -- our amazing choreographer Robin Berger will stage the songs in which the five girlfriends are rock and roll back-up singers, and I'll stage the numbers for the guys in the record store, with what our actors call (sometimes lovingly, sometimes derisively) Millerography. So I'll stage "Last Real Record Store on Earth" and "Nine Percent Change of Your Love;" while Robin will stage "Desert Island All-Time Top Five Breakups," "She Goes," "Number Five with a Bullet," and "Crying in the Rain." Splitting the duties this way gives the women a much more polished look than the guys, which I think works really well in this show. This coming week, we'll have our first choreography rehearsal, we'll finish learning music, we'll have a full read-thru-sing-thru, and then we'll start blocking the show.

High Fidelity was the first show New Line "rescued" back in 2008. (Cry-Baby was the second.) It holds a special place in my heart. High Fidelity is like no other show I've ever encountered. And that's part of why it sold out our run in 2008. And that's why we're doing it again. It's that special.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

High Fidelity

As I do with most musical theatre cast albums (aside from the obviously crappy ones), I pre-ordered the High Fidelity CD on Amazon when it was first announced. When I got the CD, I instantly fell in love with the whole score, but particularly the opening number, "The Last Real Record Store on Earth" -- not only is it great rock and roll, it introduces every major character and the main themes of the show. It's a perfect theatre song, but it's also freakishly catchy. I still find myself listening to that opening number three or four times in a row sometimes...

At first, it didn't occur to me that New Line could -- or would even want to -- produce the show. After all, it had been a disaster on Broadway. But the more I listened to these amazing, funny, smart, original songs, the more I wondered how such a thrilling score wound up in such a bad show. And then I discovered that the playwright David Linsday-Abaire had written the show's script. And I started wondering, what if the show isn't bad, after all...? What if Broadway got it really wrong...?

I put on my musical theatre detective hat (only metaphorically, of course) and started searching the internet. Eventually, I found the show's composer Tom Kitt's band's website. So I emailed Tom and asked about High Fidelity. He sent me the script and I found that it's just as smart and insightful and emotional as the score and as Lindsay-Abaire's brilliant plays.

So we decided to produce the show in summer 2008. We were the first ones to produce it after Broadway.

We assembled a really strong cast (several of whom will return for this New Line revival) and went into rehearsal. I had worked with my lead Jeff Wright already on Grease and Assassins, and his portrayal of John Hinckley was both chilling and heart-breaking. I always knew Jeff was a strong performer with a nice voice, but I had discovered he's also an extremely intelligent and fearless actor. We also had two great comic actors who had only worked with us for about a year, Zak Farmer and Aaron Lawson, who we asked to play themselves... um, I mean... to play the sidekicks, Barry and Dick. Lawson's in Chicago now, but Zak is returning to the role of Barry, and one of New Line's finest character actors, Mike Dowdy, will take over the role of Dick.

The show become so meaningful to all of us as we worked on it. It's so relentlessly truthful and emotional, and though there are plenty of laughs, it's actually a very intense drama that almost everyone can relate to personally. We realized as we worked that High Fidelity is neither a love story nor a musical comedy (the original Broadway production team thought it was both); it's a story about a man who has to learn to grow up. Well, really, three men who have to learn to grow up.

As we worked, I started writing my background and analysis essay about the show, and I kept finding more and more in this material to write about, so my essay grew and grew. Eventually, it ended up in my latest book, Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and Musicals.

I had acquired a bootleg video of the Broadway production (shhh, don't tell anybody!), and I found that musical comedy director Walter Bobbie (who had emasculated Chicago with his bland revival) and his Hi-Fi design team had literally ruined the show on Broadway. First, I don't think I've ever seen a show paced faster than this one, almost as if there was a ticking time bomb in the theatre and they had to finish the show before it exploded. I shit you not -- they were racing through this very complicated emotional story, treating it like it was Dirty Rotten Scoundrels or Young Frankenstein, and they were essentially ignoring everything serious in the script and score. Plus the show had been saddled with enormous, moving, trick sets that looked like they belonged more in a show like Wicked, not High Fidelity.

I was horrified by it all and I think that was the first time that I realized how badly great shows can be misunderstood and mistreated on Broadway. I encountered exactly the same thing when I saw the original Broadway production of Cry-Baby.

