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

performance both want. That means the director being ready to take anything and try anything, even if it means making a fool of himself. I had found the right button to press for Laura, but there was one place where the only way to help her was to risk making a fool of myself—so what the hell, I did. To her enjoyment and the enjoyment of the few people allowed in the rehearsal hall, I simulated the strip for her. I may have looked like a fool, but it was obviously fun; fun helps rehearsals.

The transition in that striptease from Louise as a naïve, untalented, awkward young girl into the sexually sophisticated, secure, witty Gypsy Rose Lee is an extremely difficult challenge for any actress. Laura took it in stride. She understood it emotionally, she was confident she could do it. The physical act of stripteasing was another matter, unknown territory. She'd never seen one, and willing as she was to try, she didn't have a clue where to begin. Underneath, she was afraid. She is very beautiful, with a beautiful body, but very far from being an exhibitionist—judging from how she dressed at rehearsal, the opposite.

How she moved had to come from who she was playing. At that early stage, I knew who that was probably better than she did. So with the help of a drummer and Patrick Vaccariello, our musical director, who was in happy sync with anything I wanted to do musically and became enjoyably essential to me as work progressed, but without the help of our ready, able, loveable, and stoical choreographer, Bonnie Walker, I walked a striptease for Laura Benanti. If I could do it, she could do it better: she had more to work with. As we went through each of the four strips that make up the number, she brought two elements that were all Laura Benanti and made the strip strikingly hers. One was an idiosyncratic sense of humor completely unexpected in a woman so beautiful; the other was a stripper's walk that Gypsy Rose Lee would have lusted for. From fearing the strip, she went to loving it and then, actress that she is, to perfecting every detail tirelessly. The curtain I had planned to use to end the number couldn't work with the City Center set—a situation directors have to face constantly. This time it was fortuitous, because a new ending was needed, something as special as Laura. Examining what curtains were available in City Center's archives, I found how to end the number with a use of curtains not seen before. In Rose's biblical mode, seek and ye shall find—so long as ye know what ye're seeking.

The fresh approach to “Little Lamb” that misled me into thinking the music was not going to be a problem helped me be alert to possible problems the music could cause before they happened. At the outset of rehearsal, lyrics were spoken and explored around the table just as the dialogue was. The first book song, “Some People,” was a little difficult to bring off as sort of a soliloquy in a musical play; it seemed more the star's opening number. It's difficult for Rose to get into the song vocally: she has to slam in on all cylinders. Helping her get there emotionally would help her get there vocally, but Patti wanted to start easy. She had such a great voice, knew so well how to deliver, I didn't push her. A mistake. The audience screamed and yelled, but it was still a mistake. At least I was aware of it. I was also aware there was nothing I could do about it at that moment, so I moved on to Rose's duets with Herbie—eagerly, and why not? Both have lyrics that are layered and begging to be explored—and who better to explore them with than Patti LuPone and Boyd Gaines, the last of the great leading men because he is also a great character actor. Still, he had a button I needed to push.

I knew what it was before we started rehearsals. Boyd Gaines is reticent by nature. He is afraid of overdoing, of being in the way, even of asserting himself. So is Herbie. When Herbie finally erupts, it should come as a welcome shock. But I wanted signs of it earlier in this Herbie; I didn't want it to come from nowhere. Boyd is such a good actor, he can do that with one word— the word “no,” as a matter of actual fact. When he tells Rose in the Chinese restaurant that he is afraid of walking out and she laughs it off with “Only around the block,” Boyd's “No!” said this man was much more than he seemed. Only one word, but it achieved a big purpose and launched her into “You'll Never Get Away from Me.”

Boyd himself has an offbeat sexiness and a sense of humor he can use physically that I wanted him to exploit but which he feared might get in the way. Whose way? Patti's? Patti LuPone loves actors who give her something to play off. Pushing Boyd Gaines to let go was not easy; he is so used to being a gentleman. But what is there to lose by going too far with a good actor? I pushed and pushed so hard it stirred him to let go and let fly. He and Patti had a sexual chemistry; they meshed like the answer to a director's dreams. The result was musical scenes so clearly what they always should have been that I wondered why I hadn't directed them that way before. Certainly they were much richer than they ever had been. I wrote them: didn't I know what I was writing? Does any writer know all he is writing—know what's underneath what he has written? Not if he's any good, is my guess. But he does need actors and a director to give life to what's there, and I had