Mainly on Directing

by Arthur Laurents

  I had liked her very much the last time I had seen her: in John Doyle's instrumental revival of Sweeney Todd. But Gypsy takes its tone from Rose. I didn't really know Patti LuPone, so I didn't know what her Rose might be. From the YouTube clips and from interviews she gave on the Internet and TV (risky venues), I wasn't sure she knew, either. If it hadn't been easy for her to call me, I certainly understood; if she had done it because she desperately wanted to play Rose in New York, I also understood. Her call merited a meeting. I don't “do lunch,” but dinner could be awkward if we didn't get on, so lunch it was. I invited her to a very Italian restaurant in my neighborhood—she carried on as though she'd been born in Firenze, and the restaurant's waiters carried on as though they thought she'd been.

  Lunch lasted three and a half hours. I said almost everything I had to say about some performing ruts she had gotten into. I had done some research and read some interviews she had given about herself—denigrating herself, to my mind—and some she had given about Rose which I thought were way off track. If a director is really interested in who his star is and what she really thinks about the character she would play, he will be wasting time if he doesn't learn as much as he can as early as he can. If he isn't interested, then either he thinks he's the star or he's her stage manager.

  Patti's reactions, which included tears, were surprising. Totally uncomplicated was a passionate love of the theatre and a determination to achieve the best she could every second she was on stage. She made an effort to be completely open, and at times she was; at others, she was wary of trusting. The theatre hadn't been particularly kind to her—neither critics, columnists, producers, some of her fellow actors. Nothing had come easily. She agreed that if we were to do Gypsy, we would have to start from scratch and take the journey together. And there we left it.

  I wasn't sure. Her desire to play Rose had been so paramount, it had gotten in the way of our really connecting. I didn't really know her.

  My partner—an inadequate word equaled only by “gay,” and is that a coincidence?—my partner, Tom Hatcher, told me to direct Gypsy with Patti LuPone. He didn't want the Sam Mendes production to be New York's last memory of Gypsy. That wasn't his only motive. He had more on his mind, even more than my doing Gypsy.

  He knew he was dying of lung cancer, but he didn't want me to know. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't. He had survived colon cancer. I knew he was having some sort of breathing trouble, but still, that hadn't stopped him from taking our annual three-week ski holiday in Switzerland. I was extremely adept at denial, and since I was unable to imagine a world without him, the possibility that he wouldn't beat this cancer too never occurred to me. Yes, I know; but it didn't.

  Looking back, I realize the main reason he wanted me to direct this Gypsy was that he knew it would help me if I were busy after he was gone, doing what I liked doing and, in his mind, should be doing. To Tom, I was an unappreciated director who didn't direct as much as I should have. He was certain that with my help, Patti LuPone would finally fulfill her potential and New York would again have a Gypsy that Gypsy deserved. He urged me to commit— this is hindsight—so he would know while he was still here that I would be doing what he believed I should be doing after he was gone. What he asked, I did. But before the production could get under way, cancer won. Fulfilling his wish, my directing Gypsy became an act of love.

  I didn't know the production was for a limited three-week run at City Center, a Moorish barn just outside the theatre district. It wouldn't have mattered if I had; it didn't matter until I went to work there. I simply wanted to direct Gypsy with Patti LuPone, and doing it away from Broadway was a plus to me. Of course I didn't know then what City Center was or how it functioned. If I had, I never would have directed that Gypsy—which would have been a whopping mistake. Ignorance can bring unintentional bliss.

  City Center was primarily a booking agency for everything from dance companies to tango singers. It hadn't produced a full-scale musical in decades. What it did produce was its very successful Encores! series: revivals of old musical comedies in concert versions—meaning abbreviated texts that actors perform script in hand, wearing suggestions of costumes before suggestions of scenery in front of an on-stage orchestra. Jack Viertel, the artistic director of Encores!—the exclamation point is part of the name— had seen Patti in Gypsy at Ravinia and was hell bent on bringing her to City Center to launch its new Summer Stars series. Jack was the de facto producer of Gypsy—unacknowledged, because he was employed by, and thus under the jurisdiction of, the Center's Ninth Floor, where its managerial offices emulate Dante's Ninth Circle of Hell. This is best illustrated by an e-mail from the Floor's Führer.

