ALSO BY ARTHUR LAURENTS
Original Story By: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood
To David Saint and
his George Street Playhouse
ONE
In the Bones
“THE SHOW DEPENDS ON YOU,” Scott Rudin said. “You have the musical in your bones; Sam doesn't. You have to put it there for him.”
The remark wasn't meant to be either flattering or challenging; it was simply Scott stating my task for his upcoming revival of Gypsy in 2003. With Bernadette Peters as a very different Rose, the production, though headed for New York, was to originate in London. Thus it had an English co-producer, Robert Fox, and an English director, very hot at that moment—Sam Mendes. What I didn't realize then was that the remark wasn't simply a Scott Rudinism; it was an acute perception of what could be an Achilles’ heel. By the time I did realize that, Scott was gone, the production had been shifted to originate in New York, and no one in charge really knew much about Broadway musicals, including the director to whom all bowed. No musical, no matter how good, can survive a misdirected, misconceived production, and this one was no exception.
There had been two major revivals of Gypsy in New York: one with Angela Lansbury in 1974, the other with Tyne Daly in 1989. Gypsy takes its tone and style from the actress playing Rose: Merman, a legend in the original, Angie and Tyne, each brilliant in her own way, in the two I had directed. I wanted someone else to direct this one because I wanted to see what that someone else would do; I hoped to be surprised. “Surprised” was not the word for my reaction to what Sam Mendes did. “Surprised” is a happy word.
He was Scott's suggestion, enthusiastically endorsed by his friend Robert Fox. Robert was as good-looking as his better-known actor brothers, James and Edward, but actors are seen more, so known more, than producers. He had taste, an executioner's tongue, a bucket of charm, and three ex-wives. He was not given to unconsidered enthusiasm or much ambition. Sam, who wasn't short on charm himself when necessary, had called me some years earlier about doing Gypsy at the Donmar Warehouse, the pocket-size theatre in London where he made his name. I thought the Donmar was too small. A year or so passed and Sam called again to offer a bigger venue: a West End legitimate theatre. Still too small for me. When London was dropped for the Bernadette Peters revival, one of the reasons given was Sam's feeling that the show was “a big Broadway musical.”
I was eager to do Gypsy in London because it hadn't been seen in the West End since 1973, when the Angela Lansbury production premiered. Very heady, the reception was, from the opening night to the end of Angie's run. I wanted to repeat that dreamlike triumph thirty years later with Bernadette; but London, alas, was finessed. The reason given was that it would be too expensive to bring the production to New York. That was also given as the reason for not taking the production to Washington before opening in New York. Money is well regarded as a believable reason for not doing anything, but I checked to find out how much had been lost taking Annie Get Your Gun with Bernadette to Washington before it opened in New York. It had made $750,000. Who didn't want to take Gypsy to Washington? Not Scott; he, too, had been finessed. Not by the Brits, though—by Stephen Sondheim, because of another musical.
Called Wise Guys, this one opened at the New York Theatre Workshop not too long before Gypsy was scheduled to go into production in London. Involved in both shows were the same three major names: Steve, Scott, and Sam. There was probably an omen in that all three names begin with S, but no one was into anything as realistic as omens. Wise Guys (later retitled Bounce and, more recently, Road Show) was written by Steve (with John Weidman), produced by Scott, and directed by Sam. Each of the Three S's must have been aware that the show wasn't ready for a public outing: its second act was unfinished and its director had come straight from editing his first film (American Beauty) without time to digest the material. Why they went ahead, then, is a mystery only to those who have never done a musical. The brightest, the most experienced, the most talented makers of musicals, particularly the most talented, also believe they can walk on water.
The show's failure produced more schadenfreude than any in years; the apportioning of blame afterwards was inevitable. There is a touch of irony in that it was Scott, he who had promoted Sam for Gypsy and opposed him for Wise Guys, who got the heave-ho. He and Steve had a feud which grew so fierce and public that Steve refused to have Scott on Gypsy. Steve was the best lyricist and collaborator I had ever worked with. That refusal was his prerogative. Steve also demanded that as his friend, I stop speaking to Scott. That was not his prerogative. I refused; he said he and I couldn't be friends; he stopped speaking to me—which was greeted in the theatre community with “Oh, not again.” But this is about Gypsy, not about Steve and me.