Getting Hi-Fi on its feet was hard work but it was so worth it. We all fell in love with the show, and we soon found we weren't alone. Our production sold out all but one night, and it even sold out on the night of the Fourth of July! We had no choice but to do a show that night, but we never thought it would sell out...

And the show's lyricist Amanda Green (in the photo at right, with Tom Kitt) came to see us during the run, and was really happy with our production. Amanda went out to eat with us after the show and she couldn't stop talking about all the things in our production she thought worked better than the original. My impression is that the writing team was not happy with the original production and its icy cold reception, and I think we proved to them that they had written a great piece of theatre; it had just been manhandled in New York.

We got rave reviews, including Mark Bretz in The Ladue News calling our show the best show in St. Louis that year. And Paul Friswold at The Riverfront Times wrote a really smart, really personal, extended "think piece" about the show, and though the RFT wouldn't run his whole review in their print edition, they did put it online. The best part of all (well, one of the best parts, anyway) is that since we produced Hi-Fi, dozens of other companies across the country have come to us to ask about production rights, and we've passed them on to the writers.

We rescued High Fidelity. We resuscitated it. We literally brought it back from the dead. None of the licensing agents in New York would handle it. No one would produce it because it had flopped so badly on Broadway, having run only 19 previews and 13 performances before closing. But we redeemed it. We earned the show the rave reviews it had always deserved. (We hope the same thing will happen now with Cry-Baby, which we just closed a couple weeks ago -- once again in its first production after Broadway and once again to rave reviews.)

Flash forward a few years...

So about a year ago, I was working on setting New Line's 2011-2012 season, and I had both Passing Strange and Cry-Baby in place, but hadn't decided on a third show. I called my perennial sounding board (and New Line board member and my occasional co-director) Alison to talk it through. She noted how much I like coming back to shows I really love and asked if there was a New Line show I was dying to repeat. I didn't even think about it until it was already coming out of my mouth: I wanted to do High Fidelity again. I called Jeff the next day and told him I'd only do it if he returned to it with me. He immediately said yes. Within twenty-four hours I had Zak, Kimi Short (as Laura), Margeau Steinau (as Marie LaSalle), and Todd Micali (as Bruce Springsteen) all on board.

But I also realized that we had so many incredibly talented new actors working with us now and I wanted them to get a chance at this rich, incredible material too. So I slowly assembled a new cast for the show around those returning leads, a kind of New Line All-Stars -- Jeffrey M. Wright (Rob), Kimi Short (Laura), Zachary Allen Farmer (Barry), Mike Dowdy (Dick), Aaron Allen (Ian), Talichia Noah (Liz), Terrie Carolan (Anna), Margeau Baue Steinau (Marie LaSalle), Ryan Foizey, Nicholas Kelly, Todd Micali, Taylor Pietz, Sarah Porter, Keith Thompson, and Chrissy Young. (It doesn't usually work out this way, but half of this Hi-Fi cast was also just in Cry-Baby, which will make rehearsals much more fun and much harder to control.) Amy Kelly will repeat her costuming duties, with Ken Zinkl designing lights, Scott Schoonover designing the set, and Donald Smith designing sound.

Ever since that call to Jeff, we've all been dying to get back to Hi-Fi and it felt like it was taking forever to get here. But this coming Monday, we start rehearsals. I can't wait.

I don't know if I've ever felt as connected to a show as I do to High Fidelity. We are so grateful to Amanda, Tom, and David for trusting us with their baby back in 2008 and we're so proud to have helped this show see the light of day again. It will be so wonderful to dive back into Hi-Fi and see what new treasure we find there...

I truly love my job.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Top Ten Desert Island Musical Theatre Books

It occurred to me that since I've written blogs listing ten really cool stage musicals and ten really cool film musicals, I ought to do a blog listing ten really cool books about musical theatre. So, with the full knowledge that High Fidelity's Rob Gordon would have me list only my Top Five, here are my Top Ten...

