All these changes plus, of course, the addition of Spanish, make this West Side Story obviously unlike any other. But what makes it deeper and richer, really different, is something that probably will go unnoticed by most people: it is acted, and acted extremely well, by the entire company, from dancers without a line (but many an ad-lib) to the major characters—not merely as never before but as well as any nonmusical actors of any stature could. And it's all established in the first intimate scene, the so-called ladder scene that introduces Tony and “Something's Coming.”
That scene, between Tony and Riff, is the first love scene in a play about love in a world of violence and bigotry. It has always been played fast and a bit coyly, primarily as a lead-in to a two-four that isn't quite a two-four and falls short as does the scene. Examine it, dig into it as one would with a scene in a play, and it becomes wrenching and essential to the telling of the story. It is a love scene that establishes the time and the theme of the play.
Each boy needs the other, but Tony no longer loves Riff as he did. Probably, at that age, there was some homoerotic element, but it's the love that's important. Riff's love for Tony explains why he keeps covering for him with the gang, keeps him in the gang when he knows Tony isn't and doesn't want to be, even gets killed because of that love. The tough leader of the gang in the preceding scene is here the vulnerable lover. Tony is a little older and has left boyhood and adolescent love. But we must know that he loved Riff to believe he is capable of the love that is on its way. A few cuts to eliminate quasi-boyishness and too much invented language, the scene now leads directly into “Something's Coming” as the reason for what we have just witnessed: the end of a love affair. It isn't a two-four, it's a growing discovery of who Tony is through his discovery of what he is hoping for.
That treatment eliminates the usual cuteness in the next scene, where Maria and Anita are introduced, and continues into the Dance at the Gym, where Tony and Maria meet. Played by Matt Cavanaugh and Josefina Scaglione, the nonliteral dialogue spoken during a slow cha-cha becomes, for the first time, a sexually charged love scene. And when Tony sings “Maria” two minutes later, it is not with reverence for a name, he is not a tenor in church singing of a virgin Maria, he is a lover, his passion exploding in variations on her name. Fortunately I didn't know, until Patrick told me, that what I was asking of Matt Cavanaugh was extremely challenging. His singing seems so effortless; there is never the feeling that so often occurs when “Maria” is sung—“Oh, God, will he hit that note?” He wasn't about hitting notes, he was about the emotion inside him. The aria—that's what it is—didn't end as it had before; it ended with a series of full, passionate “Maria”s followed by a gentle affirmation of Tony's love. Then, just before the last bars, he turns—and there is Maria on her balcony. It is to her that he sings that last, high pianissimo “Maria.”
When he climbs up to Maria's fire-escape balcony, they immediately are lost in a passionate kiss. They can't keep their hands off one another, can barely stop kissing long enough to sing “Tonight,” but they do, in voices belonging to a dream Tony and Maria who look the way a dream Tony and Maria should look, sing as they should sing, act as they should act. The love story is secured and the audience belongs to the lovers.
The initial reason for reviving West Side Story was that it would be bilingual. It is and it brings an exciting quality never before seen in musical theatre. But there was another dynamic that came later and was equally unique: the emphasis on acting. That brought the theme—love can't survive in a world of bigotry and violence— vividly to life with an emotional reality that was unexpectedly moving because of the acting of the entire company. West Side Story was lifted to a new level—the level Gypsy reached, the level I believe the musical play should reach.
In 1957, the first public performance of West Side was given at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C. Fifty-one years later the first public performance of a new, different West Side Story was given at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C. The theatre was not as I remembered it; actually, both the building and the décor of the theatre had changed. The show itself was not as those who had seen the original remembered it. It, too, had changed but many of those who claimed to have seen it hadn't seen what they remembered seeing. Most had really only seen the movie, which I wished they hadn't. None of that mattered. The first performance told us what mattered: it was greeted with a roar of approval. Enthusiasm grew with each performance; the standing ovations came earlier and earlier.
It's infinitely easier to work on a show—and every show needs work—when the audience adores it and tickets are selling like mad, especially when foreclosure and bailout are the watchwords of the day. Easier to polish the performance, easier to deal with problems. There are always problems; and first on my list were the supertitles I hadn't thought necessary.
They ran in white on black rectangles on either side of the proscenium, a constant distraction whether read or not, because those flashing of white in every scene where a word was in Spanish pulled the audience out of the play. A bilingual script was meant to make the play exciting; instead, it was destroying it with those titles.
Some of this was because more had been translated into Spanish than I had intended, and I had been too lax (aka dumb) to realize this. “Rumble,” most obviously, had been translated as “puela,” which means “fight” in Spanish. Why? The Sharks spoke English, they would have said “rumble.” Anita makes a point of speaking English while Bernardo insists on speaking Spanish. Her big speech to Bernardo in the scene before “America” was mistakenly in Spanish. It would be easy to restore it to English, but it was the whole approach, the insistence that supertitles were necessary, that had to be addressed. Making the decision unilaterally, I threw them out.