With London out and New York in, one would have thought Scott, an experienced New York producer, more essential than ever, and he was. With musicals, however, neither logic nor common sense prevails. By the time production was underway in New York, Robert Fox was odd man in. Noted for productions of classy plays in London (principally with Maggie Smith) and almost a neophyte when it came to musicals, Robert had replaced Scott with an American producer who was a neophyte: not only had he never produced a musical, he knew nothing about musicals. He was, however, a fan, an Anglophile, and he had a lot of lolly. After the first preview it was evident to everyone except Robert and his co-producer that this revival was in what is colloquially known as deep shit. My longtime partner, Tom Hatcher, came striding up the aisle as soon as the curtain came down and broke the news to Robert. Startled at first because Tom came from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and deceptively looked it, Robert recovered quickly, and his experienced tongue got to work. Too easily upset on my behalf, Tom struck back, and they played a juicy little scene at the back of the orchestra. A theatre gossip columnist standing nearby reported the episode the next day, except that in his version the argument was between Robert and me. That might have upset me in the days before Nick and Nora, when the New York Times, in a futile effort to increase circulation, had its own theatre gossip columnist who destroyed me every Friday during our endless previews. Like the show, she didn't last.
As the credited producer, Robert put all his chips on Sam; he believed Sam did walk on water, as indeed he had at his reservoir, the Donmar. But this was Broadway, this was the Shubert Theatre, and unlike Scott, Robert didn't know what it meant to have the musical in your bones. Thus he couldn't see that it wasn't in Sam's or understand why it needed to be.
What does it mean, the musical wasn't “in his bones”? For that matter, what exactly does “in the bones” mean? Well, there is no exact definition: the expression encompasses a feeling for the rhythm of the musical as a whole as well as of the scenes and numbers within it, for why and when and how to highlight a moment and make it musical without actual song or dance, for how and when to implant the emotional reality that makes a performance musical theatre, not musical comedy. It's not a skill, it can't be acquired with experience, it can't be learned or taught or injected—it's an instinct. Even excellent singers and dancers don't make excellent musical theatre performers if, despite their gifts, despite their technique, despite all their experience, the musical isn't in their bones. In Rose's words: “You either got it or you ain't.” Unfortunately for Sam Mendes, his first directorial touch on Gypsy showed he didn't got it.
Gypsy starts before the director does, with that legendary, thrilling Jule Styne overture. Play the opening “I had a dream” chords (the show was a few years before Martin Luther King's historic speech) and the audience applauds as though cards have been held up in a television studio; it erupts over the trumpet solo in the burlesque section and roars its approval with the final orchestral flourish. It's flyin
g on a musical high when the curtain rises on a noisy, brightly lit, garishly costumed rehearsal for Uncle Jocko's Kiddie Show, Seattle—as the illuminated signs say on either side of the vaudeville proscenium. During the brief scene, laughter comes fairly easily, because the audience is so exhilarated but also because it knows in its musical bones that something is coming that is going to send it even higher. And something does. Strutting down the aisle in all her vulgar glory is Rose. “Sing out, Louise!” she calls, and the roof of the theatre is knocked off. Gypsy is launched.
The rhythm and knowing drive to that opening beat were absent from the Mendes production. The overture worked its magic; the exhilarated audience was flying high; and then the curtain rose—on gloomy silence and the empty, cavernous stage of a dingy old theatre. Across the back wall, the designer added redundancy with one word in large, faded letters: SILENCE. A stooped, scraggy stagehand dragged himself out of the upstage shadows to cross oh-so-slowly downstage with placards to be inserted in the downstage light boxes. Before he had trudged halfway there, the audience had been lost. It had come down from its high and was ready for The Iceman Cometh. By the time Bernadette as Rose strutted down the aisle shouting “Sing out, Louise!” Gypsy‘s battery had died and she had to jump-start the show again all by herself.