Directors and the New Musical Drama: British and American Musical Theatre in the 1980s and 90s (the book is way more interesting than the title) by Miranda Lundskaer-Nielsen is one of the coolest books I've read in a while. It chronicles really clearly the many changes in our art form during this period, including the mega-musical, the art musical, the new rock musical, etc. In one section of the book of particular interest to the New Liners, she writes, “After the pioneering efforts of theatres such as the Public Theater and Playwrights Horizons in New York, the idea of the serious nonprofit musical spread to theatres across America during the 1990s. While these shows met with varying levels of economic and critical success, the very existence of this alternative home for the art form began to redefine the musical, offering an alternative to both the traditional Broadway musical and the new West End shows. As the economics of the commercial theatre became increasingly forbidding, the nonprofit theatre became vital incubators for musical drama and nurtured a new generation of musical theatre writers.” And New Line was part of that! New Line was founded in 1991 and through we didn't realize at the time that we were part of a movement, this book describes our original motivations and agenda surprisingly well.

I've described Broadway Musicals: The Biggest Hit and the Biggest Flop of the Season, 1959 to 2009 by Peter Filichia as candy for musical theatre geeks. It's truly one of my favorite musical theatre books I've ever read. Filichia (who is a friend, full disclosure) goes through every season during that time frame and picks the biggest hit musical and the biggest flop musical and writes a few pages about each one. And they're often not the shows you'd expect. Just grab a season at random, like 1973-74, when Filichia's pick for biggest hit was the truly godawful (but very commercial) Stephen Schwartz musical The Magic Show and the biggest flop was Rachael Lily Rosenbloom (And Don't You Forget It). You've never heard of it? Exactly. And sometimes, his choices are exactly what you'd expect. For the 1989-1990 season, the biggest hit was Grand Hotel, one of the greatest of the concept musicals, and the biggest flop was Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge. 'Nuff said. Not only does Peter have a wealth of hilarious, semi-scandalous musical theatre stories in his head, which he shares generously, but he also knows more about the inside scoop than anyone else not actually inside the creation of these musicals. Peter is a columnist, Broadway reviewer, and author of many books, the latest of which is the also very cool Broadway MVPs: 1960-2010: The Most Valuable Players of the Past 50 Seasons, which I'm about halfway through and enjoying thoroughly...

Everything Was Possible by Ted Chapin is the ultimate insider's look at the creation of Stephen Sondheim, James Goldman, and Hal Prince's Follies, one of the genuine masterpieces of the art form (seeing the recent Broadway revival was truly one of the great thrills of my life). Chapin was a production assistant on the original production and he kept a really detailed diary, which he adapted into this book. It's without question the best book I've ever read about the creation of a show -- and what a show! The most expensive Broadway show ever up to that point, the most artistically ambitious, the most logistically complex, the most harrowingly emotional, created by the inarguable geniuses Sondheim, Prince, and Michael Bennett (Goldman's script is amazing, but he doesn't rank with the others), and we get a ringside seat to literally everything. One of the fun side benefits for me was reading about the massive troubles and missteps and rewrites and restaging that took place all through the out-of-town tryout and the previews on Broadway, all of which made me feel so much less insecure as a director myself... Even the geniuses don't get it right the first time... or the second time...

Unfinished Show Business: Broadway Musicals as Works-in-Process by Bruce Kirle is one of those rare books on musical theatre that really fully understands and appreciates the art form and that has new, fresh, interesting ideas to put forward. It's about, more than anything, how our art form responds to and reflects the culture around it, and why a single show may have various versions to serve different times and agendas in the history of the art form. Anyone who loves musical theatre should check this one out. It's a smart, insightful book that is a real joy to read.

The Whorehouse Papers by Larry L. King may be one of the funniest books I've ever read. King wrote the original Playboy article that was the source material and he also wrote the stage script for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. As King tells the story, Peter Masterson came to him with the idea for turning King's Playboy article into a stage musical and King said, “Look, my ignorance of the subject is absolutely awesome. I’ve only seen three musicals in my life and didn’t care for any of them. I saw a number of dramas, but I quit musicals after three. Not my cup of whiskey.” He went on, “As a writer it irritates me when the story comes to a screeching halt so a bunch of bank clerks in candy-striped suits and carrying matching umbrellas can break into a silly tap dance while singing about the sidewalks of New York.” (Hmmm, now that you mention it, I hate that too.) But after hearing Carol Hall's opening number, "20 Fans," King said, “My God, that’s beautiful! This fucking thing may work!” His dark and funny tale of the insanity of bringing this true story to the musical stage under Masterson and novice director Tommy Tune is laugh-out-loud hilarious, as well as being a wonderful master class in the process of creating a truly original piece of musical theatre. (And by the way, another creation story book that's almost as funny is Meredith Willson's But He Doesn't Know the Territory, about the creation of The Music Man.)