  He made it clear that this was a City Center production and would be done in the City Center way. If we pushed back he would “nickel and dime [us] at every turn.”

  If the Ninth Floor had read the front page, they would have known how important the e-mail is as evidence of stupidity as well as cupidity. To them, Gypsy was just another Encores! with a few extra trimmings.

  Fortunately, I didn't have to take them on alone; I had what every director must have, even in a situation that isn't ugly: a production stage manager who could fill in any blank I couldn't. Craig Jacobs, the best PSM I know, enabled me to do the production I wanted despite City Center. It was never easy or smooth going, but that didn't matter. I was more excited by the work I was doing than I had been for a long time—maybe ever, because I wasn't seeking anyone's approval.

  As it turned out, Tom would have been more than pleased. So I thought when we opened. Over time, I progressed from thinking he was pleased to believing he is pleased. Yes: is. And that has made life pleasurable again. No one would have smelled incense and heard temple bells or scoffed at that more than I would have back before the moment when all went lopsided and changed so radically. But dealing with death can make a skeptic deal with possibilities that weren't acknowledged, let alone accepted. Dealing with death is dealing with how to go on living—in my case, what had been a wonderful life. The summer of City Center, I got an e-mail from Mike Nichols about Gypsy that I wished so much Tom had read; today I believe of course he has read it and is infinitely pleased for me that Gypsy had made Mike Nichols “realize again and for the first time in a very long time that the theatre is still the best thing we have.”

  No praise means more than praise from a peer you respect and admire. It came in other e-mails, in notes and phone calls from friends, acquaintances, people who were just familiar names in the theatre, even a bona fide critic, however former: Frank Rich. Long a fervent admirer of Gypsy, he saw the production three times during its brief run and sent me an ecstatic e-mail.

  What made Mike Nichols and Frank Rich, what made others, what made all of them react so strongly to this Gypsy? What made the audience cheer and scream all during the play at every performance? What made closing night the most extraordinary night I've ever seen or heard of in the theatre?

  More than 2,500 people, from the celebrities in the orchestra to the audience in the third balcony, stood and applauded and hollered and cheered for almost fifteen minutes. Fresh roses made it difficult to walk on the stage. “None of us had ever experienced anything like that in our careers,” said the City Center's stage-management report. “We chose ultimately to leave the curtain out. We brought the houselights up, the audience remained in place, screaming itself hoarse and clapping its hands raw. As the company disappeared into the wings, a brief but undeniably significant chapter in musical theater history came to a close.”

  “Significant” additionally because this was not the premiere of a new, innovative work that might change the course of musical-theatre history; this was the closing night of the fourth New York revival of a show half a century old. Nothing new on paper—but there must have been something new somewhere. Not a new star, because even with bigger and brighter stars, there had not been a response remotely close to this on the closing, or for that matter opening, night of the original or of
any of the other revivals.

  Why that extraordinary response to this particular production? What process made the production itself extraordinary?

  I had directed Gypsy twice before, and while each production was inevitably as different as the Rose played by two very different stars, and each was a still remembered success, I had no interest in repeating either Angela's deeply probing yet deftly comedic performance of a Rose in conflict with herself or Tyne's earthy, brassily comic performance of a driven, sexual Rose or a variation of either. Losing Tom had changed my priorities: the theatre didn't matter as it once had. If I was going to participate in life, it could only be in theatre; but without him, it could only be theatre that really excited me—certainly not a revival that was just another revival. Because it was for him, this Gypsy had to be a Gypsy completely unlike any that had ever been seen, and not only because Patti LuPone being Patti LuPone would be a Rose unlike any other anyway. It would be an Event; Patti would take the town by storm, and the production would wake up the New York theatre as Tom wanted and predicted.