There was curiosity, anticipation, excitement before that first no-title performance. “Rumble” had replaced “puela,” and I had inserted some English where I thought it necessary to help the story or to let the audience know what a scene was about. In the scene before “I Feel Pretty,” Maria said in English, “Tonight is my wedding night.” Her scene with Chino, which follows, was all in Spanish except for his last line said in English, the language of the traitor: “He killed your brother.” Its impact after only Spanish was devastating.
The audience reaction left no doubt: the titles were removed permanently. “I Feel Pretty” stopped the show as it always had, but for the first time the scene with the duet of “A Boy Like That” and “I Have a Love,” followed by a brief passage in English with Schrank, got a hand it had never gotten before. I had also cut the projections used during the Balcony Scene and “One Hand, One Heart.” As a result of the double stripping down, the audience was totally involved the entire evening, surely the purpose of a play. There were always standing ovations at the end; usually not until major players took their bow. On the night the supertitles were eliminated, the entire audience stood up the moment the curtain rose after the play ended. Sweet validation.
Why? is the most important of questions, certainly the most important a director can ask. Beginning with himself: why is he a director? Not having any desire myself to direct, I was pressed into service during the dress rehearsal of my first play, Home of the Brave. The director, Michael Gordon, was feuding bitterly with Ralph Alswang, the scenic designer, over a window shade. Mike would order the stage manager—Jimmy Gelb, a Chekhovian character he knew from the Group Theatre—to lower the shade and shadow the room; Ralph would sneak on stage to raise the shade and let light in the room. Up, down, up, down—until an exhausted, exasperated Mike ran up the aisle of the Belasco Theatre and went screaming into the night. Who was to take over? Jimmy suggested me. The play was a war play, I wasn't long out of the army, I was still in my twenties and this was Broadway, but no one else offered. I had been troubled by Mike treating what I called “GI dialogue” as heavily Stanislavsky via the Group Theatre—so why not? I went to work to turn the actors into GIs who use words as a casual cover for un
wanted emotion in an extreme situation. The actors took to the approach, we were humming along; then came the first preview and the Anti-Defamation League, which issued a proclamation that the play was anti-Semitic because the central character, a Jew, was neurotic. The author, believing he had written a play against anti-Semitism, refused to change his work. The second preview was cancelled and Mike Gordon returned, unsure though he was which side he was on, and got the curtain raised. The play opened to mixed reviews.
My second play, Heartsong, about a marriage that was ruined by an abortion (in 1947!), was produced by a woman who was David O. (Gone With the Wind) Selznick's ex-wife and Louis B. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) Mayer's daughter. The play had two directors: Olivia de Havilland's acting coach followed by Audrey Hepburn's husband-to-be Mel Ferrer. It played three cities but never—there is a God—got to Broadway. I began to think about directing.
My next two plays were directed by Harold Clurman, who had been one of the leaders of the Group Theatre, expounding theory to actors like Mike Gordon, my future director. The first play, The Bird Cage, starred Melvyn Douglas and featured Maureen Staple-ton. In Philadelphia—cursed Philadelphia!—Harold said to Maureen, “Sweetheart, I don't think you know what you're doing in this scene.” Maureen answered, “Harold, I don't know what I'm doing in the whole fucking play.” The second play, The Time of the Cuckoo, was a hit—at last!—starring Shirley Booth. The third day of rehearsal, Shirley walked off the stage, refusing to take direction from Harold. She never changed her mind. I thought more about directing.
Elia Kazan once said Harold Clurman should direct the first three days of any play because no one could explain the socioeconomic-psychological background of the play and the characters more eloquently. After three days, however, Harold should go home. Kazan had begun as an actor in the Group Theatre under Clurman's tutelage. By the time he made that pronouncement, he was the director most in demand, and Clurman was grateful to direct the road company of a play like A Streetcar Named Desire which had originally been directed by Kazan.
As a director of plays—not musicals; Love Life revealed the musical was decidedly not in his bones—Kazan was arguably the greatest in American theatre history and the creator of the American style of acting—a combination of the Method as practiced by the Group Theatre, technique as practiced by the Theatre Guild, the best of Broadway, and a passion all his own. As a man, he was ruthless and immoral, not above taking out an ad to urge his peers to betray one another to the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy era. Late in his life, there was an outcry against the proposal that he be given an “honorary” Oscar. Protesters pointed out he had already won two Oscars—one for a film of dubious quality, Gentlemen's Agreement, the other for a film of dubious morality and acting that reads as over the top today, On the Waterfront. To award another, honoring a man who had destroyed the careers, if not the lives, of peers and friends, was an insult not merely to them and their families but to directors like Alfred Hitchcock who had never even received one Oscar.