The Great American Book Musical: A Manifesto, A Monograph, A Manual by Denny Martin Flinn is an outstanding book, one of the best I've read about musical theatre in a long time. It's a very smart, contemporary look at musical theatre, and thankfully, it's not one of those insufferable books that thinks musical theatre died in 1964. The author died shortly after writing it, but he said about the book, "I'm trying to leave a record of the technique, to create a blueprint for an ancient art." It's a really excellent read for anyone who works in or just loves the American musical.

The Show Makers: Great Directors of the American Musical Theatre by Lawrence Thelen is an amazing collection of profiles/interviews with twelve legends of the musical theatre, Hal Prince, George C. Wolfe, Tom O'Horgan, Arthur Laurents, Jim Lapine, Jerry Zaks, Jerome Robbins, Des McAnuff, Graciela Daniele, Mike Ockrent, Richard Maltby Jr., and Martin Charnin (okay, I wouldn't really call the last three "legends" but they're very good directors). I'm somebody who's read most books about musical theatre, but I learned a lot from this one, things like how these very different directors handle the rehearsal process (Lapine's process is the most interesting to me), pre-production, rewrites, etc. It's such an interesting read if you're into how musicals are made.

The Broadway Musical: A Critical and Musical Survey by Joseph Swain was the first book to analyze musical theatre scores in-depth, to look at musical themes and other devices, to explore how the music contributes to storytelling. (The only other books that do this kind of in-depth analysis are Stephen Banfield's Sondheim's Broadway Musicals and my own books.) Swain does a really strong job of explaining in really clear terms (if you know music theory that will help, but it's not necessary) how music functions in works of the musical theatre over the history of the art form, in shows including Show Boat, Porgy and Bess, Oklahoma!, Carousel, Kiss Me, Kate, Guys and Dolls, The Most Happy Fella, My Fair Lady, Camelot, West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Godspell, Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, A Chorus Line, Sweeney Todd, and Les Miserables. Pretty impressive list, isn't it? This is the book that inspired me to start doing my own analyses, which eventually led to me writing books. This is a really cool book, both for hardcore musical theatre fans, but also for people who just love seeing musicals and want to know a little more about what makes them tick...

The Broadway Musical: Collaboration in Commerce and Art by Bernard Rosenberg and Ernest Harburg is an incredibly clear look into the business of making commercial musical theatre. The book's jacket says "Three out of four Broadway-bound musicals fail to get there, and many of those that do, ultimately fail. The Broadway Musical takes an engrossing look at the industry's successes and failures in an effort to understand the phenomenon of mass collaboration that is Broadway. The authors investigate the complicated machinery of show business from its birth around the turn of the century through its survival of the cost explosions of the 1980s." It's really eye-opening and really interesting. Another book on this topic just as interesting and more recent is On Broadway: Art and Commerce on the Great White Way by Steven Adler.

Now complain all you want but I'm going to count this next one as a single pick. They're my rules and I can break 'em if I want to. Ethan Mordden wrote a series of seven books chronicling the history of American musical theatre, and five of the seven are really wonderful. His books Make Believe (about the 1920s); Sing for Your Supper (the 30s); Beautiful Mornin' (the 40s); Coming Up Roses (the 50s); and Open a New Window (the 60s) are all very cool, fun to read, full of interesting info, and often very funny. His books One More Kiss (about the 70s) and The Happiest Corpse I've Ever Seen (about the 80s through today) are hard to get through because he hates rock musicals. No, I mean he hates them. In fact, he hates all the changes the art form went through in the 70s and again in the 90s. He hates all the things that give me such hope for the future of our art form. So for me at least, the last two books kinda read like some musical theatre equivalent of Ebeneezer Scrooge wrote them. Yuck.

And finally, since both my other Top Ten lists included more than ten, I can't help but cheat on this one too and plug my own musical theatre books, all of which I'm very proud of, Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and Musicals; Strike Up the Band: A New History of Musical Theatre; Rebels with Applause; Deconstructing Harold Hill; From Assassins to West Side Story; and Let the Sun Shine In: The Genius of HAIR.

