That Was the Year That Was 2010 Revisited

As the year draws to a close, critics and journalists compile their top ten lists. Last year at this time The Road to Qatar! made several top ten lists in Dallas. One year later, we are poised to go into rehearsal for the Off Broadway premiere of the show at the York Theatre Company. This is very gratifying to a writer of musicals. After all, so many writers write and their shows either sit on the shelf or suffer through endless readings and workshops, never quite seeing the light of a lighting designer or a set or a costume or heaven forbid an orchestra. So I am feeling pretty lucky. There are years and there are years. This one began with the hope that Qatar would move on to NYC but really found me in Pittsburgh for a lengthy 6 week rehearsal period for the world premiere of Time after Time. Jeffrey Saver and I have actually been working on and off (lots of off) on this show since the mid 90s! So to finally see it realized with a wonderful set and projections and beautifully directed by Gabriel Barre (not to mention orchestrated for 10 by the great Steve Orich) was a kind of minor miracle. The show opened during several blizzards but we still managed to get wonderful reviews. But good reviews don't help when the storm clouds of snowdom keep New Yorkers from coming to Pittsburgh. So the show closed and we have to start all over again to get another production or get it closer to the goal, which for this not so small show would have to be Broadway. The good news is the material and the production were wonderful. The score is especially good and the book (if I do say so myself) is really excellent. During the whole rehearsal period I worked via phone and email on the Drama League's Angela Lansbury Tribute. I have been writing these tributes (with special material songs) for maybe 20 years, but the Angela Tribute turned out to be the best one I had been involved with. Everything went right at the Pierre Hotel. I might have had to trudge through snow to get from Pittsburgh to NYC for the show, but it was worth it. Right after Time after Time things started heating up with the NYC production of Qatar and most my focus was taken up with that. Meanwhile another of my shows, Rock Odyssey came out of retirement. Several years ago Walden Media decided to branch out into the theatre biz and commissioned 2 seasons worth of Family musicals for their Seattle Theatre. I was commissioned to write two of them: Rock Odyssey and Merlin's Apprentice. The former decided to rear it's Greek head this year and like the Cyclops it grew and grew. First was a spring production in Miami at the Adrienne Arscht Center which was unlike any children's show I have ever seen. It was huge with real sets and costumes and effects and a large cast whopping it up for thousands of kids who were brought in bus after bus. The publicity was huge and the center decided to do it again in the Fall...and then they decided to take a ten year license to do it and do it and do it. So if you see Rock Odyssey anywhere in the next ten years, let me know. I took the upfront money and ran! Seldom has such a deal happened with a show that I thought was dead in the water for 8 years. Hallalu! Another older show came back to life this fall: The Night of the Hunter. Hunter had it's world premiere in SF and was beautifully presented in the New York Musical Theatre Festival, but this production had something the other two did not have: a full 24 piece orchestra that made me cry nightly. Claibe Richardson's gorgeous music was so well served by the great cast led by Davis Gaines and Julie Johnson. Claibe is gone and he was notoriously picky, but I think even he would have been happy to hear that orchestra and those voices. So what else? With all this activity, I have also worked on new stuff, songs, shows I have had in my head that aren't quite all there yet. Recorded things. Came up with special material for Marlo Thomas, Chita Rivera, Dick Van Dyke (got to meet him for the first time! wow)...A year...another year. Now 2011 promises to be very exciting right out of the gate with The Road to Qatar! and maybe some of these other projects that seem to want to get born will be born. Maybe Qatar will open all new doors. I have nothing but hope and fingers and toes crossed. And you know what? I want to write another book too! Musicals are fun but so much stress...a book you write, it gets edited it gets published you get paid. nice.

Happy New Year.

Casting About...