The first five minutes of a musical are crucial: either the audience can be captured, in which case they are the director's, no matter what he or she does, until at least halfway through the first act; or they can be lost, in which case it will take some stage magic to get them back before the end of the first act, if ever. Never mind intelligence and craft, never mind desire, never mind talent. If the musical were in your bones, you would never follow that dazzling overture with the gloomy silence of an empty, cavernous hole and the long wait while an old stagehand trudged across a dreary stage.
Nor would you have continued to show it wasn't in your bones right up to the big climactic eleven o'clock number, “Rose's Turn.” For a director born for musicals, “Rose's Turn” is New Year's Eve in Times Square. It's his world and his stage on which to let his star loose theatrically. And legitimately, for the number takes place, not in reality, but in Rose's head, where she is “better than any of you!”—the greatest performer in the world, the star she had always wanted to be, hailed by wildly cheering fans. Raunchy, funny, sexy, vulgar, and underneath, always raging, always eaten up with hunger for the star she has never had on her door. She almost gets tripped up: there's a shaking passage where she questions herself. But she's Rose, and Rose doesn't give in or up: that eternal anger fuels her to insist on triumph, and triumph she does. The cheers in her head are louder than anyone ever heard in life.
Bernadette Peters's life in the theatre had made her more than ready. But that wasn't how Sam saw the number. Under his direction, “Roses’ Turn” seemed to be “Bernadette Peters in Concert.” Except for a rather dainty pass at a stripper's walk, she scarcely moved at all.
A director sometimes has a vision, a conception that he comes to from some place within himself. That it is at odds with the material he is directing doesn't seem to matter or even occur to him. The material—this is so elementary it shouldn't have to be stated, but almost every musical production in recent years seems oblivious to it—the material is the source for everything seen or said or done on the stage. The director, the choreographer, the designer, the actor who thinks he or she doesn't have to observe this is digging his own shallow grave.
A number like “Rose's Turn” is so strongly written, and Bernadette Peters is so strong a performer, that the audience applauded and cheered even though it wasn't getting full value: the star wasn't delivering that landmark number as brilliantly in her own original style as she undoubtedly could. Those who had seen the show before were well aware of this (New York overflows with musical-comedy queens who know every word of Gypsy and don't hesitate to voice their displeasure); those, like Sam, who had never seen the show weren't aware of what they were missing. The vehemence of the response the number gets anyway made it hard for Sam to see he had made a mistake—doubly hard when the producers, who also hadn't seen the show before, were functioning only as the director's faithful fans. Of course, all of them could have seen the video recording of the Tyne Daly revival at the Lincoln Center archives. (Actually, one of them did. Apparently he wasn't impressed.)
Bernadette Peters grew up in the theatre: she was a Hollywood Blonde in a touring company of Gypsy when she was eleven years old. When the company played a cut version in Las Vegas, I directed the show for the first time, and I must have directed Bernadette—as I wish I had when we were both back in our hometown and slightly older.
Bernadette has long been a total professional, beloved by every company she has graced. She has also long been a star, but she doesn't indulge in the conventional star behavior. That's admirable, but there are times when she has done herself and the show she is starring in a disservice by not taking advantage of her status. Gypsy was a glaring example. What she could really do, not only with “Rose's Turn” but with Rose herself, only became clear late in the run, when she finally asserted herself and let the lid off the performance that had been bottled up. Her “Everything's Coming Up Roses” at the end of the first act brought both cheers and tears. Her whole, stunning performance galvanized the actors capable of letting loose with her. It might have brought the show to life, but too many in the company either had nothing to let loose or, like the over-the-top strippers, were bloated from scenery chewing. Bernadette's Rose did take its rightful place, but too late, and unseen by too many who should have seen it.