  That was the goal: an Event. How I would make this fourth revival of Gypsy—I didn't really think “fourth,” I wasn't counting—how I would make it an Event, I had an inkling, but not a doubt that I would until City Center's Ninth Floor made execution of that idea, or any idea, unlikely.

  Example: their schedule for technical rehearsals was a candidate for senselessness. Of the five days they offered, the first day was without a crew, which made rehearsal pointless; the third day was the Fourth of July, a holiday at the Center, which meant no rehearsal, because no one worked; and the fifth and last day was reserved for a special run-through for their board (of investors), sitting in the mezzanine because photographers would be in the orchestra taking production shots of a production that didn't exist.

  The schedule for technical rehearsals should be made by the production stage manager and the director, who have worked with the scenic designer and know all the various artistic needs of the production. They then submit their schedule to the producer(s) and general manager for comment. City Center's Ninth Floor wasn't the first and won't be the last of the current breed of producers to reverse the order. Their concern is money, not quality, and even before that, control. Control of exactly what, they aren't sure, but if they have it, they can decide what is worth being in control of.

  Craig Jacobs came up with a workable schedule that was ultimately accepted after a battle that was disgusting even for the Ninth Floor. It had a positive effect, though. It forced me to face that if Gypsy was going to be the Event I envisioned, I had to ignore the producers and, with Craig's help, do as I wanted. Actually, what could they do? They were promoting the show, they were selling the show, they needed the show.

  There's always something that can be done by any side. What they could do, they did. As warned, they nickeled-and-dimed the budget for scenery and costumes. There are two ways to deal with that: quit, or take it as a challenge to let imagination and inventiveness supplant money. A big Broadway musical costs far too much these days, anyway: there's too much reliance on too much scenery and too many unnecessary costumes and too little courage to push the audience to use its imagination by directors and creators using theirs—and too much acceptance by producers and general managers that this costs that much. “Why?” you ask. “Because it just does,” they answer. Well, examine it; question it; often, it doesn't.

  I began with the costumes. To suit the limited budget, my idea was for the show to be the world as seen through Rose's eyes. In the first act, the only costumes that would register would be for Rose and June—Baby and Dainty—and Louise. For the vaudeville acts, the kids, big and little, would be costumed as little as Rose could get away with on her “Eighty-eight bucks.” For the character women, a generic dress with an accessory for the occasion—cloche hats for the mothers at Uncle Jocko's Kiddie Show, a coolie hat for the Chinese waitress in the resturant, collar and cuffs for Miss Cratchitt in Grantziger's office. Similarly, for the character men: shirts and pants, with a plaid tam for Uncle Jocko, a cap for Georgie, suspenders for Pop in the kitchen, a suit and tie for Weber backstage at the vaudeville house.

  As the play and Rose moved along, more costumes would appear. When June left, Louise's costumes would be stepped up to stand up to Rose. In the burlesque house, more characters in more costumes, until by the end of Louise's strip, the company would finally be in full costume for a full production number in a Broadway show.

  The costume designer I chose was Martin Pakledinaz. We had met more than twenty years ago when he was assisting Theoni Aldredge on the surpassingly brilliant Cage aux Folles costumes. We had been glad to run into each other occasionally over the years, usually through Theoni, but Marty had come into his own with fireworks. Working together can be a strange test: how was he going to react to my strong ideas? He was one of the very few good costume designers around, I wanted him, we had to work well together. We did, and better than merely “well.” I didn't anticipate how exhilarating it would be.

  Presumably the director chooses a design team for its excellence and expects or hopes it will and can follow his lead. Sometimes, as with Wicked, where great slabs of scenery have nothing to do with the story, perhaps the director didn't choose the designer—or perhaps he did but the designer went off on his own. How those slabs got on stage and stayed on stage is another question. In a musical where no one is completely in charge, anything can happen, and often does. When the director is in charge (as I was despite the Ninth Floor) and he's chosen a great design team (as I had despite the Ninth Floor), it's exciting to see what the designer does with the concept handed him. Marty Pakledinaz took mine to a place I hadn't imagined by adding a brilliant use of color to tell Rose's story.