You write it, you rewrite it, you finally get great artists to say they will produce it, direct it, design it, sell it and then...you have to cast it! It would seem to be the easiest thing in the world unless you have written a musical COMEDY with an emphasis on the comedy but still want great singing (after all, it's a MUSICAL comedy, not just a comedy)Last year when casting The Road to Qatar! we couldn't afford a casting director so the authors did the casting about themselves depending on On-line casting services which did very well for us. We saw many good people, some of whom did not want to go to Dallas to do a new musical for bupkis. But ultimately with a lot of help from friends both professional and non, we cast the show and we did very well with the critics and knew that we wanted to keep several of the cast members if and when we got to the NYC production. In some cases we were able to keep them and in some we were not. So we found ourselves having to cast three out of the five actors all over again. But this time we had a professional casting director helping us out. You would think it would be easier. But the truth is, there are just so many brilliantly funny comic types who fit your show who can also sing like the wind. The pool is not as deep as one thought. Think about it...how many Nathan Lanes are there? If you have great comic chops like that, you get whisked away to TV or movies and hardly ever think about singing again until your sitcom is cancelled and you can command a huge salary in a revival of a show that is only running because you had a sitcom and well you know the rest. But try to find those brilliantly funny musical comedy COMIC types who can SING who don't have sitcoms and who will work for New York bubkis...well, that's a camel of a different color. But...to make a long story short, after a stressful few weeks of hunting, we have pulled those proverbial rabbits out of a hat...no they are not big name stars who will immediately sell tickets...but these are the future. The people who will get to show off what they seldom get to show off in a show that let's them show off and shine. Comic singers who act, sing, dance, use puppets, talk in funny accents, play Gays, Jews, Arabs, Italian Opera Directors, Indian Airline Stewardesses, Bratislavan Opera Singers and other assorted bananas. I can't wait.

After You Type "Curtain"

A very nice person wrote to me privately tell me that I shouldn't be so hands on about the casting of my show. She told me a story about a composer who wanted to really be there for every second of the rehearsal process, etc. And she thought that could never work. Mind you, this composer had no experience in the theatre and might very well have been a block to the process of putting on a show. But the thought that people might think that after you type "curtain" you are done, is absurd. This is when the hard work begins. Some say they love having written, I prefer the actual writing, the creation. It's what comes after when you are lucky enough to actually get a production that is hard. The negotiations, the casting, the rehearsal, the rewrites, the misconceived notions that threaten to ruin the work that is on the page. The politics. The huge collaboration. Now I am not saying that I don't love collaboration, don't get me wrong. It's the heart and soul of musical theatre. But it's hard. Right now we are casting a very important role...it just happens to be the role based on me, but it has turned out to be a hard role to cast for some reason. Why, I haven't a clue. It's a short funny Jewish guy between 35-50 who sings really great. This is NYC...where are they? Yes, they are out there if you are paying big bucks, but for an off-Broadway not-for-profit theatre, where are they? It's wildly frustrating and makes you wonder why you typed the words "Scene One" let alone curtain. You write a book, it gets published, people buy it, and that's that. You write a musical with five fabulously funny comic roles and you get...tzuris! That's my thought for today. Am I lucky to get my show on? You bet your ass. Am I frustrated right now. Oh baby! Oh Baby! Oooooooooh Baby! But I have been here before and I hope to be here again. So that's today's rant.

A Little Chat with Cole and Krane

A short interview that turned into a conversation with Stephen Cole and David Krane about their upcoming York Theatre production of The Road to Qatar! Performances begin on Jan. 25th, 2011
Go to www.yorktheatre.org to get tix.
S=Cole
D=Krane
Question:
The Road to Qatar! is based on the true experience you both had writing a new Broadway-style musical for the Emir of Qatar. How exactly did this all start?

S: One day, five years ago, I got an email that said "We want you write musical...HOW MUCH?"
D: I got the same email. We didn't even know each other yet.
S: They told me to call a number in Dubai and at the time I had never even heard of Dubai, but once I looked it up I realized they were really rich there...
D: Oil, you know!
S:...So I wrote back and told them to call me. The called immediately and repeated the phrase in a broken English...
Both: ""We want you write musical...HOW MUCH?"
S: I passed them on to my agent and told him to ask for a lot of money! I also asked about the composer and...
D: I asked about who was going to write the book and lyrics...
S: They said they had composers in Rome and Lithuania. That was scary. I wanted someone I could work with here. One day an email came and said I would be writing the show with David Krane. I was thrilled. A New Yorker. With Broadway and Hollywood credits.
D: We met and it was like looking into a short Jewish mirror. We wondered how they put us together
S: Later I asked how they found us. They said, "your website" Good lesson for us all, always keep your website looking spiffy!

Question:
And what was the original musical you were asked to write about?