There is a long list of artists of distinguished professional achievement and repellent personal behavior. Probably at the top of the list, Wagner and his ardent anti-Semitism. Does behavior lessen achievement? Kazan got his honorary Oscar, but is forever tainted.
Perhaps if, immoral or not, he had directed one of my plays, I would not have begun to think seriously about directing. It was originally more in self-protection of my plays than anything else. I felt I couldn't do worse than the directors I'd had.
I went to every acting class in the city I could and attended the Actors Studio and the Neighborhood Playhouse. I learned most about acting and actors from Stella Adler and Sandy Meisner. Stella was famous for returning from Paris, where she had been studying the Stanislavsky Method with Stanislavsky himself, and announcing to every Method practitioner in the Group, including Clurman, Lee Strasberg, and Kazan: “We're all wrong!”
She was also, and rightly, famous for her courses in Ibsen and Chekhov. The acting method she taught was very similar to Sandy Meisner's, the most practical teacher of all. His emphasis was on playing an action that shows what the actor wants in the scene. Their influence is apparent today, even in musical theatre.
Why do directors direct? To be in control? To achieve the success they couldn't as actors? To produce theatre that gives the audience an experience only theatre can—moves them, excites and entertains, illuminates, and always makes them want to see more theatre, that's the desired answer. For the director who takes that kind of theatre for granted as his goal, it's imperative to know the answer for everyone, not just his actors, to that most important question in the theatre: why? Why every moment? Why every piece of scenery, every light, every prop, every costume? Why?
It's the most important question in life, too, but who asks it? Not everyone, or at least not everyone expecting an answer. I ask, knowing I don't and won't know all the answers. Some, I guess at; others, I choose to answer my way for myself. Why am I here? I don't ask that. I have no answer; nor does anyone have an answer for me. Why am I gay? That isn't important to me, either; but it was and still is to too many others. Well, I was born gay. Why do I say that? I knew I was when I was seven. How? Sex. At seven? At seven, I knew I was attracted to boys sexually. How did I know? Take my word.
Does it influence me professionally? Not as a director. As a writer? To the same extent that being a Jew does: I often write about outsiders. Do I ever wish I weren't gay? How could I? I would never have had the life I had with Tom Hatcher if I hadn't been gay. What I try to bring to the theatre, both as a writer and as a director, comes from the gifts of that life.
Why did I write this book? The answer is typical: life has no respect for a straight, logical line; it always zigzags. Originally, an editor of a publishing house specializing in theatre books saw the huge pile of notes I had given Sam Mendes for the Gypsy he was directing with Bernadette Peters. The editor thought publishing those notes would be extremely informative; display in detail how the process of directing a musical really worked in real theatre life (if that isn't an oxymoron). I set about organizing the notes and providing a background for them, but as I did, the book seemed to be turning more and more into an attack on Sam Mendes, which was far from my intention. I stopped and was ready to quit when Tom stepped in. It wasn't that he didn't want any work to go to waste; rather, he knew he was on the way out and that a book would be something else to keep me busy and get me through the bad part. Why not pass on whatever I knew about directing musical theatre, based on my own experiences? There was a need for something about directing musical theatre—at least I thought so. But knew I was incapable of writing an academic text; inevitably, there would be digressional odds and ends on life and love that would come not only from my experiences directing musicals but from the experiences of my years with Tom.
Tom and theatre, that's what my life has been. And that's what this book is—an effort to say thank you by doing what I can to make the theatre indestructible and to keep Tom alive.
A NOTE ON THE TYPE
This book was set in Adobe Garamond. Designed for the Adobe Corporation by Robert Slimbach, the fonts are based on types first cut by Claude Garamond (c. 1480-1561). Garamond was a pupil of Geoffroy Tory and is believed to have followed the Venetian models, although he introduced a number of important differences, and it is to him that we owe the letter we now know as “old style.” He gave to his letters a certain elegance and feeling of movement that won their creator an immediate reputation and the patronage of Francis I of France.
Composed by Creative Graphics, Allentown, Pennsylvania
Printed and bound by R. R. Donnelley, Harrisonburg, Virginia
Book design by Robert C. Olsson
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2009 by Arthur Laurents
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,
a division of Rando
m House, Inc., New York, and in Canada
by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are
registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Laurents, Arthur.
Mainly on directing : Gypsy, West Side Story, and other musicals/by Arthur
Laurents. —Ist ed.
p. cm.
“A Borzoi book.”
eISBN: 978-0-307-27342-0
I. Musicals—Production and direction. 2. Laurents, Arthur. 3. Styne, Jule,
1905-1994. Gypsy. 4. Bernstein, Leonard, 1918-1990. West Side Story. I. Title.
ML1711.5.L38 2009
792.602’33092—dc22 2008055541
v3.0
Mainly on Directing Page 18
