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

What is tricky is keeping the humor in the scenes without making it jokes-on-demand that sugarcoat the desperate despair that has seeped into Rose's dream. Even trickier is how, once again, to convert entertainment numbers in a musical into scenes in a musical play.

“Together,” the first book number in act two, is plainly a vaudeville act aimed at the audience. The three leading players sing jokey lyrics to a jingly tune and hoke it up as performers, not characters, usually with much success. Not this time around, though; this time the players seemed uncomfortable and the song an ill-judged mistake, because what had been brief plot points for Rose and her daughter were now dramatic turning points in the understated battle between them that becomes the clothesline of the second act. The song didn't belong, but it was an audience favorite, it was the centerpiece of the scene, it had to stay. There had to be a way of making it work for the story, and there was. What gentled it into belonging was the way Rose now began it.

Rose often has more than one motivation for what she does. She needs Louise for the act, she needs Herbie for the act, but she also needs them emotionally: she never wants to be alone. This Rose really does want a family. It may not be her first priority, but she wants one. So she starts “Together” sweetly, arm-in-arming Herbie to sit by her, coaxing Louise to sit on her other side. Soon she has them clowning and horsing around with her, enjoying letting loose for the first time. Instead of faithfully reproducing choreographed movement, they screw up some steps and ad-lib others. She has turned them into a family; they are a family— mother, father, and daughter having fun together, as the title says.

When the actors give the characters dimension, they give them possibilities which music bolsters. “Together” became constantly improvised fun for the three actors. Each audience felt the fun was improvised just for them at just that moment and fell in love with the family.

“You Gotta Get a Gimmick” almost slipped by. Its purpose in the show is to stop it. It does, and always will, no matter who performs it, how well or how badly. But even in rehearsal, in this production, a showstopper existing solely to be a showstopper was a wrong number. It also derailed the three actresses struggling in the unfamiliar territory of burlesque and strippers to locate characters they could make real, at least to themselves. The number is choreographed for five-six-seven-eight caricatures with no regard for what idiosyncratic character each actress was trying to breathe a little life into.

It was apparent at the first run-through of act two that the damage done by “Gimmick” didn't stop with the number or the strippers. In a musical comedy, a showstopper couldn't have caused damage. In a musical comedy, it's a number that does its job, stops the show, and the show moves happily onward. In a musical play, a showstopper is a number that has nothing to do with the story or the characters and stops the play dead in its tracks no matter how hysterical the audience gets. The show moves on because the scenery moves on. With “Gimmick,” just what show was no longer clear: not the show it was meant to be, and certainly not the show we were all so excited about doing.

“Gimmick” tainted everything that took place in the burlesque house. Rehearsing the second act, where the characters are heading for explosion, I was constantly looking for moments to heighten emotionally so that the explosions wouldn't come from nowhere. Emotion has long been out of fashion in the theatre, but for me emotion is synonymous with theatre. The burlesque-dressing-room scenes with only Rose, Herbie, and Louise are packed with emotional moments. They were being acted by Patti, Boyd, and Laura with as much emotional reality as their first-act scenes, but they came off as melodramatic and contrived. Every moment in a play affects every other moment in a ripple effect there is no way to prevent. The show-biz aura of “Gimmick” affected every moment in the burlesque house.

It was my fault. Tempted by the showstopper “Gimmick” would assuredly be, I ignored the effect it was having on what I myself was trying to achieve. There was so much to get done with a whole company as well as the stars and only three weeks to do it in—a valid excuse if any excuse is valid. But none is for failure. The ridiculously short time of three weeks can only be pointed out for the success I hoped this would be.

This wasn't the first instance of my being at fault and for a somewhat similar reason. I had overlooked the damage done by allowing the Farmboys and the Hollywood Blondes to give their customary mindless musical-comedy performances—the boys hoking it up in the hotel room, the Blondes equally hokey in the burlesque house. They had been cast with actors—young, inexperienced, but talented actors. What they deserved was the respect of being treated like actors. I did: I got to work directing them. I encouraged, even prodded them to find characters for themselves and then showed them how with only one or two lines, even with no lines, they could make a marked difference to the show. It really paid off in ways I wouldn't have thought of and was saved taking the time and trouble of inventing. One example: in the hotel room, what had been an anonymous pleasant Farmboy became a smartass, juvenile lecher who made passes at June. The chain of reactions from June, who slapped him, to Rose, who wanted to slap him, to Tulsa, who protected June for a reason we don't find out until the end of the act, made the hotel room alive