S: At first the show was to be about a little boy whose father wouldn't let him go to a sports academy. I remember sarcastically thinking..."wonderful...sounds like a hit to me!" Then they changed the premise to "a sultan's son is locked in a palace and is very spoiled and only wants a star in the sky." I thought, "okay. Better, but how do I fill a whole evening with this?"
D: The answer was 20 camels, 5 Arabian stallions and a dozen falcons.
S: Not to mention 500 LED screens, lots of flying, Croatian acrobats, fire jugglers, Russian dancers, and a British West End cast. It became about the kid's magical journeys to ancient Greece, Phaoronic Egypt...
D: We had to look that word up.
S: Qatar during the pearl diving days. The show grew to...
D: Mammoth proportions.
S: Radio City without the Rockettes.

Question:
Were you nervous about the prospect of working in the Middle East?

S: Well, at first we were. I mean you can't live in this world and not know what it going on over there and we were not experienced in traveling to that part of the world.
D: I had to tell my sick mother in Queens that we were doing the show in Paris. She would have been too scared for me if she knew the truth.
S: But when we got to Dubai, we felt totally safe. It felt like being in Las Vegas...
D: But without the gambling. It was so architecturally spectacular and modern and built up.
S: We felt just as safe in Qatar, even when we went swimming in the Persian Gulf!
D: Our nerves about being in the Middle East were nothing compared to putting on this huge show...The show was scary!
S: But the experience was enlightening, hilarious and full of all the comedy and drama of putting on a show in any foreign place.

Question:
What was the experience of prepping for the production in Qatar like? How was it different from working on shows here in NY?

D: First of all there was the language barrier...
S: We had translators. One very memorable translator who is now a character in the show...our Lebanese valley girl, Nazirah. She would translate for us. We never quite knew if what we were saying was really going through.
D: And there was the cultural difference. Bargaining is part of the every day life. But mostly it was about how inexperienced our producers were in putting on a new musical of this size. There were over 100 people on the stage!
S: Everything was bigger there. We had a pre-recorded 70 piece orchestra.
D: We recorded in Bratislava! They also treated the show when it was finished...as finished. They didn't invite us to be part of the rehearsal process, so we couldn't do any rewrites or cuts as we would normally do to make a show better.
S: Once we handed them the script and the orchestra was pre-recorded, that was that. We were like Birdseye. Frozen. Seeing the show on opening night was surreal. We hardly remembered what we had written. And yet, the Emir stood up at the end and cheered.
D: There's nothing like royal applause!

Question:
Were there any customs or cultural changes that you had to get used to while staying in Qatar?

S: We were only in Qatar for less than a week and treated royally. We were fed the best food...
D: Stayed in the best hotels...Same thing in Dubai, which is a totally different country.
S: And culturally, the funny thing is, Arabs and Jews are very similar. They are forbidden to eat ham and shellfish...same as Kosher law. We learned some words and did our best to be polite. We learned you don't sit with the sole of your shoe showing, that's impolite. We learned that your dressed nicely, nothing too revealing...I never went out in my speedo.
D: We were wide-eyed and so were our hosts. They were in awe of our American musical theatre expertise...
S: That's why they hired us. They wanted the best of everything. And the United States (particularly New York) is were you go to get the best new musicals.

Question:
If you had to compare The Road to Qatar! to any other musicals, which would you choose and why?

S: We think The Road to Qatar! is totally unique in that it is totally...
D: Well, almost totally...
S: Yes, almost totally true. And also because it's a 95 minute comic musical. It's both hip and old fashioned...hip because it's so up to date in its subject matter and old fashioned because it's got a bouncy melodic musical comedy score that makes you think of the good old days of musical comedy. When Comden and Green were ruling the street.
D: I think the show is like Showboat.
S: Showboat? Why not Porgy and Bess? It's kind of The Producers meets A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum meets Forbidden Broadway. Irreverent, off the wall...
D: Fun!
S: Fun-ny!
D: My favorite quote about the show is..."Makes the Middle East Funny!"
S: It's what we need right now. Musical comedy heals.

