Mainly on Directing

From Arthur Laurents, playwright, screenwriter, director—a mesmerizing book about theater, the art, the artist, the insider, the outsider—and the making of two of the greatest musicals of the American stage, West Side Story and Gypsy. It is a book profoundly enriched by the author’s two loves, love for the theater and love for his partner of fifty-two years, Tom Hatcher, who shared and inspired every aspect of his life and his work.Laurents writes about the musicals he directed, I Can Get It for You Wholesale, its producer David Merrick (the “Abominable Showman”), and its (very young) stars Barbra Streisand and Elliott Gould . . . He writes about Stephen Sondheim’s Anyone Can Whistle, which starred Angela Lansbury and Lee Remick, marking the debut for each in musical theater. He summons up the challenges and surprises that came with the making of La Cage aux Folles, the first big Broadway musical that was gay and glad to be.He writes in rich detail about his most recent production of Gypsy, how it began as an act of love, a love that spread through the entire company and resulted in a Gypsy unlike any other. And about his new bilingual production of West Side Story.And he talks, as well, about the works of other directors—Fiddler on the Roof; Kiss Me, Kate; Spring Awakening; Street Scene; The Phantom of the Opera; LoveMusik;* Sweeney Todd.*Moving, exhilarating, provocative—a portrait of an artist working with other artists; a unique close-up look at today’s American musical theater by a man who’s been at its red-hot center for more than five decades.From the Hardcover edition.From BooklistThe title is coy, if not downright misleading. Directing is only one of several issues the venerable director-dramatist discusses in fascinating, detailed dissections of Gypsy and, to a lesser extent, West Side Story (a few other musicals get inspected, too), by someone who should know of what he writes. Laurents wrote the books for both Gypsy and WSS, and directed, late in life (he is 90), a highly praised, hit revival of the former. (Even as this is written, he is directing a bilingual WSS opening in March 2009.) Insightful, incisive, very opinionated, Laurents just doesn’t hold back. His criticism of Sam Mendes and the 2003 Gypsy revival is unstinting, but then he doesn’t even spare the original Mama Rose, Ethel Merman. He is, however, equally lavish with his praise, gushing about Patti Lupone’s Rose so that you’d never guess he famously (if silently) feuded with her for years. This book for Broadway gossip mavens and others with higher aspirations—such as directing Gypsy themselves—is hard to put down. --Jack Helbig Review“. . . required reading for anyone who is passionate about musical theater. . . a sublimely dishy portrait of Broadway’s golden age and beyond, ranging from legends such as Ethel Merman, Jerome Robbins and Stephen Sondheim to Laurents’ late partner, Tom Hatcher, whose influence on his work is movingly detailed.” —USA Today“Laurents has created an indispensable account of his hard-won success. . . valuable as much for the advice it gives to future directors as for the passion with which it argues for the redemption of musical theater as a serious art form.”—*The Buffalo News* “. . . a book that, in its frankness and warmth, is both a professional manual and a moving elegy.”—The New York Times Book ReviewFrom the Hardcover edition.