Mainly on Directing by Arthur Laurents (read more books .TXT) 📕

By the time I made my way up to the stage, there had been an exodus as from Egypt, led, not by Moses, but by the gypsies, the dancers in the show. The gypsies know everything that's going to happen before it actually happens. How they know, nobody knows. But they do, and they did that day at the Palace. Only Robert Stack didn't know. Fritz had vanished. Stack stood there alone, waiting for me to anoint him Star of a Broadway musical.

We sat on the set's furniture, upholstered in mauve silk, facing a papier-mâché giraffe that I had found in Boston and put a diamond choker on to make the set look like what people would think was “gay.” Stack in his denim jeans sat next to the giraffe, unaware of the diamond choker.

He was very pleasant as we attempted to connect. He had been in a Broadway-bound play with Eileen Heckart. A life raft to seize on: I knew Heckie; she had been wonderful in a play of mine I had also directed. She had been wonderful in the play Stack did with her, too. Where did they do the play? Oh, he and Eileen had begun in a well-known summer theatre in Ogunquit, Maine. And then Broadway? Well, no … it never did get to Broadway; actually, it never got out of Ogunquit. Ah, well, that happens. But he had musical experience? Oh, yes: he had played with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. Played what? The triangle.

I was proud of what had been made of the dicey material that was La Cage aux Folles. I loved the company. I was not about to ask them to suffer, gladly or any other way. But I didn't want Robert Stack to suffer from public exposure merely because Allan Carr was a Pasadeniac, and I also didn't want the show stuck for that two weeks' salary.

I ran through all the truisms with the hopeful star. Musicals are very difficult to do if you haven't done one before—on the road, at a dinner theatre, on a cruise ship, someplace, let alone Broadway. Stack nodded. Then there's the difficulty of singing with an orchestra for the first time while on a Broadway stage for the first time. Stack nodded. Whatever I dredged up just brought that pleasant, understanding nod. Finally, a deep, decisive breath and I dove in: he could be doing himself a disservice if he went on. No luck: he nodded; he was prepared for the risk. Of making a fool of himself? Of the newspapers having a field day? None of that mattered, he said. “I can do it if you believe I can do it.”

What do you say to that? Truth and consequences. No fool he. His performance had been that of a complete amateur, but he wanted the part so badly; his desire was so naked that he had defected from Hollywood. He had exposed himself, he was a person, he wanted the recognition we all want (see Gypsy). It was painful to deny him. But then I remembered the triangle in the symphony orchestra. And the opera-singer aunt. And that he was from Pasadena. And what the theatre was about.

“I'm sorry, Bob,” I said. “I don't believe you can do it.”

“That's that,” he said politely, without a trace of resentment, of any feeling at all. We shook hands, he quit that day, and I never saw him again.

I had saved the show his two weeks' salary. When I learned how much, I was in shock: $35,000 a week. In 1986, they were going to pay Robert Stack $35,000 a week! I had saved the show $70,000.

Except that I hadn't. Allan Carr insisted on paying Robert Stack in full. After all, he was from Pasadena.

The absence or presence of movie stars in musicals can be an unexpected trap for an unwary director. The reason for the presence of the movie star is hardly a mystery. No one asks why Antonio Banderas was cast in a revival of Nine. As expected, the box-office advance was good. Unexpected were the rave reviews and the wildly enthusiastic audience, both sending the box office skyward. Banderas was completely at home on the stage; his charm was enormous; he was the matinee idol of the twenty-first century; and the company—of women—adored him. If 81/2, on which Nine was based, was about a man of genius, and for all that Banderas was, that he was not, did it matter? How faithful was the musical to the film, anyway?

The real questions were: What was the purpose of the production? Why was Nine revived? Did the director want more than gaudy success? Did he have higher aspirations? Did the authors?

In this theatre, why ask? The show was a success.

The Boy from Oz would not have been the stunning success it was without another movie star, Hugh Jackman. He gave the best performance of any male musical performer in decades as the gay Australian songwriter/singer Peter Allen. (He gave an equivalent performance as the poster-boy American farmhand Curly in Oklahoma! in London.) The New York audience went mad for him, as did the box office. Paradoxically, if it hadn't, the producer might have replaced the director, who didn't have the musical in his bones and delivered a very uncertain production which succeeded only because of Hugh Jackman.

His importance to The Boy from Oz unfortunately cannot be overestimated, for a better director might have made it easier even for a star who was obviously enjoying what he did; might even have opened new doors for him, talented as he was, made the work more challenging and exciting, and, best of all, given him a musical play worthy of him rather than a starring vehicle. There is a legitimate need for stars, for reasons poetic and practical, but that need underestimates the importance