Question:
Besides the writing of a new musical, what else were you able to get from this experience? What did you learn?
D: Well, believe it or not, one of the big reasons I did the show was because I had this romantic notion of bringing peace and love to the other side of the world. To prove that art could perhaps heal the wounds that have separated our cultures. \
S: And in a way, we did do that...I mean we met people that we never would have met, saw places we never would have seen.
D: We learned that people are very different and also very much the same...
S: Our producer was exactly like any other theatrical producer. He wanted to put on a great show...
D: Except with camels!
S: I also learned that you can write a musical in 6 weeks. Who knew? I usually take a year or so. I mean when you are given a task and a list of what has to be part of that...
D: Not to mention when you know there is a check and a production at the end of your task...
S: At first, like anytime you put your fingers on the keyboard and type "scene one", you can't imagine you will ever get to "curtain"...
D: But you can.
S: I also learned to answer all my emails. I mean who knew from one little email would come a huge show in the Middle East and then another show all two short Jews going to the Middle East and writing a musical. Who would have dreamed? Would you?
D: Don't forget the best part. We became collaborators and friends.
S: Of course. We were put together by people from the other side of the world. How did they know we would be so compatible? It's like fate...Kismet.
D: That show was Middle Eastern too.

A Weekend in LA with Buddy

I spent the weekend in LA at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, but it wasn't a spa or relaxation trip. I went out to the coast to interview on video music legend Buddy Bregman. One of Buddy's first professional jobs, his big first orchestration credit was on the 1954 TV musical Anything Goes starring Ethel Merman, Frank Sinatra and Bert Lahr and Sheree North. Buddy's uncle Jule Styne was producer of the show and Leland Hayward was the executive producer. Jule loved nepotism and got his talented nephew the job. He was 24. Now 80 and looking great, I got to talk to Buddy about the show and his subsequent dazzling career (he was A&R man for Verve Records and did all the arrangements on Ella's Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart songbook albums...Buddy also orchestrated Kay Thompson and the Williams Brothers and recorded with Bing and worked with Garland and Bolger and everyone and his mother.) This will be an extra on the DVD release of Anything Goes which is taken from Ethel Merman's personal kinescope from the collection of yours truly. As a little sidebar I got to audition a potential short Jew for The Road to Qatar! and he was marvelous. Today we did official agent submission auditions and that went very well with a front runner for Nazirah rearing her little head. Thursday we see more actors and do callbacks. This is what I call showbiz...but does it have to be so cold out?

Look Here A New Nazirah!

Today was a very full Road to Qatar! day starting at 11am with our director, choreographer and designers gathering at David Krane's sumptious apartment so we could go through the script and chart where how the set moves and functions. We then went through to tell what little and big changes David and I made since last year in Dallas. All this was fun and exciting and then later it became clear that I still had some work to do on Nazirah. Ah, poor Nazirah...the lone female in the cast of five...the Lebanese Valley Girl who is an ace translator who becomes Vice president in change of production for the not very competent producer Mr. Mansour...Nazirah who gets a crush on Michael's biceps, despite his sexual orientation. That Nazirah. She is actually the antithesis of what our heroes expect of a Middle Eastern woman. She is not traditional, she is rather Western-ized and modern and although she longs for the glamour of New York penthouses in the sky and London's West End, she eventually takes her new found show biz abilities and produces a musical back in Lebanon. She is finally coming into focus. She is still the ditzy zany young lady with a big bust that tries to appeal to all the men around her, but now she has some growth and fun and so her big number Nazirah's in London is changing to reflect that. She loves being in London because of the shopping, the empowerment, she is taking producing lessons from Cameron MacIntosh. Nazirah's in London and she has a Gold charge card! Harrod's watch out!

Persecuted or Paranoid?

Let's play a new game...it's called "persecuted or paranoid?"...Today I got an email containing a newletter from an organization that promotes musicals and musical theatres across the country, an organization that does a yearly festival of new musicals of which I am an alumni with two shows being presented by them over the years. So in the newletter I notice that they have a spotlight on an alumni writer of musicals. Wonderful, I think...this could be a good way to self promote. So I write to them and remind them of the great year I have been having (yes, I knocked on wood)...after all it began with a great world premiere of Time after Time in Pittsburgh, went on to 2 very successful and well publicized Miami productions of Rock Odyssey (and a ten year licensing deal!), proceeded to The Night of the Hunter starring Davis Gaine, Julie Johnson and a 24 piece orchestra in Texas, and is climaxing with the announcement of The Road to Qatar! at the York Theatre Off Broadway...so I thought now would be a great time them to feature ME! I swiftly sent out the email and swiftly received the reply that told me that they are discontinuing the spotlight on the musical theatre author series. How timely for me! Persecuted or Paranoid? Hmm...you be the judge.