You can find all my books (past, present, and future) on my Amazon Author Page.

I'd also like to mention a few really excellent books on theatre, that aren't specifically about musical theatre but still worth a read -- New Broadways: Theatre Across America: Approaching a New Millennium by Gerald M. Berkowitz; Playing Underground: A Critical History of the 1960s Off-Off-Broadway Movement by Stephen J. Bottoms; Broadway Theatre by Andrew Harris; and the truly amazing Connecting Flights by Robert Lepage, maybe the best book on theatre I've ever read.

Young actors often ask me what they should do to learn and improve at their art form. I tell them to read everything they can get their hands on, listen to every cast album they can find, and go see every musical anybody produces anywhere nearby. (I had the great luck to be an usher at the Muny for eight seasons.) I taught a class in musical theatre history a while back and I was astounded to find out that most of these musical theatre majors didn't know anything about the history or literature of their art form. Most of them had never seen The Music Man or Les Miserables or even Rocky Horror. But how can you do The Drowsy Chaperone or Cry-Baby if you don't understand old school musical comedy? How can you do Godspell or Grease if you don't understand Hair? 

Honestly, I think these kids just love performing and it's never occurred to them that they're making art and not just "putting on a show." I see this mindset all the time when people come to work with New Line for the first time, and it blows their minds to discover the artistry and intelligence and deep human insight that goes into making great musical theatre. Once we've opened their eyes, they're converts for life.

The crusade continues...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Just an Endless Happy Ending

Well, we opened Cry-Baby last weekend and it has been an awesome ride so far. We've had great, responsive crowds, and one of the show's songwriters, Adam Schlesinger, was at our show Friday night. He really seemed to love the show, finally seeing it done small and intimate, with a 6-piece rock band -- the way they all wish it would have been produced originally. It always makes me so happy when we can take a show like Cry-Baby (or High Fidelity) and show Broadway that the book and lyrics are outstanding after all, despite a clumsy, manhandled Broadway production -- particularly because it vindicates the writers who worked so hard to fashion a cool show only to have it mutilated by Broadway people who just didn't understand it.

It was an awesome opening weekend, and it's just going to get better. Ticket sales are soaring!

Here's what the critics think...

“If you liked New Line’s productions of Return to the Forbidden Planet and Bat Boy, or if you just want to have a great time, then pick up tickets for its latest giddy extravaganza, Cry-Baby. You'll laugh too hard to catch all the hilarious lyrics. . . In fact, the whole ensemble captures the go-for-broke spirit that Miller, band leader Justin Smolik and choreographer Robin Michelle Berger relish. . . Now in its 21st season, New Line also stages serious musicals: Evita, Love Kills, Kiss of the Spider Woman and many more. And it stages them beautifully, albeit with unexpected twists. But Miller's intimate musical comedies have a distinctive charm all their own, part sketch comedy, part witty spoofs of musical-theater tradition. They don't come up that often, but when they do, they last a long time in memory.” – Judith Newmark, St. Louis Post-Dispatch  (Read Judy's whole review.)

“I couldn't stop smiling and laughing through this stage-musical version of John Waters’ film, though I have to admit I never really tried. From the opening chords, which (of course) sound like some 1950s movie about teen rebels, we know we're in for a counter-cultural extravaganza. Long and lanky Ryan Foizey is fantastic as a pacifist Elvis Presley in red-scare America, and director Scott Miller and crew surround him with a cast that bristles with talent and dance that crackles with excitement.” – Richard Green, TalkinBroadway.com  (Read Richard's whole review.)

“Cry-Baby is a smash, a musical and cultural send up of drape and square mores, while at the same time, a parody of the typical ‘boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back’ scenarios that we've all been exposed to in more traditional shows. At times, it’s like watching a throwdown between Little Richard and Pat Boone over who really sings ‘Good Golly, Miss Molly’ the best and most authentic. . . Scott Miller and New Line Theatre have once again given us something outside the norm, and it's a joyous ride. This revision of Cry-Baby is a sheer delight, full of characters and situations from the movie by filmmaker John Waters, but also standing on its own with a clever and hilarious score (music and lyrics by David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger), having jettisoned the tunes from the film itself. Go see this play now. It’s wonderfully directed, smartly choreographed, and marvelously acted. . . This is a rave because this a rockin’ good show! Go see Cry-Baby and enjoy!” – Chris Gibon, BroadwayWorld  (Read Chris' whole review.)