Sam tried hard to satisfy many of the notes I gave him, but my continued insistence that “Rose's Turn” was misconceived was hardest for him to accept: perhaps because he was deceived by the audience's response, perhaps because he liked to stage any musical number that didn't require real dancing himself and didn't want to entrust the number to the choreographer, Jerry Mitchell. Jerry, a gypsy through and through, had the musical in his bones. He had an undoable assignment: to embellish and improve on Jerry Robbins's original numbers. On his own, he staged the most audience-effective number in the whole show: Gypsy's final strip, done by Tammy Blanchard's incandescent Louise. That strip, however, was Las Vegas in Nevada, not Minsky on Forty-second Street. If the production had had any period authenticity, the staging would have seemed out of time and place and the number wouldn't have worked as well as it did. But the designer didn't have a sense of time, place, or period, so Jerry Mitchell provided a glitter and vitality that were a welcome relief from the brown quasi-earthiness that burdened the evening. He replicated the Robbins steps for “You Gotta Get a Gimmick” as best he could, but the number was massacred by the three shameless hamsters. Once again, the producers were deceived by the preview audience's response.
With “Rose's Turn,” my notes had better luck. Just before the end of previews, Sam allowed Bernadette some freedom. That he did so was because Sam is essentially a literary man and finally saw the contradiction between the words Rose spoke and sang and her limited movement. Directors of plays usually don't give the same weight to the text when directing musicals. Music seduces.
For a long time now, it's been the rare musical that shows awareness of the vital importance of scenery, costumes, and lighting— the look. Shows like Follies and La Cage aux Folles seem relegated to nostalgia. The look in recent years usually seems to confuse mechanized vulgarity with theatricality. And the audience wonders (or at least I wonder): what happened to taste, to color sense, to visual style?
The responsibility is the director's, for in the end, the look of the musical is the director's look. He chooses the designers, he conveys his vision, he guides and edits. He can inspire the best to be even better or he can hamstring them into being less. For lighting his revival of Gypsy, Sam Mendes chose Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, candidates for finest lighting designers in the country. Following the rules for being complete professionals, they put aside their knowledge,
experience, and the musical instinct in their bones and did their best to satisfy the captain of their dark brown ship. For scenery and costumes, Sam chose his London colleague Anthony Ward. When we met, I remarked that Gypsy was very American. “What does that mean?” Ward sniffed. That he never bothered to find out was clear from his scenery; that he didn't even bother to find out who Rose was was clear from his dowdy costumes for Bernadette. Whatever Anthony Ward had in his bones, it wasn't musical or authenticity. There are still Brits who think we are their colonials.
The scenery for Gypsy, like the scenery for all Donmar productions, had no walls. This makes sense at the Donmar Warehouse in London, where walls would block the audience from seeing what's going on. It made no sense at the Shubert Theatre on Broadway in New York, because there was no clear reason why there weren't walls. The absence of walls in any set that was supposed to be a room left the audience unsure where a scene was taking place—in a kitchen, for example. The lack of walls wouldn't have mattered if the pieces that made up the set had been carefully chosen to convey “kitchen.” Instead, all the rooms were composed of the same brown doorways, brown chairs, and brown table, all pushed around the stage by actors and/or stagehands in meticulously choreographed moves to music. The arrangement of doorways, chairs, and table changed for each scene, but the end result was always brown doorways, chairs, and table in an unidentifiable location. Style, yes—but for Kafka, not Gypsy.
No walls ruptured the rhythm of the show. Intended to speed the pace by cutting the time for scene changes—which it did—it unfortunately also slowed the pace markedly during the scenes themselves. When there are walls, a character can enter and exit in almost no time because he comes on stage unseen behind a wall and merely has to open a door and appear. When there are no walls, he has to come on stage in full view of the audience and decide how to get to that door at the right moment. He can't race to it without attracting unwanted audience attention, but if he walks slowly, pretending to be invisible while knowing he isn't, trying to time it so that he won't have to wait at the door but can open it on cue the split second he gets there, it may take him almost a minute to cross from the wings to the door. In real time, a minute may not be much, but in theatre time, a single minute can seem like five. Not only is the pace slowed, not only are entrances not the surprise desired, but the audience's attention is split between watching the characters on stage and watching the actor sneaking out of the wings trying to pretend he isn't.
Mainly on Directing Page 1
