A Time We Would Never Forget

Near the end of The Road to Qatar! Michael says, "this was a time we would never forget" He is referring to the incredible and zany experience the audience has just gone through with the characters, the making of Aspire, the first American musical to premiere in the Middle East. But every night as I hear him say the line, which is really from my pen and my lips and my heart, it touches me with its truth. And now that The Road to Qatar! is approaching its closing day at the York Theatre Company in NYC, I say it again...This was a time we would never forget. The chapters of your life, when you are writing, musicals, open and close and open and close. You write the show, the do the readings, the workshops and finally get them on the stage (if you are not only very lucky but very industrious and smart) and then you become close to a new family...director, choreographer, designers, actors, musicians. You all bond and form a unit that is your show. But I never forget that it all became with an idea in my head that I then translated into English and put to a collaborator and then our idea grew into something with pages, and words and notes. Sometimes I sit in that theatre and marvel that nothing would be there without the idea. Everyone would be doing something else or nothing at all. Of course in this case, fate lent a great hand. From "we want you write musical, how much" to closing night of the musical about writing THAT musical is now 6 years. It's quite a chapter. And don't think I not going to write this book! Oh yes, The Road to the Road to the Road to Qatar! will be written and will tell all. But back to the feelings, the emotions. It's been a wonderful rollercoaster ride...like any show, incredible highs and many dips and lots of learning how strong I am. You have to be very strong and resiliant to do this kind of work and I am. Show biz ain't for sissies. But I am a strong and lucky man. Not everything can go the way you want it to. But in this case I wrote the show I wanted to and got to see it the way I intended. Everyone on the creative team was on the same page. The cast is stellar, Stellar I tell you...Stellaaaaaaaa! (Sorry Brando just invaded my body...the muscular Brando, not the fat Brando) and this is the show we intended. A musical COMEDY romp. silly, funny, crazy, satirical...a living breathing Sid Caesar sketch with great tunes. In this age of Spiderman and Next to Normal we might be an anachronism...an off Broadway musical that wants to tell a story and entertain...but I think not. I think when we get those butts in the seats, they love us. Getting them in the seats was a challange, but as we near the last performance we have an overflowing Matinee and two very healthy houses. Next week we go into the recording studio and preserve the musical part of the show. We will toss in some of the comedy too but for that you will just have to wait and see the show again. Believe me you wil see it. I am one very very proud author. How many times can you say, I did what I set out to do? Yes, this is a time I will never forget.

So? What do you do? What CAN you do?

As Michael in The Road to Qatar! says, "this is a time we would never forget." Six years after receiving that first email "one cold morning in February" saying "We Want You Write Musical...How Much?" The musical about the writing of that musical premieres in New York City. Hometown of the two authors. The Road to The Road to Qatar has been blessed with a wonderfully received production in Dallas that got rave reviews and won the Best New Play or Musical from the Dallas Fort Worth Drama Critics Forum. So when we worked our asses of to bring an even better, funnier, slicker, more inventive version of that show to NYC, one would have thought (well, one would hope) that we would also be welcomed as a new musical comedy. But real life has a way of unfreezing the best moments. Oh yes, the audiences love us. They laugh from the first line to the finale and cheer loudly for our brilliant cast. We did the most wonderful work during the beginning of previews, cutting a scene and a song and trimming the fat to come up with 90 laughfilled and delightful minutes...We were lulled into a false sense of security by a laughing happy audience. Who knew? Opening night was filled with stars (stars that David Krane and I know and gathered to make it all look great. To get photo ops, to celebrate, the raise the bar at this tiny theatre under a church. We succeeded...down the stairs came Chita Rivera, Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue, Marni Nixon, Christine Ebersole, Mary Testa, Judy Blazer, Celeste Holm (she took the elevator), Alice Hammerstein, Anne Kaufman (George S's daughter), Richard Maltby, Maury Yeston, Tom Meehan, Sheldon Harnick, Danny Burstein, Beth Fowler, John Cullum, Judy Blazer...on and on...the house filled. the show started, the audience laughed and applauded. It was a magic night. But not better than our previews where other show biz pros and audience members proclaimed us "brilliant...a hit!" I can remember the Friday night I was ordered by our wonderful director not to laugh, but just listen to where the laughs were. It was magic. The laughs were everywhere. The opening night party was a delight. Everyone came. Everyone praised. The performances after the opening were wonderful. The audiences loved us. I chose early on in this process to let people know I would not be reading reviews. Of course, deep in my heart I was scared. And of course, deep in my heart, if someone said the reviews are raves, I would read them. But you know when they are not great when the volunteer ushers scowl at you, and the homeless people outside the church look at you with sympathy and give YOU a handout. And yet there were some great reviews and there was that audience, which lifted me when I was down. And there is this small five person company who are so gifted and committed to the material and what they are there for, that it makes want to weep. Last night, with the cold, the non-supportive notices and the air filled with what? the sense of giving up? It's hard to tell...with all that there was a small house. A very small house. And yet, I put in four new lines that I thought might improve the show. Or deepen the characters. I don't know. I feel like a two faced woman...or Dorothy Collins singing Losing My Mind. Can't go left, can't go right. I adore this show. I sit through it and it zips by in 90 fastpaced clever entertaining minutes. I did what I set out to do...the write a funny musical comedy about writing the musical we wrote for the Middle East. Where did I go right? Well, onward and up. Getting it recorded and produced in London is next on our agenda. You have to wear blinders and run your race, but wouldn't it be nice if people weren't slinging camel crap in your face while you did it? Judy Garland's mother said it best..."You Wanted This!"