Four and half stars out of five. “A glorious and infectious American regional premiere by New Line Theatre. Under Miller’s devoted and painstaking direction, this Cry-Baby rocks the room with an effervescent energy, exploding across the stage through an array of dazzling moves choreographed by Robin Michelle Berger. . . Miller has a penchant for mining rare musical gems and, sometimes, resuscitating them from their moribund beginnings. Such is the case with this Cry-Baby, which will leave you shedding only tears of laughter.” – Mark Bretz, Ladue News  (Read Mark's whole review.)

“Under Scott Miller's bull's-eye direction, Cry-Baby is bolstered by New Line's consistently energetic cast, including newcomer Ryan Foizey in the title role. His charismatic Elvis Presley inspired Cry-Baby has just enough seeming volatility to make him seem dangerous, but all the heart to make him genuine. Doesn't hurt that he has a great voice, too.” – St. Louis Theater Snob  (Read Andrea's whole review.)

Three and a half stars our of four. “There’s an enthusiasm and energetic playfulness in New Line Theatre’s production of Cry-Baby that evokes some very clever laughs and lots of nostalgic friskiness. It’s a hallmark of the kind of amicably provocative show New Line likes to produce. . . Scott Miller has developed an enjoyable niche for his theater that is unique, important and always fun.” – Harry Hamm, KMOX

“Scott Miller almost always settles into a high-octane groove with his productions at New Line Theatre. That's true of his current offering, Cry-Baby, the musical adapted from John Waters’ film of the same name.” – Bob Wilcox, KDHX

“Scott Miller directs stylishly. . . Miller’s direction and the cast’s talent make it a fine diversion, something to see if you need a break from preparing your taxes.” – Joe Pollack, St. Louis Eats and Drinks

After a few days off, it will so wonderful to get back to this amazing show and this amazing cast tonight. Come see us -- details on the New Line website. I promise you will have a fucking blast!

I love my job!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

The Turkey Point Jukebox Jamboree

New Line Theatre's Cry-Baby previews tonight and opens tomorrow night. Hell Week is over.

Most theatre people call it "production week," but I've been calling it Hell Week since high school. Although, really, Hell Week is rarely hellish anymore -- our shows are almost always in awfully good shape by that point. So these days, Hell Week is really just the time to work out subtle details of staging, make sure the costumes and costume changes all work, trouble-shoot the mics, find the volume balance with the band (which will change again the minute the seats have bodies in them), that kind of stuff. Back in the early days of New Line (who ever thought New Line would have "early days"?), it really was Hell Week -- we'd move the set in on a Sunday, have three tech rehearsals and open. There was no time for a lighting cue-to-cue rehearsal or a band rehearsal or a preview. Now we have a lot more time.

Thank god.

Still, Hell Week is when I also have to take care of tons of producing details, like picking up programs, getting box office change, coordinating with Metrotix, picking up tickets, creating flyers and such for the lobby, that kind of thing. The biggest stress for me personally is that, as both producer and director, almost every question this week requires an answer from me. And there are a lot of questions. I don't know if you ever get this feeling, but my brain gets tired! Trying to answer questions and solve problems continuously for a week is exhausting. So all that doesn't leave me much time for blogging. Actually it doesn't leave me time for much at all beside my nightly chronic and sleep.

Sunday was the first time the band joined us for what's called the sitzprobe, the only rehearsal we have with the band and cast together before running the whole show. It's the number one most stressful rehearsal for me in the entire process (though significantly less stressful since the ever-awesome Justin Smolik joined us as accompanist). We have to show the band all our little idiosyncrasies with the score, things we've cut (instrumental music we don't need in our production), etc. for the whole score and run it all -- in about four hours. Add to that, this time around, that we're also dealing with all new orchestrations created just for our production by the show's original orchestrator, Chris Jahnke. And because Chris and his assistants have been writing all this new, they've been sending the band parts to us as they finish them. We got the last of them Sunday morning, the day of the sitzprobe. And though the new arrangements are extremely cool -- they've reduced the score from an 18-piece Broadway orchestra to a 6-piece rock band -- there were the inevitable typos and measures that don't match. It was quite an adventure trying to figure it all out...