  In the opening scenes, the center of her world and her dreams is Baby June, too radiant in a Dutch-girl costume of a glaring sky blue. Louise's Dutch-boy costume was a cloudy gray-blue. All the other costumes were almost colorless. Uncle Jocko's tam and knee britches were a washed-out Scotch plaid; the balloon girl's balloons were the blandest balloons ever blown. Only Rose had color—not as bright as June's, but suiting Rose's vulgar taste.

  One exception: she wore an old paint-smeared smock when she was working on the vaudeville numbers or Louise's strip. That paid off in the one dress Marty and I disagreed about. She was covered by the smock for “Rose's Turn;” when she came to “Here's Rose!” I wanted her to tear it open and there was Rose in that Red Dress. Marty said every Rose wore that Red Dress. He was right, but it was the color we were building to all night; and the use of that dress illustrated an important cautionary note for the director of a revival: merely because something was done with notable success before, don't throw it out unless you can do better. It's hard to do better than a Red Dress at the climax of Gypsy. No color can outdo red. Particularly when you don't see it coming, which, because of the smock, this time you didn't.

  Marty held back color in the first act, but in the second he brought it out in an imaginative use few designers are capable of today. At the end of act one, the older Louise wears a shapeless, colorless blouse, as usual; in the first scene of act two, June is gone, Louise still wears a shapeless blouse, but the blouse is now blue, June's color—not June's Easter-egg blue but a blue strong enough to put Rose on guard and pay attention: Louise is now a challenge.

  As the play moved into burlesque, there were the strippers. Of course they needed color, but not strong enough to overwhelm the deliberately chosen first moment of pure color: when Louise, for the first time in a dress, looks in a pier glass and says: “Momma, I'm a pretty girl.”

  Instead of putting Louise in a black evening gown for her first awkward strip, as had been done in the very first Gypsy—what stripper in a cheesy burlesque house would wear black?—Marty put her in a soft lavender, a color Tessie Tura would wear, because the dress is one Louise presumably has been making for her. And instead of pouring Louise into a shimmering sequined Vegas gown for the las
t scene, as every other designer had, Marty slipped her into a draped gray silk dress with long sleeves and a high neck. Elegant but too quiet? Not what Gypsy Rose Lee would wear? The dress had a slit up the back bordered with rhinestones that weren't seen until at the end when Gypsy turned and her back was to the audience as she walked out on Rose.

  When I asked Marty why he put Louise in that chic gray dress, he quoted Rose's line to Louise: “You look like you should speak French.”

  A designer motivated by the text! All designers read the script; their designs show if they understand it. If they don't, the director must explain it to them. If the designs still don't show understanding, the director tries again. After that, accept you made the wrong choice and move on. Choosing Marty was hitting a bull's-eye.

  Jack Viertel agreed with the Ninth Floor about the placement of the orchestra. The junta was determined it be on stage because it always was on stage for Encores! I was equally determined it not be on stage for Gypsy, which they still wouldn't admit wasn't an Encores! production (they never did). For them, the orchestra on stage left less room for scenery, thus making the physical production cheaper and freeing the pit for more top-price seats. For me, the orchestra on stage would expose the actors to playing a play, not a précis, in front of an unwanted audience of musicians on a bandstand as in Encores!

  It wasn't too hard to win. It's not difficult to awaken guilt about money in most opponents in the theatre, particularly City Center, where it never slept. “Star” is a synonym for “money” there; Gypsy was to be the first production in the new City Center series, Summer Stars. Patti LuPone was a star. Patti didn't want to play intimate scenes in front of an orchestra. They agreed the orchestra would stay in the pit where it belonged.

  Except that it didn't.