I did. I still do. I just want to not wake up at 6AM in a panic.

Not Just Another Opening in Qatar!

The stars came out on the opening night of

The Road to Qatar!

Here is what some of them had to say:


"We need to laugh in this day and time. I had a blast!"
Chita Rivera

“A remarkable story! And now it’s a hilarious musical!”
Christine Ebersole

"If you are sophisticated enough to like the romping antics and the inspired silliness of one-liners then The Road to Qatar will be right up your street. Cleverly written, composed, produced, played and directed, it is hard to believe that it is actually a true, adventure story, which it is, with lots of fun. Go and get a good laugh on The Road to Qatar! You deserve it."
Marni Nixon

"The Road To Qatar is such a fun and tuneful romp through the Middle East, performed by one of the most versatile and hard-working casts I've seen in a long time!"
Maury Yeston

"I loved it! Funny, smart and inventive. The cast is superb and I left humming the tune "Aspire". Go, you'll have a great time!"
Danny Burstein

"So thrilled with the production. It was such a class act, so smartly done. The values of the evening were suited to the wonderful material. It was a truly memorable night!
Beth Fowler"

A fun evening. What a story and you did it up brown. Made me wish I'd seen the show in Qatar. You may not have had the Shah in the house last night but you certainly had some potentates of the New York theater there. Good luck with the rest of the run.
John Cullum

"If you wanna have a great time and lot's of gut splitting laughs at an unbelievably TRUE story, go see ROAD TO QATAR.! A truly imaginative production packed with talent!"
Judy Blazer

"The Road to Qatar! is fun. Genuine fun. When was the last time you could say that about a musical?"
Richard Maltby

"The Road to Qatar! is a delightful trip and a great evening"
Celeste Holm

"The true story is pretty hilarious, and the cast is wonderful!!!
Mary Testa

"The Road to Qatar is fresh, funny, fantastically cast and an absolute delight."
Jim Brochu

The Morning of the First Preview

In the wee small hours of the morning (alright it's 831am)as my space heater hums and the snow is coming down I am contemplating our first NYC audience for The Road to Qatar! Happily for me there is a rehearsal today to clean some stuff up, put in a few tiny changes and rehearse them. But ultimately it's like letting your baby go to school for the first time. This baby went to pre-school in Dallas and did pretty well for itself. But now the poor Qatari is about to face New Yorkers who paid money to sit in the dark and be entertained. I grew up as a New York audience. Saw my first show in 1967 and fell in love with musicals. So I know that New York audiences are wonderful people. But that doesn't stop mommy and daddy from wanting to still keep control of our little bubala. Losing control is hard. I won't be able to run up and fix a line or change a lyric. Hell, we just wrote a whole new song that has been rehearsed for one whole day. But that's fun. The fixing, the writing, the fiddling. It's the watching without control that can give you an ulcer. But I am breathing deeply and trusting in this fabulous cast of Bruce Warren, Bill Nolte, Sarah Stiles, Keith Gerchak and Jamie Beaman...trusting in the great band of 5 strong and trusting that our baby can walk and dance and sing and entertain the world in a time it really needs it. Something funny is going on in the Middle East and it's The Road to Qatar! So get ready, Daddy. It's time for baby to take it's first steps and speak it's first words...oh my God, the baby speaks Arabic~! Shukran! Shukran to all.

From Good to Verse

In my last post, I talked all about the wonderful new verse we wrote for the lovely song The Other Side of the World. The truth is The Other Side of the World was one of the first songs written for The Road to Qatar! I once had a verse that began with the words "Ever since 9/11..." It was original written as the song for one of the guys to convince the other to go to the Middle East. It switched characters and finally found it's home as a duet late in the show. And it worked. In Dallas. It worked fine. But shows change and the chemistry of the book, music, lyrics, set, cast, lighting etc. changes the feeling of it all. And add a verse to the song that is really right to transition and right for the characters and suddenly the old song itself didn't seem as right. Sure it would work. But why couldn't the characters sing more in their real quirky, natural, funny vernacular? Why retain the poetic nature of the song? Well, it was worth an experiment. So I wrote several versions of a lyric that would say the same thing ultimately, but say it in a style that was keeping more with the show that surrounded it. Of course, it would have wonderful to have written the new song BEFORE rehearsals started, or even early in the short but wonderful rehearsal process...but there was no way of truly knowing what was needed until we saw the show in run thoughs...so here is where the craft comes in. Here's where you can't be scared. Here's where you write the lyric and your brilliant collaborator David Krane writes the music and you refine it and send it off to the wonderful actors who now have the task of learning it and getting it into the first preview of the show in a day. It's like the old days out of town. Jerry Herman playing Before the Parade Passes By for Carol Channing. Rodgers and Hammerstein giving Gertrude Lawrence Getting to Know You. Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim writing Smile Girls for Ethel Merman in Gypsy (okay so they cut it after one performance...never mind!) Writing musicals is not like writing a prescription. It's some other kind of alchemy that makes it all work and you gotta be...flexible...and on your toes, as Larry Hart wrote. So all those years of writing special material and fast, is like a warm up for when you really have to do it. When all eyes and ears are on you. You deliver. Tomorrow I will hear a whole new song called Who Knows...too bad the playbill will call it The Other Side of the World. Well, that's what inserts are for.

On the Wonderful Road to Qatar!

Well, January is swiftly flying by. We are now in the home stretch before the first preview of The Road to Qatar! We began rehearsals right after New Years with a marvelous comically brilliant cast, only two of whom did their roles last year in Dallas. The space at the York Theatre Company is ideal for this show. Last year we did it on a large stage and it worked, but now with the intimacy and smaller scale, combined with a really clever set and bold comically colorful costumes and props, the show is finding it's natural home. It was born for off-broadway and that's where it's going. Although we did very well in Dallas, got wonderful reviews and were named Best New Musical of 2010, we have continued to hone and change and rewrite to make it even better. Just yesterday, during the first tech rehearsal we added a button for the opening song Come Down to Dubai and wrote (in record time) a short verse for the only ballad in the show. Why a new verse? The song played well in Dallas. Our wonderful director Phillip George had a smart thought. After 80 minutes of brakeneck farce and comedy we are suddenly putting on the brakes to take a moment and figure out why the boys (the two short writers of musicals) are even doing this when everything points to imminent disaster. The song tells us that they have a bigger purpose (they are only discovering that for themselves) to bring peace and love to the other side of the world. Subtexually they two very different personalities bond during this song. They finally become friends for good. So to get over the hurdle of just slamming on the comic breaks, we wrote a verse to the song, which emerges from one of the writers melting down. Michael answers him in song that is in the new verse uptempo and funny but slowly as he says, "who knows" slows down to something more questioning and contemplative

JEFFREY
Why are we doing this? Did we do something wrong in some past life? Why are we here?

MICHAEL
SURE, WE'RE UP TO OUR ASS IN CAMEL CRAP
THE PRODUCTION COMPLETELY BLOWS
AND YOU ASK ME WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?
WHO KNOWS? WHO KNOWS?

WHO KNOWS WHY WE WERE CHOSEN?
WHO KNOWS HOW WE WERE FOUND?
BUT SOMEHOW WE BOTH HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE CHANCE
TO MAKE A JOYFUL HEALING SOUND
AND THAT SOUND WE CREATE
WILL REVERBERATE FAR AND WIDE
BRINGING PEACE AND LOVE
TO THE OTHER SIDE
OF THE WORLD

ETC.

I am very proud of this new rewrite. The interesting part is that on the weekend, we all decided, no changes for this week until the previews. But meanwhile with the input of the theatre and our own instincts, we have put in about 18 changes including this new verse. Today the band of five strong meets the cast of five strong and they will make beautiful music together for the first time. The Road continues...Next week we face our first audience. It's terrifying and exciting and every other emotion you can wish for or not wish for. I am confident and scared all at the same time. This show is unique. It's our lives up there. But then when you write with passion and love, isn't it always your life up there?