Then we ran the show Monday night, with the band and full tech for the first time. And to our horror, we discovered the band parts frequently didn't match the piano score, something we only got a glimpse of Sunday. A little backstory... when we started working on Cry-Baby, the authors sent us the script and score. What we found out only very recently was that the piano score we've been rehearsing with is the version they went into rehearsal with -- but not the version they orchestrated. So they sent us a list the day before the stizprobe of "discrepancies," changes we'd have to make in the piano book and/or the band parts to make them match. Unfortunately, the orchestrators apparently didn't find all the discrepancies. So all week, as opening night creeps closer and closer, our musicians have been trying desperately to make sense of our band charts. I think they've figured it all out now.

Thank god we have smart, talented musicians. Otherwise, we'd be fucked...

Trying to lead us through this minefield is Justin Smolik, who joined us as our keyboard player and resident music director at the beginning of last season, for I Love My Wife. He's an outstanding pianist technically (way better than me), but also a really, really expressive player. And he can play rowdy jazz and pounding rock and roll like nobody's business. Few people could have handled the Passing Strange score that beautifully. He's also great at the hardest part of the job -- being a sensitive and responsive accompanist, in other words, performing with the actors, not behind them. I feel so safe leaving the actors in his care once I step away from the keyboard.

Our lead guitarist Mike Bauer first joined us in 1997 for Jacques Brel (playing both guitar and mandolin), when he was only 19, and he stayed with us for several shows before other priorities took him away. But he returned to us in 2010 for The Wild Party, and he's been part of The New Line Band since then. Mike doesn't know he's as good as he is -- but like Justin, he's a really strong, really expressive player, he brings so much to our shows, and he can play in virtually any style. It's very cool to have him back in the family.

Dave Hall first played bass for us during Cabaret in 2001, and he's been our bassist pretty much the whole time since then, as solid and dependable as can be. Back in New Line's early days, we sometimes didn't hire a bass player because our budget was so tight. Dave convinced me we should always have a bass player, and he's right. I don't know if his argument was an artistic or self-serving one, but he convinced me. Dave's in a relationship with our stage manager Trish, so he often finds himself doubling as assistant stage manager after performances, washing dishes, sweeping up rose petals, you name it...

Clancy Newell has been playing drums for us since Spelling Bee in 2009. He's one of those incredible, totally dependable drummers, who knows how to follow, who can jump measures if something goes wrong on stage, and who knows how to keep his volume at a reasonable level, even when he's playing rowdy rock and roll. Many -- most? -- drummers aren't very good at that. Most drummers like playing loud. Clancy is a real treasure and I think he plans to stick around for a while. Plus, he's one of the mellowest, most easy-going guys I think I've ever known. Totally a latter-day hippie (I don't know if he'd agree or not), just like me...

This is Robert Vinson's third show playing reeds for us. He also played Spelling Bee in 2009 and Evita in 2010. I so loved listening to his sax solo in "I'd Be Surprisingly Good for You" every night, such a warm, sexy, creamy sound. We've had good reed players before, but Robert is really amazing. He has such control of the sound, such a rich, true tone. He's played on Broadway (including one of the Grease revivals) and elsewhere, and he's really great to work with. We're lucky that someone of Robert's caliber wants to work with us -- 'cause it ain't for the money.

Rhythm guitar player Joe Isaacs is joining our New Line family for the first time with Cry-Baby. He's a student of Aaron Doerr's, the guitarist who played bare and Passing Strange for us, and who will be back for High Fidelity. But Aaron couldn't do this show so he sent us Joe, who's doing a really excellent job, despite all the crazy obstacles we keep throwing at the band... Talk about baptism by fire...

I often talk and write about how lucky we are to attract the incredible talent we get for our casts. Every show has such smart, talented, fearless actors. But we're just as grateful that these musicians choose to work with us -- for far less money than they deserve. But like the actors, the musicians don't do it for the bucks; they do it because we get to work on some of the most interesting, most artful, most exciting music you can imagine. It's a real adventure every time...

Though I'm sure they wish it had been easier this time, they're always bringing their A game, and it shows. We're very lucky to have them.

Come see Cry-Baby and hear this amazing band rock your shit!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott